Doors open

The doors are open. play.total.football. Season 1 started yesterday with the camp week; Round 1 is Saturday 10.10 at 11:00. Twelve days. Here is the list.

1. Register. Email, manager name, password. Played before? Settings → “I played before”: old email + your code.
2. Name your club, pick two colours, draft eighteen players (one of three, eighteen rounds). You are placed in the highest league with a free slot.
3. Read the squad, set a lineup and a formation. Save it — the game locks it at kickoff and swaps out anyone injured or suspended.
4. Set the week's training and a personal focus for two or three players. The board pays $300k for each of these first steps.
5. Hire a coach and a physio. Two more grants. Order one scout report.
6. Challenge a club to a friendly — a bot accepts at once — and watch the live engine with your own players in it. Two per week, until Friday 9.10.
7. Sign a sponsor when the first offer arrives; read its clauses.
8. Look at the free agents. They are the players the dissolved clubs left behind; some are better than yours.
9. Say hello in the Newbies forum — your welcome thread is already there.
10. Set a ticket price near $20 and leave the ground alone until it is full.

What not to do. Do not spend the $1.5M on day one. Do not put twelve friendlies on the calendar (you cannot; two per week). Do not change the formation the night before Round 1.

What is coming after the doors. The hero video; the deeper role behaviours; the out-of-position cost; a proper tune of the story engine's card rate from the first real matches — I will tell you what I measure, every week, here.

Legacy managers: your codes went out; if yours did not arrive, write to me with your old email.

Saturday 10.10, 11:00. The pyramid is waiting. See you in the stands.