Questions about Tactics11

Register with your name, email, password and date of birth, or with one of the sign-in buttons. We email you a 6-digit code: type it on the same screen and you are in, with no second sign-in. You are then offered a free club in a league with other managers, playing at a time that suits your evening. Look it over and apply, ask for another, or pick the world, league and club yourself.

No. Tactics11 runs in the browser on desktop, tablet and phone - you sign in and your save is already there. The iOS and Android apps are there if you would rather have it on your home screen.

Yes, in the phone browser or in the iOS and Android apps. It is one account and one club whichever you open, so a lineup set on the laptop is the lineup on the phone.

Within minutes. When you take your first club, your assistant books a friendly against an AI side that kicks off 15 minutes later. You can change the side until a minute before kick-off and make substitutions while it is played. It counts for nothing: no energy, injuries, cards, form, morale, money or record. You can replay the short tour of the game any time from your manager menu.

For your first 7 days as a manager, counted from the first club you take, transfers and loans are with clubs the AI runs only. A new account is the cheapest way to feed players or money into another one, and a week shuts that off without slowing anybody who plays honestly. After it, the whole market is open. Leaving a club cancels the listings, asking prices and unanswered offers you made there, and for 7 days after, no club you run can deal with it - you know that squad from the inside.

No. Tactics11 runs on its own generated football universe of clubs, players and competitions. That keeps the game free of real-league licensing, which is why the game will always be free to play.

Matches are simulated minute by minute against other human managers in a persistent league world, so the transfer market, form and league table are all driven by real opponents rather than an offline database.

Yes. A squad must keep at least seven players from the club's own country, and may register at most three from outside its regional league - the twelve leagues, such as West Africa or North-West Europe. Anyone from another country in the same league is regional and has no limit. A foreign player must be rated 75 or more and aged 20 or more on the day he signs; what happens to him after that does not matter. A club at seven locals cannot sell or loan a local away, and a club below seven after a retirement can only sign locals until it is back up.

Not in the window you signed him in. A player who joins your club stays until that window closes, or for 30 days if that is longer, and in that time he cannot be sold, lent or released. A player signed in July or August can leave in January at the earliest; one signed in January, in the summer.

He leaves as a free agent on the day it ends, unless you renewed it first, and any club may sign him, including yours. You are warned 90 days before, and players ask for talks as their deal runs down. If losing your expiring players would take your squad below 18 players or 2 goalkeepers, the board extends just enough of them, on the same terms, to the end of the season and tells you. Clubs the AI runs renew the players they want and let the rest go, so the free-agent market fills every summer. Academy players follow the academy's own timeline instead.

No. Every player has a hidden ambition, consistency, big-game temperament and professionalism, which the staff describe in words and never as numbers. Consistency decides how far his level strays from match to match, temperament what a final, a semi-final, a derby or a much bigger opponent does to it, and ambition how hard he negotiates and how soon he wants a bigger club. Play styles, such as a pinged pass, a finesse shot or relentless running, each change one thing he does on the pitch. You see your own players' character; another club's player shows it only once your scouts have watched him closely.

No. Every month of the season the ceiling of each player aged 27 or under is revised by his minutes, his coaching, his professionalism and some chance, and each revision stands, a point at a time. Regular minutes and a good attitude push it up; sitting out pulls it down. A young professional who plays a lot can now and then have a breakthrough season. Your academy head sends you the revised estimates, which narrow as the academy level rises and as the player plays. Professionalism itself stays hidden: the staff describe it in a word, and a mentor's can rub off on an academy player over a season.

Every club has an academy under its senior squad. A class of scholars arrives at 16 every close season, and the academy level you have built decides how many places there are, how high each intake's ceilings can reach, how fast the academy develops, and how precise your staff's ceiling estimates are. Academy players cannot be named in the senior eleven and do not count against the 25-man senior limit until you promote them. The one exception: when the senior squad cannot raise the sixteen a match needs, the assistant calls up the best available academy players for that match alone. It works the other way too: when the academy cannot raise eleven for a youth league match, the assistant borrows senior players for that match alone, under-21s first and never more than three aged 21 or over. The academy side plays its own league every season, one per league, Monday nights: there is no prize money and winning it is not a first-team honour. In the last year of a scholarship you decide whether to offer a first professional contract. Offer none and he leaves for free; offer one and he refuses, and the club that signs him within a year owes you training compensation set by your academy level and the years he trained with you. Another club can only sign one of your academy players by a bid you accept and he agrees to, in a transfer window. When a player your academy trained is later sold between two other clubs, you receive 5% of the fee. Academy professionals can be loaned out for senior minutes, and a player of 23 or under can be recalled early if the borrower has not played him for 30 days. Mark academy players Develop, On merit or Rest and the assistant follows it when he picks the youth league side, and pair any of them with a senior mentor aged 24 or over. The academy head describes each player's attitude, sends a weekly report when ratings move and a monthly review of every estimate, keeps a progress chart for each player, and tells you when a graduate makes his senior debut or scores his first senior goal. Academy players leave at 21: promote them or release them. For nations, only the senior team is a job. A country also fields a U23 team, but the AI runs it: its matches are simulated by the engine, like the rest of the youth system. The U23s are open to players aged 23 or under on the day of the match, and a player called up to the senior squad for a window cannot play for the U23s in that same window.

