Devlog

Match Center, the match report and the stats on the Fixtures page now show each team's expected goals (xG): how many goals their chances were worth. In Match Center it builds up shot by shot as the match plays. Lost a match with twice as many shots? The xG shows whether those shots were real chances or hopeful efforts from range.

Where a shot is taken from now matters a lot more. Shots from outside the box hit the target less often and are easier for the keeper to save, while shots inside the box are a little more dangerous. Working the ball into the box pays off, and a striker who misses from close range now feels it in his rating.

A new Set Pieces page, next to Tactics in the menu. Choose who takes your corners, free kicks and penalties from a full overview of your squad and their attributes, and set up how your team attacks and defends corners on a tactics board in your own kit colours. Nobody chosen? Then a random midfielder steps up for corners and free kicks and a random forward for penalties. Who you pick matters: a sharp delivery or a clean strike makes a real difference.

Every corner and cross now comes down at a real spot in the box: the near post, the six-yard box, the far post or the penalty spot. The players around that spot fight for it, instead of the same defender winning every header. Attack the near post, the far post or crowd the keeper; defend zonally, man to man or with a mix. Keepers now come off their line to claim balls, and corners are a bigger threat than before. The match viewer shows the ball landing exactly where it did in the match, with the real players going for it.

Every player now has a height, shown on their profile, in your squad, in scout reports and on the transfer market, where you can also filter on it. Height doesn't change a player's rating or value, but it matters on the pitch: tall players win more headers and tall keepers reach more crosses, while shorter players are nimbler, harder to stop on the dribble and quicker to get a shot away. Now and then the commentary mentions a really tall or really short player when their height decides a moment.

Club, player and manager names are now links almost everywhere they appear: in scout reports, on the transfer market, in Match Center, cup brackets, statistics, awards, the forum and more. One click takes you to their page.

A search box in the top bar finds clubs, managers and players by name.

Since the 3D stands and the crowd arrived, the match viewer could stutter on some computers and phones, even fast ones. We measured where the time went and made several parts much lighter, such as the player names and the advertising boards. On screens faster than 60 Hz the viewer now draws on a steady beat instead of as fast as it can, which looks a lot smoother. On a device that still can't keep up, it first simplifies the shadows and only then drops to a steady 30 frames per second. Players always stay sharp.

Your stadium is now eight stands you build up one by one: the Main Stand and Opposite Stand on the long sides, the Home End and Away End behind the goals, and four corners. Each stand goes through seven levels, from an open field with a rusty fence to a grand stand under a floodlit roof, and the long sides hold the most seats. The new Stadium page shows your ground live in 3D, from any angle and by day or night. While a stand is being built you see the building site, with a crane, scaffolding and workers, and the stand is closed to fans until it's done. Your crest is picked out in coloured seats in the long stands, and you can choose the seat colours. Existing clubs keep their progress: every level their old stadium had counts as four stand upgrades.

Choosing your first club is now a proper signing. It starts with picking the language you want to play in. Then pick a country on the map, which zooms in on it, or use the country buttons below the map. Every club without a manager gets a scouting report: squad strength and where it ranks in the division, budget, squad size, star player and home kit. Next, choose when your home games kick off, shown in your own time. When you've found your club, the contract is put in front of you. Draw your signature with your mouse or finger, or sign with your name, and the club's seal makes it official.

Right after you set up your dashboard for the first time, three short tips show you around: the light and dark theme switch, New Manager Tasks, and the forum, where your first thread and first reply earn you GL Coins. You can skip the tour at any time.

In the light theme, popups such as the one for renaming your club after you sign kept a dark background while their text turned dark too, so with some club colours the text was impossible to read. Popups now follow the theme: white in the light theme, dark in the dark theme. On phones, their buttons now fit properly as well.

A mistake on the sign-up form, such as a password that didn't meet the rules or an email address already in use, emptied the whole form. Password rules are now checked while you type, with a checklist that ticks off each requirement, so those mistakes never leave the page. If the email address is already taken, your manager name, email and date of birth stay filled in, and only the password needs typing again. A referral link also no longer gets lost after a mistake.

If two new managers claimed the same club at the same moment, the second one could take it over from the first. Only the first signature counts now, and the second manager is asked to pick another club.

Goal Legends now has a light theme. Tap the sun icon in the top bar to switch, and the moon icon to go back. Your choice is remembered on this device. The dark theme stays the default, and a few pages keep their dark look in both themes: your Manager profile, Team profiles and National Team profiles, which are built around stadium artwork. The Lineup page gets a daylight version of the pitch.

