Keep who you need
Every player has a role, a wage and a contract. Renew before it runs out or he leaves for free.
Contracts guide →HOW TO PLAY
From the invite
to the final table.
Football Career Online is a football management game: you pick the club, the squad, the formation and the instructions, and the match engine plays the football. Here is a whole season, start to finish.
- 01
Create a career
Choose a mode, one of 17 leagues, a budget and the transfer rules. Play a single season, or keep going for up to fifty, with players who age, develop and retire. Then share the invite code with up to seven friends. Any club nobody picks is run by the computer.
Guide: Running a league with friends → - 02
Build your squad
In Career you take over a real club and its real squad. In an Auction everyone starts empty and bids for every position, one player at a time: open bids that everyone sees, or one sealed bid each. Play against friends, against real-named computer managers from Easy to Impossible, or both.
Guide: Auction strategy → - 03
Set your team
Pick your eleven and one of 14 formations (4-3-3, 4-2-3-1, 4-4-2, 3-5-2, 5-3-2, 4-1-4-1, 4-4-1-1, 4-3-2-1, 4-1-2-1-2, 4-3-1-2, 4-2-2-2, 3-4-3, 3-4-2-1, 5-4-1), then four instructions: mentality, pressing, passing and tempo. Each is a trade-off, not an upgrade. Players out of position, tired or out of form play worse, and the pitch shows you by how much.
Guide: Tactics and formations → - 04
Press Ready
Nothing happens until every manager is ready. Then the whole matchweek plays at once, including the computer clubs' games, and the table, stats and news update for everyone. To move faster, anyone can propose playing ahead; it only runs if everyone agrees.
Guide: Your first season → - 05
Work the market
Buy from your league and five others. Computer clubs negotiate with counter-offers, and players have demands: a role, a contract length and a wage that fits your wage budget. Friends decide for themselves. Your best players attract bids too, and you can move money between transfers and wages at any time.
Guide: How negotiations work → - 06
Watch Wrapped, then go again
At the end of the season nobody sees the final table until the group watches Season Wrapped together: derbies, awards and each finish revealed one by one. In a long career the next season follows, with contracts to renew, a new academy intake and clubs abroad buying and selling.
Guide: Contracts, wages and budgets →
THE MATCH ENGINE
Not a coin flip weighted by ratings.
Every match is played possession by possession, about two hundred of them, with the players you actually fielded, in the positions you played them. Midfielders fight for the ball, wingers take on full-backs, strikers take on centre-backs and keepers, and every attribute counts: pace, shooting, passing, dribbling, defending, physical, and a keeper's diving, handling, reflexes and positioning.
Players tire, substitutes come on, fouls bring cards and penalties, a red card leaves a side a man down, and the scoreline changes how both teams play. We tested it against thousands of seasons of real football: goals, draws, home wins, shots, cards and final tables land where the top leagues do.
A stronger side usually wins. It does not always win. That is football, and that is the point.
Find a wonderkid
A new intake every season, better at bigger clubs. Promote the best and give them minutes.
Academy guide →Beat the computer
Solo auctions against real-named managers. On Hard and Impossible they are tactical geniuses too.
AI managers guide →CUP NIGHTS AND CHALLENGES
History, and twenty solo challenges.
Magic Nights lets you take any club from any Champions Cup season since 1990, with that era's squads and format: two-legged knockouts, group stages or the modern league phase. Follow a match live, change tactics and make substitutions, or simulate it. Read the Magic Nights guide.
Road to Glory is a separate solo campaign of 20 challenges: historical cup runs, league careers and auctions against AI. Each stage fixes the club, budget and objective. Meet the main objective to unlock the next stage; optional objectives earn stars. A clear is permanent, and failed attempts can be retried.
THAT'S THE LOT