Game guide

Footlub is a football management game based on real matches. You run a club together with other users, sign real players and field them every weekend: their points come from the statistics of Serie A, Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 matches.

Points come only from the real performances of the players, with no human ratings. Every player belongs to one club only, and the club is a real company, with roles and shares.

Every user plays in their own country's realm (for example Italy). Within a realm each real player can belong to one club only: if a player is yours, no other club in the realm can have him.

Your realm is assigned at sign-up and can't be changed.

• Chairman: founds the club and owns at least 51% of the shares. Appoints the Sporting Director and the Coach; if a role is vacant, he fills it himself.
• Sporting Director: runs transfers (offers and auctions).
• Coach: sets the line-ups and makes substitutions during the live match.
• Shareholders: join on request (up to 10 members per club), own shares and take part in the internal forum. In forum polls, votes are weighted by shares.

Kit: the Chairman designs the club kit (pattern, colours, number colour and goalkeeper kit). As soon as a player is signed, he wears his new club's kit on every page of the game. No player photos or real club crests are used.

Every new user gets a 100 mln endowment. Whoever founds a club pays it all into the club's cash: the club starts with the Chairman's 100 mln, and he owns 100% of it.

• Club value = cash + purchase price of the players in the squad + stadium works paid for, minus any debts to former shareholders.
• Joining as a shareholder: you buy shares at the club's current value (if it's worth 100 mln, 20% costs 20 mln). The shares are sold by all shareholders in proportion to what they own, and your millions go into their personal funds, not into the cash. Example: Chairman at 80% and a shareholder at 20%; if you join with 30%, the Chairman sells 24 shares and the shareholder 6, receiving 24 and 6 mln. The Chairman approves the entry and never drops below 51%.
• Income from every league match: home gate depending on the stadium, plus a prize for the result. Division 1: 1.5 mln per win and 0.75 per draw; Division 2: 1 mln and 0.5; Division 3 and below: 0.5 mln and 0.25. Friendlies bring no income.
• Stadium: every club has one, named by the Chairman (the name can be changed at any time). With 30,000 seats it earns 1 mln per home match; it can be expanded in steps of 10,000 seats up to 80,000 (up to 3.5 mln per match), paying for the works from the club's cash. During construction (2–4 months) home income is halved: summer is the best time to build. Works above 20 mln must be approved by shareholders holding more than half of their shares. Money spent on the stadium counts towards the club's value.
• Buy-out: a shareholder leaves by agreement with the Chairman (one of the two proposes it, the other accepts), or with a vote of 75% of the shares of the other shareholders. He receives his percentage of the club's value in his personal funds and his shares go back to the Chairman.
• If the cash isn't enough, the rest becomes a debt paid in instalments: half of every income goes to the former shareholder until it's settled. To raise cash sooner, players can be sold in trades for millions.
• Each user can own shares in one club only.
• Important decisions arrive as a notification to whoever is involved: join requests and their outcome, buy-out proposals and exit requests, buy-outs completed or rejected, stadium votes and works.

Every club pays an annual membership of €29.99, split among shareholders by shares: whoever owns 20% of the club pays 20% of the fee. Founding a club or buying one that's for sale includes the membership for the season.

• The renewal for the next season is due by 31 May, from the Membership page: each shareholder pays their part.
• If a shareholder doesn't pay, the Chairman covers their part and takes their shares; the shareholder leaves the club.
• Whoever joins as a shareholder mid-season pays nothing for that season, already covered by the Chairman: they pay their part from the next renewal.
• If the Chairman doesn't pay, leadership passes to the paying shareholder with the most shares.
• If nobody pays, in June the club is put up for sale with its whole squad: whoever buys it inherits players, history and its place in the division.

During the beta, payments are simulated: the renewal is recorded without any charge.

Every player has one or more real roles: nobody decides them, we derive them from the positions he actually played in the previous season:

An Footlub matchday is a week of real matches, from Tuesday to Monday (Italian time), with all the games of the 5 leagues: weekend and midweek rounds. Weeks without matches (international breaks) are not matchdays. Every real round (for example Serie A round 12) always belongs to the same Footlub matchday: the one of the week in which most of its games are played.