Yes. The tactics board sets the side's shape and orders; inside that you can give each starter four individual instructions - shooting, passing, pressing and runs (in behind, normal or coming short) - single out up to three opponents to close down or mark tight in the next match, and name the captain, deputy and dead-ball takers, with separate short and long free-kick takers. The engine reads them, so they change how that player acts in a match. Set pieces have their own calls: corners to the near post, far post, short or cut back to the edge; free kicks direct, whipped, deep or short; throw-ins long or short; zonal or man-marking when you defend them. In a shootout your penalty taker goes first and your assistant picks the best finishers on the pitch. While a match is on you can make substitutions, change the approach and swap two outfield players' positions, which they do at the next stoppage, and change the shape at half-time.

Yes. Every goal says how it came about: where the move began (open play, a counter, the ball won high, a rebound, a set piece and its routine, or a penalty and who gave it away), how many passes it took, the chance's xG, and whether the defender nearest the ball was out on his feet. After the whistle the match centre lists up to three reasons for the result, such as the chances each side made, set-piece goals, a red card, a referee's call, tired legs late on, players picked out of position, or a gap in quality. They are read off the match the engine played, so they never contradict it. After a league or cup defeat your assistant also mails you the one change worth making, or tells you to change nothing when you made the better chances.

Yes, both, and neither is a morale button. Before each league or cup match you can give one team talk: keep it calm, fire them up or demand a win. The right one depends on the match - calm an underdog, demand from a favourite, fire up a side for a big even occasion - and it only changes how well the side keeps the ball in that match. It settles with the squad an hour before kick-off. The press only come to you around derbies, knockout ties, matches against a clearly bigger club, upsets and three-goal margins, and ignoring them costs morale. Your assistant also fills any squad duty nobody can do, and tells you who he picked.

Yes. A member can set up a 4, 8 or 16-club knockout cup in their world, and anybody managing a club there can join it with the code. When it is full it is drawn and played round by round as challenges - live when both sides have a manager - and a level tie goes to extra time and penalties. A tie that is called off goes to the side still clear to play. There is no prize money and it does not count as an official honour; the winner gets the trophy on their club page.

They are earned. Every league or cup meeting with another manager, every challenge and every auction one of you wins while the other bid adds to your history, and a close result adds more. Once you have played each other and there is enough of it, the papers call it a rivalry: your matches become derbies, with a bigger crowd and the press, for as long as you keep meeting. A manager holds at most three rivalries at a time, so it has to be among the three hottest for both of you. A year without meeting or bidding against each other and the history starts again. A rivalry follows the two managers, not the clubs. Your rivals are on your manager page.

No. Every world is twelve equal regional leagues of twenty clubs - West Africa, North-West Europe, South America and nine more - and nobody is ever sent down. A season runs on the real calendar, so a year is a year. What a table decides instead: the top nine of every league go into the three tiers of the Vanguard, the cup and Shield winners take places too, part of every club's TV money is paid by where it finished, and its results move its reputation, which sets its income, its staff and what its board expects.

Each department has a head who moves it halfway from your club's standing to his own quality; hiring a better one costs a one-off fee. Under the heads you can build a team on monthly wages: coaches who each work one discipline (goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, attackers, fitness or set pieces), scouts who each cover one region, and physios who shorten lay-offs. Each helps only where he is better than what you already have. Your training complex decides how many coaches you can take on and your medical centre how many physios.

Yes. Players form close groups from a shared country, seasons together, the same generation and the same part of the pitch, and a few become leaders the rest listen to. Each week a group pulls its members' morale toward its own, with leaders counting double; an unsettled leader takes his friends down with him; a newcomer with a friend in the squad settles faster; and selling a leader costs the friends he leaves behind. The squad screen shows the leaders, the groups and the warnings worth acting on.