In the light theme, the top bar takes on your club's crest colours and the side menu gets a soft tint of them. Buttons, links and your row in the league table use your club colour too. Text on your colours is always picked to stay readable, so even very light or very bright club colours work. Change your crest colours and the theme follows.

Opening a section in the side menu, such as Squad or League, left an empty space under its last item. The menu now closes up neatly.

On narrow phone screens the top bar was slightly too wide, which cut your manager name off at the edge. On those screens the bar now shows just your badge, which still opens your account menu.

In rare cases a Friendly Cup could create the same round twice, after which it never finished. A round can now only be created once.

Man of the Match counted goals and assists twice, once in the match rating and again on top of it. A scorer on the losing side could win it over a clearly better player from the winning team. Man of the Match now goes to the player with the highest match rating, with goals and then assists only deciding exact ties. Earlier match reports keep their original pick.

A player's Overall used to be his rating at his main position only, even when he suits one of his other natural positions better. A winger with a striker's shooting could show 62 everywhere but rate 67 when lined up up front. Overall is now always his best rating across all his natural positions, so some players go up a few points and their market value rises with it. Nothing changes in matches, and nobody goes down. Youth prospects now show all their positions on the preview page, and the Overall you see there is exactly what they get when they join your squad.

The League Statistics page kept showing last season's clean sheets and cards after the new season started. Every table now shows this season's league matches only.

Player of the Year and Rising Star were also counting national team matches. They now count League, Elite Champions Cup and Domestic Cup matches only, as described on the Awards page.

Design the kit your players wear in every match on the new Kit Designer page (Club menu), with a live 3D shirt on a hanger that you can turn to see the front and the back with your name and number. Every club can pick the shirt, second colour, shorts and socks, choose from six patterns, and pick a crew neck or V neck. Your kit is now separate from your club crest, so changing one no longer changes the other.

VIP members get seven extra patterns, a polo collar, long sleeves, hooped socks, a stripe on the shorts, their own trim colour, shirt print colour and print font, a goalkeeper colour, and a full away kit that is worn automatically whenever your home kit clashes with your opponent's.

Play a small knockout cup for a trophy. VIP members can host a 4 or 8 club cup, pick when it starts and how far apart the rounds are, and choose between a closed cup (invite only) and an open cup that anyone can join, with or without non VIP managers. Invitations hold a spot for 48 hours, the host can start early, and bot clubs fill any empty spots. Every tie is a friendly, and the winner's silver trophy goes on their Trophy Room shelf.

VIP members can watch up to 50 players and choose exactly what to hear about: listed (optionally only under your price), new bids, the last hour of bidding, sold or moved club, or reaching an Overall you are waiting for. Save up to 10 scout alerts by position, age, Overall, Potential, price, nationality and even individual stats like Heading or Pace, and get told about every new listing that fits. Alerts arrive in your inbox, and by email if you like.

VIP members can save up to 5 lineups, each with its own formation, bench and tactics, and switch between them in one click from the Lineup page.

A showroom for every league title, cup and player award your club wins, plus a shelf for friendly cup trophies. A VIP perk, open for any visitor to admire.

VIP members can claim 25 GL Coins every day from the dashboard.

VIP names now shine in gold on the forum, VIP members get a free club rename and a free stadium rename every 30 days, and VIP members can vote on what gets built next on the Feature Votes page. Everything is listed on the new VIP Membership page, and all VIP pages now sit together under VIP Features in the menu, marked with a crown.

A player's unspent XP now resets when he moves to another club, so XP can no longer be passed between clubs by selling players cheaply.

Players in the 3D match view now have a slimmer footballer's build with a looser shirt, proper shorts and a normal V neck.

Watching a match on the pitch view now shows the same player stats table as the Text Center next to the pitch, updating as the match plays.

The Squad Numbers page is now in the Squad menu, numbers appear in the match stat tables, and a player who joins your club gets your lowest free number. Two youth prospects could sometimes get the same number; that's fixed, and existing duplicates are repaired.

The newest result in the Team Form card on your dashboard now stays hidden until you have watched the match or revealed it, just like the Previous Match card.

Season prize money is now paid per league and is a lot more generous. Every Elite Division club gets at least €1,500,000, plus €250,000 for each place it finishes above the bottom, so the champion takes home €5,750,000. National Division clubs get €750,000 plus €125,000 per place, up to €2,875,000 for the title. Previously every club in the world was ranked in one big table, so a league champion could be paid as if it finished 40th.