If a player plays two matches in one matchday (midweek plus weekend), the best one counts, with a −1 penalty if he played both. If he plays only one, that one counts with no penalty. Players with no match in the matchday (league paused for cups or holidays) are replaced by the automatic substitution.

Your club's matches are in the Fixtures: from there you set the line-up for each match.

• Until the first kick-off of the matchday the line-up can be changed.
• At the first kick-off the match goes live on its own, with the line-ups entered.
• At the end of the matchday, when all the real matches of the fielded players are over, the result becomes final.

Friendlies can be arranged on a current or future matchday, choosing opponent and venue.

If a real match is postponed, the Footlub matchday waits for the rescheduled match: the players of those two teams must take the field before the result is final.

• The postponed match stays in its own matchday even if it's played weeks later: its players aren't replaced by the automatic substitution and the points from the rescheduled match count for that matchday.
• Footlub matches waiting for a rescheduled game stay suspended: the partial score is visible, but the result doesn't count in the table (nor bring income or prizes) until they're closed. Shareholders of both clubs get a notification listing the matches to be played.
• The other matchdays go on as normal: several matchdays can be suspended at once. The line-up stays the one captured at the first kick-off: if a player is sold in the meantime, the points from his rescheduled match go to the club that fielded him.
• Friendlies can no longer be arranged on suspended matchdays.
• Cancelled matches, matches awarded by forfeit or never played (one week after the end of the real league): their players count as not having played and the automatic substitution kicks in.
• A match always belongs to the matchday of its real round, even if it's postponed by months or moved before the matchday starts: it's like a match suspended at minute 0.
• If a match is brought forward to an earlier week, its matchday starts with that match: line-ups are locked at its kick-off, before its result is known.

No press ratings: the score comes from the match's individual statistics, the same for every role (a goal is worth the same for a defender and a striker). The only exception: the goalkeeper is penalised for goals conceded. There are no team bonuses (result, clean sheet).

The points of the 11 starters are added up (with substitutions and penalties). The home team gets +2 home advantage. Then points become goals:

• If the two teams are in adjacent bands but the gap is under 2 points, it's a draw on the lower band.
• If they're in the same band (with at least one goal) and the gap is at least 4 points, the team with more points scores one extra goal.

During the matchday the match updates in real time with the statistics from the real games.

• Up to 5 substitutions per match, made by the Coach by tapping a player on the pitch.
• The player going off brings to the slot the points scored until then; the player coming on brings only the points he scores from then on.
• You can't substitute a player who has been sent off or who has already finished his match after playing.
• A substitute who has already finished his match can only come on as an automatic substitution.
• Automatic substitution: if a player on the pitch ends his match with 0 minutes, the first available substitute comes on (first one in the role, then one that makes a formation valid, then the first on the bench) with all his points.
• Anti-cheating: a player you take off manually becomes the first substitute. If the player who replaced him doesn't play, he comes back with only the points scored after going off, and this return doesn't use up a substitution.
• A player whose match is postponed isn't replaced: the match stays suspended until the rescheduled game (see Postponed matches).
• Tapping a player (on the pitch or on the bench) when you're not making a substitution opens his profile.

The formation adapts to the players on the pitch. After every substitution, if there's a formation in which everyone plays in their own role, it switches to that one with no penalty. Example: in a 4-2-3-1 the striker doesn't play and a midfielder comes on → it switches to 4-3-3.

The penalty only applies when there's no valid formation. Example: in a 4-1-4-1 the only striker doesn't play and a midfielder comes on → there's no formation without strikers, so the midfielder plays up front with −2.

• The Coach can make at most 2 formation changes per match: by choosing one with "Change formation" or with a manual substitution that changes it.
• Every change that shifts the stance applies ±10% per level to the points the opponent scores from then on, up to ±20%.
• Formation changes caused by an automatic substitution don't count and don't change the stance.