On payroll day the board sets one target for the month ahead: points, goals, clean sheets, or a limit on defeats. It is scaled to your club's standing in its league and, after five league or cup matches this season, to your last ten results, so a big club or a side in form is asked for more. Meet it and the board's confidence in you goes up; miss it and it slips a little. A month with fewer than two league or cup matches has no target, and if you change club mid-month nobody holds you to the old one.

At the start of every season the board sets your club a short list: a league target, plus one to three more drawn from what fits your club, such as a cup round, finishing above a named club (an earned rival in your league if you have one), goals conceded, goal difference, home defeats, away wins, a top scorer's goals, starts for players under 23, a wage ceiling or breaking even. Targets come from your club's own last season, so two clubs of the same size are rarely asked the same thing. Your club page shows each one as the season goes. The board reviews the list at the end of every quarter - 30 September, 31 December, 31 March and 30 June - on where the season is heading on current form; the June review judges what actually happened and settles it: every objective met or missed moves the board's confidence in you. One may be marked as your job: if it is not on course at a review and confidence would be under 30, your contract ends. Resigning or taking another job in that position is recorded as a sacking, and you are told before you confirm. A new manager starts on at least 75. A review is only held against you if you have been in charge, under that list, for the whole quarter.

Yes, for ever. One club, every world, every club competition, every screen and the whole match engine, on an account that never pays anything. Everybody can follow the World Cup. Membership adds the live picture of your own matches, highlights of every match in your league, saving your goals as videos, more clubs, a national team job, holiday leave, a challenge every day on the day and time you pick, kits with patterns, your home stands in your colours and a season review card.

Every manager follows their own matches live on the scoreboard, with commentary, statistics and every touchline control, free. The live 3D picture of the match is part of Membership. Nothing in it changes what you can decide: the scoreboard carries everything a decision needs. Members also watch the highlights of every match in their league once it is over.

By the year. A year runs for 365 days from the day you pay, whenever in the season that is, and everything it adds works from that moment. It renews automatically unless you untick it at checkout or turn it off later; you keep what you paid for either way.

Every new manager gets a welcome membership: 14 days of Membership, free, from the moment you take your first club. No card is asked for, nothing renews and nothing is charged; when it ends you carry on on the free plan. Free days include every member perk except naming your club and uploading a crest, which need a paid membership. Buy a year during those 14 days and it starts the day you pay, replacing the free days left.

Yes, the annual membership, at the same price, shown by the App Store or Google Play in your own currency. It is one membership however it is bought: buy it here, sign in on your phone, and it is already there. A membership bought in an app renews and is cancelled in that store, one bought here on the Membership screen.

Yes, to anybody who is not already a member and accepts gifts. Name a manager, or give one or more to active managers picked at random. They can always say no, and a gift nobody takes is never lost: a random one goes to somebody else and a named one comes back to you. A gift has no cash value, cannot be resold, and is non-refundable once claimed.

Share your invite link from your profile. When a manager you invited pays for their own membership and the payment still stands after 14 days, you get 30 days of membership, free - unless you are already a member then, in which case the reward is skipped. At most six rewards in any 365 days. Signing up or playing earns nothing on its own. Invites between accounts that share a browser earn nothing, ones between accounts that share a network address are checked by a person first, and the two of you cannot trade with each other for 90 days after they join. A refunded or charged-back payment, or a ban on the friend's account, takes the reward back. The Invites tab on your profile shows everyone who joined and what each earned.

No. A nation is picked from players who already belong to clubs in that world, so nobody's club gets stronger, and one manager holds each nation. Every club manager's players are called up the same way, whoever runs the nation.

Once a season you can hand your clubs to the AI for up to 30 days. They are run exactly like every other AI club: it picks the side, it does not buy or sell, and the board does not count your absence against you.

No, and it never will. Nothing on any plan touches a result, a transfer, a training session or a table, and nothing on any plan tells a subscriber something a free account cannot also see. An advantage in information is pay-to-win wearing a different hat.

It is worn beside your name wherever your name appears - a club header, a league table, a rival row, a news byline. It says you pay for this, and nothing else.

Nothing is seized on the hour a card fails. You keep the first club you ever took, for ever, on the free plan. If you hold more than the free plan allows you are told which club is affected and when, in that club's own inbox, and you choose for yourself which to carry on with.

The API Hub is our football data API: the clubs, players, competitions, fixtures and standings of a world you manage, served read-only as JSON over REST. It is part of Membership.