When the season ends you now get an inbox message about your league finish, with a breakdown of your prize money: the base amount for the league you played in, plus the bonus for where you finished.

After the new season's fixtures are drawn you now get a full pre-season day before the first league matches, so there's time to set your lineup, tactics and transfers. The Season Planner shows the draw, the pre-season and the kick-off day.

The League Table and World Leagues pages now have a season picker. It opens on the current season, and from now on every finished season's final table is kept so you can look back at it.

The Season Planner now shows where the season stands: the last league matchday, the off-season days, and the exact day the next season starts automatically. It also shows what your current league position is worth in prize money, the full prize table for your league, and your last payout.

Behind-the-scenes polish to how one season hands over to the next, plus a fix for the Season Planner occasionally not loading on the first visit.

The World Cup Qualifying page now shows the full fixture list under each group: every matchday with its date, kick-off time and result. Anyone can look up any country's schedule, not just their own. If you manage a national team, your group opens automatically and your matches are highlighted.

A new Fixtures page in the National Teams menu shows any country's upcoming matches and results: World Cup qualifiers, World Cup matches and friendlies, each clearly labelled. Pick a country from the list, or open My National Team and go straight to your own fixtures.

Every kick-off time now shows in your own local time, wherever you are in the world. A few places still showed server time: the next match on a national team's profile, the fixture list on the Lineup page, the full-time newspaper and the inbox messages for arranged friendlies. Manager Settings now shows each preferred kick-off in your own time too, with the CET time alongside.

Thanks to the national team manager who reported this. Some national teams saw old qualifying matches from a previous campaign listed as upcoming, against teams that aren't in their group. Those leftover matches would never be played and no longer show up anywhere. Friendlies now also appear on your dashboard and on a country's profile, clearly labelled as Friendly, so you always know whether a match counts for qualifying.

When a season ended early, its unplayed friendlies could still be played later, on the same day as a World Cup qualifier in the new season. Friendlies from a previous season are now cleared when a new season starts, so a national team never plays twice on one day.

Thanks to the managers who told us results felt too random. Every team used to get a random good or bad day before kick-off, and that roll mattered more than the actual quality of the squads. It is now much smaller, so the better team wins most of the time and upsets still happen, mostly because football is a low-scoring game. Matches now average about 2.8 goals, around one in four ends in a draw, and hat-tricks are rare again.

Now and then a clearly weaker team plays the match of its life and can topple a far stronger side, just like a real cup upset. The match report tells the story when it happens, and also when a team was flying or had an off day.

Playing at home now gives your team a small edge, just like in real football. International matches are played as neutral games.

A side two or three goals up now eases off, and a side chasing the game pushes forward. Fewer 6-0 thrashings, more late fightbacks.

You can now add images to forum posts and replies: paste a screenshot straight into the text box, drag one in, or use the Add image button. Images show as thumbnails in the post; click one to see it full size. Up to six images per post.

Start a poll with your forum topic: ask a question, add up to ten answers, choose whether people can pick more than one, and optionally let it close after a day, three days or a week or two. Every manager gets one vote, can change it while the poll is open, and sees the results as soon as they have voted.

The forum overview now shows who wrote the latest post in each section and when, and clicking the topic takes you straight to that post. Reply counts are also correct again after a post is removed.

Players now really tire during a match, so Stamina matters and fresh legs from the bench make a difference. Friendlies never cost energy for your real matches.

Fullbacks now carry the ball forward, overlap their winger, take throw-ins and whip in crosses, and in the Visual Match Engine they push up and wide instead of hiding next to the centre-backs.

A team that wins the ball near the opposition box now attacks from there, instead of starting again from its own half. Passing out from the back is safer, and the final third is where attacks get tougher.

Teams were sending far more of their play down the left than the right. Both wings now see the ball equally.

A foul now gives the free kick to the team that was fouled. Before, the team that made the foul kept the ball. The team that concedes a goal now always kicks off, and red cards are rarer.

The players on the pitch are now real 3D athletes with motion-captured animations instead of drawn figures. They walk, jog and sprint at their actual pace, strike the ball with a proper kicking leg, slide in, rise for headers and celebrate goals with their own signature moves. Every player wears his team's full kit, collar and trims included, keepers in long sleeves and gloves, and takes his skin tone and hairstyle from his player photo. Floodlight shadows fall on the grass under everyone.