• The league is a pyramid of divisions: Division 1 has 4 groups of 10 clubs, Division 2 has 8, Division 3 has 16, and so on.
• In each group teams face each other four times (home and away, twice): 36 matchdays.
• Only Footlub matchdays with at least 4 real leagues in action count. On every league matchday the club plays only the official match: no friendlies.
• Win 3 points, draw 1. Ties are broken by goal difference, goals scored and finally total fantasy points.
• In Division 1 the 4 group winners play the semi-finals (first against fourth, second against third), then the final and the third-place play-off, as one-off matches over the next two matchdays. In case of a draw, the team with more fantasy points goes through.
• Promotion and relegation: from Division 2 down, group winners play the promotion finals (group A against the last, B against the second-to-last, …) and the winners go up. The same number of teams go down from the division above: the bottom teams of each group (in Division 1 the bottom 4).
• Wage bonus: results give extra room under the wage cap for the following seasons. Division 1: +5% for first, +4% for second, +3% for third. Promotion finals: +2% to the winners, +1% to the losers. The bonus builds up year after year up to +30% over the base cap; relegated clubs lose 3% (never below the base cap).

• Free agents are released onto the market in batches and stay available until someone buys them. The Sporting Director buys them at auction, with the club's budget.
• The first bid opens the auction, which lasts 48 hours. Every bid in the last 15 minutes resets it to 15 minutes (no last-second bids).
• Bids go in tenths of a million (100,000): you start from 0.1 mln and raise by at least 0.1 mln.
• While you lead an auction, the millions bid, the squad place and the player's wage stay committed: you can't bid more than you actually have.
• When it closes, the winner pays and the player signs with his annual wage. The wage bill has a cap of 70 mln, which grows with league bonuses.
• Fixed-term contracts: when bidding, the Sporting Director picks the contract length (1, 2 or 3 seasons). In the final season the Sporting Director or the Chairman can renew it on the same wage for 1-3 seasons; if not, at the end of the season the player goes back to the free-agent market.
• Release: you can let a player go at any time by paying from the club's cash 60% of the wage for each remaining season (including the current one). If there isn't enough cash, the release is blocked.
• If another club outbids you in an auction you get a notification, so you can bid again before it closes.
• Anti-fraud checks: every transaction (auctions, trades, cash movements, shareholders joining and leaving) is monitored. Any transfer deal can be blocked or cancelled if it's considered fraudulent, for example unbalanced trades between linked clubs or agreements to favour another club.
• Trades: the Sporting Director offers players and/or millions to another club in the realm; the other director accepts, rejects or makes a counter-offer. Offers expire after 48 hours.
• Loans: the Sporting Director can ask to borrow a player from another club or offer one of their own, until the end of the season. The proposal sets the loan fee, the percentage of the wage paid by the borrowing club (the rest stays with the owner) and an optional purchase price, which can be exercised during the loan. The contract stays with the owner: the borrower can't release or trade the player. The purchase can also be an obligation, or a conditional obligation based on a single condition (starts, goals or a Footlub Points average over at least 5 matches), counted in the official matches in which the borrower starts him: at the end of the loan the purchase is automatic and, if there isn't enough cash, the shortfall becomes a debt to the owning club.
• After every deal the squad must stay between 18 and 30 players (counting the auctions you're winning). A player fielded in a match in progress can't be traded; a player who is sold is removed from his old club's saved line-ups.

• Phone verification: to found a club, buy one or join as a shareholder you need a phone number verified with an SMS code. Each number works for one account only: no multiple accounts.
• Notification centre: the bell at the top shows how many new notifications you have; open it to see them all and tap one to go to the right page. They arrive for outbid auctions, trades, shareholders, stadium, results and suspended matches.
• Phone notifications: you can turn them on for each device from your profile. Footlub can be installed as an app: on iPhone from Safari with Share → Add to Home Screen (needed to receive notifications), on Android with Install app from the browser menu.

Realm

The game world of your country: within a realm every player belongs to one club only.

Footlub matchday

A week of real matches (Tuesday → Monday) across the 5 leagues.

Slot

A position in the formation, accepting one or more roles.

Out-of-position penalty

−1 in the same area, −2 in another area, only if there's no valid formation.

Stance

Defensive, balanced or attacking: changing it shifts the opponent's future points by ±10% per level.

League coefficient

Points multiplier based on the league.

Default line-up

The club's base line-up, used for the first match if you don't set one.

Automatic substitution

The substitute who comes on by himself for a player who ends his match with 0 minutes.

Suspended match

An Footlub match waiting for a postponed real match: it doesn't count in the table until it's closed.

Rescheduled match

The postponed real match, played later: its points count for the original matchday.