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The Football Game box art
2017 Ranked #8,006

The Football Game

A season-management game has players buy and select footballers, use tactics, and navigate matches to exceed club expectations. Injuries, events, and shifting league positions make every squad decision carry narrative consequences.

Sports Simultaneous Action Selection Hand Management Sports: Football / Soccer

Players

2-4

Play time

60-90 min

Age

8+

Complexity

2.13/5

Rating

6.95

Harder to teach Low interaction Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.4/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 3.9/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.3/5

Low interaction

Player scaling 4.0/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.5/5

Deep strategy

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How it plays

How does it play?

Description from the publisher: About: In The Football Game, each player takes charge of a football club and manages it through an entire football season. The winner is the Club who most exceeds the expectations of their fans.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

Description from the publisher: About: In The Football Game, each player takes charge of a football club and manages it through an entire football season. The winner is the Club who most exceeds the expectations of their fans. The Football Game is a much about the football narrative as it is about winning. It captures the rivalries, the excitement, the back-page headlines, the stars, the emotion, humour and the occasional insanity and scandal of football both on and off the pitch. The Football Game combines our love of the sport with our love of tabletop gaming. It reflects not only how football works, but also how it feels! How to Play: The game is played over six rounds, with one turn per Player per Round. Each Round represents about 6 weeks of a football season. During setup, each Player chooses a Club and is dealt a random squad of Footballers and a Manager. The strength of your squad determines your Club’s Class (and win conditions). The transfer market is where you'll buy and sell Footballers in order to add strength and depth in your squad. You’ll need cover too: Players may become unavailable in the course of each Match Day. Every turn ends with a Match Day Roll, where coloured dice are used to reflect scoring. Even the very best Footballers won't perform every week! When selecting their match day team, Players should consider a Footballer’s Ability, Colour, Position, and how these might affect other Footballers in the team. Each Match Day influences the league position of all clubs, so you're never left waiting for your turn. You can boost your score through the use of Tactics cards played both before and after each Match Day Roll. Careful management of Tactics cards might be the difference between stealing the title for some, or avoiding relegation for others. These cards allow your players (such as the Wing Wizard, Ancient Attacker, and Incredible Sulk) to pull off elegant interceptions, lucky deflections, and wonder goals. The two twelve-sided bring about the fortunes and misfortunes that can affect any club or Footballer. You’ll experience Injuries, Knocks and over 50 events including Social Media Mishaps, Night Club Nightmares, Academy Stars, Billionaire Buyouts, Sell-On Fees and many more! Victory points are scored at several stages of the season, and are awarded according to your league position and club class. Different club's have different expectations, so the winner at the end will be the club who most exceeded their fans expectations! Will your Players perform? Will your risk-taking be rewarded? Will lady luck hand you a lifeline?

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
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Player resources

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Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
2–4
Best with
2–3
Play time
60–90 min
Age
8+
Complexity
2.1/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

3
Mark Pearson Jo Pearson Simon Pearson

Artists

1
Robert Gauld-Galliers

Publishers

1
The London Board Games Co

Linked items

No published linked games yet.