Goalkeepers now dive across their goal to reach shots, catch the ball and hold it in their hands, then roll it out, throw it or punt it up the pitch instead of dribbling away with it at their feet.

A few throw-ins now make it into every match replay, taken properly: the player walks to the touchline, lifts the ball over his head and throws it back into play with both hands.

The moment a shot is struck, the camera now swings with the ball to the goal and holds there for a moment, so you never miss a goal, a save or a near miss again.

While the teams walk out of the tunnel, a TV-style line-up graphic shows both starting elevens in their formation, with every player's number and name, then fades away for the kick-off.

Match commentary now appears one sentence at a time across the bottom of the picture, like subtitles on a film, so you can follow the story without taking your eyes off the play.

A new button in the top-right corner of the Visual Match Engine plays the match full screen, like a video, with pause, speed and view controls that fade away while you watch.

Home supporters now wave flags with your club crest in the stands, the corner flags fly in your colours, and two homemade banners hang over the front rows with a joke about one of your players and another at the visitors' expense. Different banners every match.

A player on the ball now has it at his feet, knocking it ahead as he runs, instead of it floating well in front of him. Passes and shots leave from his boot.

Passes that go out of play for a throw-in now count as failed passes in the Match Center, so pass completion percentages reflect every pass a player attempts.

Thanks to a manager who spotted this: centre-backs with strong heading were scoring far too many goals from corners, some over 20 in a season. Every corner and cross used to go to the same player, and corners reached a header too often. Now the ball is shared between everyone attacking the box, centre-backs mostly go up for corners rather than open-play crosses, and fewer corners turn into goals. Good headers of the ball are still your biggest set-piece threat, just at a realistic rate.

About one match in five is now played in the rain: falling rain, a wet and shiny pitch, splashes on the grass, umbrellas up in the crowd and a rain icon in the score bar. The weather only changes how a match looks, never the result.

Two assistant referees now run the touchlines, keeping level with the last defender and raising their flag for offsides. Clubs play in striped, hooped, halved or sashed shirts, every player wears his name and number on his back, and when two kits clash the away side changes into a different colour.

The goals are now real 3D frames with nets, the ball has panels and spins as it travels, and the stands have roofs lined with floodlights that glow, with floodlight towers in the corners.

Goals, yellow cards and substitutions now get a TV-style caption with the player's photo, a possession bar appears during the match and a stats card at half-time. The goal replays after full time are shown from new camera angles: high behind the goal and at pitch level.

Teams now switch sides for the second half, just like in a real match, and goal replays are shown the right way round for the half they were scored in.

Throw-ins are now taken with both feet on the touchline, facing the pitch, instead of from a few steps inside the field.

Every now and then a player beats his man with a trick: an elastico, a Marseille roulette or a Cruyff turn, and wingers sometimes whip a cross in with a rabona. A keeper who concedes no longer wanders around his box either: he shouts at his defence, puts his hands on his head or punches the ground.

The substitutes listed under the Visual Match Engine could show a club's entire squad. Benches are now back to the seven players actually picked for the match.

A rare hiccup could freeze the Visual Match Engine partway through a match. It now recovers and plays on, and switches to the 2D view by itself if the 3D view runs into trouble.

The Visual Match Engine has been rebuilt from the ground up and is no longer a prototype. Matches now play out in a broadcast-style stadium view, with a camera in the main stand following the ball. It replays the match's real possessions: the actual passes, tackles, interceptions, set pieces and shots, by the actual players. Players move by their tactical role, pressing, covering, making overlapping runs and filling the box for crosses. There are sliding tackles, headers, a referee who follows play and shows cards, goal celebrations, and replays of every goal after full time. A top-down 2D view is still one click away.

The teams now walk out of the tunnel behind the referee and line up before kick-off, and jog back out for the second half. Both dugouts are filled with your actual substitutes, the managers pace their technical areas, and the bench jumps up when their side scores. The goals have real nets that ripple when the ball hits them, animated sponsor boards run around the pitch, and misses fly on into the boards or up into the crowd behind the goal. The crowd shifts in their seats, and every so often a phone camera flashes in the stands, with a flurry of them after every goal.

Goalscorers no longer just run to the corner flag. Every player now has his own signature celebration: a knee slide, a backflip, the airplane, a jump-and-turn "Siu", or pointing to the sky, and he does the same one every time he scores, replays included. His team-mates pile in and jump on him once he's done.

The players on the pitch have been redrawn with far more detail: shaped shirts with sleeves and a collar, proper shorts, socks and boots, rounded shaded limbs, and a real head and neck. Every player also takes his skin tone, hair colour and hairstyle from his player photo, from close crops to full afros, so you can pick out your blond winger or your big-haired striker at a glance, on the pitch and on the bench. Shirt numbers are on their backs, like in real life, and every player's name floats faintly above him so you can always tell who's who.

A broadcast-style score bar now sits in the top-left corner of the pitch, showing both teams, the score and the match clock, just like on TV.

Every match now gets its own short, written report, a goal-by-goal recap, a Man of the Match pick with their photo and rating, and full match stats, generated the moment the final whistle blows. Finish watching a match in either the Visual Match Engine or the Text Match Center and a newspaper-style "Full Time!" popup greets you with the headline and a way straight into the full report.

Your Next Match card now shows both teams' current league position right next to their crest. Previous Match gets the same treatment, but keeps positions (and the score itself) hidden until you've actually watched the match, and once you have, it stays revealed for good instead of hiding again every time you come back to the dashboard.

Hover any stat column on the Squad page, Shooting, Heading, Pace, Composure, and more, and a tooltip explains exactly what it means.

The Club Facilities page now shows your balance and how much of it is actually free to spend on upgrades, money already tied up in transfer bids doesn't count, as two small badges in the top corner.

In the Text Match Center, a goal's celebration overlay used to appear at the exact same moment the scoreboard, timeline, and momentum graph had already updated, instead of first. The celebration now always plays out in full before any of those catch up.

The Match Center's shots stat sometimes showed the away team's numbers in the opposite order to the home team's. Both sides now read consistently, shots followed by shots on target.

The Season and Matchday badges on the League page were subtly different heights thanks to a leftover style rule from an older design. Fixed so they sit flush.

Player rows in Match Center now show a red arrow badge and the minute for whoever was subbed off (their name greyed out) and a green arrow badge and the minute for whoever came on, mirroring the actual pairing from the substitution. A bench player's row only appears once they've actually entered the match, so a substitute's stats, goals, assists, everything, are tracked and shown from the moment they step on the pitch instead of staying invisible for the rest of the match.

A fixture with a lineup staged just for it gave no hint of that in the Lineup page's fixture dropdown, so editing your default lineup afterward gave no warning a stale staged override was still quietly in force for that match. The dropdown now marks a fixture as "(Staged)", and a new Clear Staged Lineup button removes the override so the fixture falls back to your default lineup.

A leftover startup step ran on every single app restart and force-rebuilt every team's default lineup from a hardcoded 4-3-3 template, discarding your team's actual formation and your real player assignments. Any team not playing a plain 4-3-3 quietly lost lineup slots each time, for example a 5-3-2 team's third centre-back and second striker both went unassigned. Removed entirely, the existing formation-aware auto-fill safety net already covers genuinely missing slots without being destructive.

Players belonging to your own team now render in the site's signature gold in every Statistics stat table and in the live Awards rankings and History tab, so your own players stand out immediately instead of blending into a wall of look-alike rows.

Squad Overview and Training Center's new viewport-pinned scrolling table (with its sticky header) could shrink the space left for the actual table down to nothing on a short enough browser window, common on a laptop once you subtract the browser's own chrome from the screen's resolution, hiding every player row with no visible scrollbar to explain why. Both pages now fall back to normal full-page scrolling below a minimum window height instead of risking that collapse.

Removed the "First Team Squad" title, your club's name, and the redundant player count sitting above the table, your club's name and crest are already shown in the top bar, and the real count is already in the Players stat card just above.

A brand new Training Center page (under Squad in the sidebar) lets you train your whole squad from one screen instead of clicking into every player's profile one at a time. Every player and every trainable attribute in one dense table, with a matching mobile version built from the ground up as tappable player cards rather than a squished table. Filter by position or search by name, and each player's own XP balance is shown right next to them, since training has always been a per-player thing, not a shared club-wide pot. Squad order matches your Squad Overview page: goalkeepers, then defenders, then midfielders, then attackers. Thanks to the player who suggested this one.

Team and player names across the site are now links straight to their profile, instead of plain text you had to go find manually. Covers the Dashboard (League Table, Next/Previous Match, Upcoming Fixtures, Season Calendar, Domestic Cup, and Elite Champions Cup cards, plus Best/Worst Performers in the Team Form card), the Season Planner's day-by-day match list, and your own Team Profile page's Next Fixture and Recent Form sections.

The National Team Lineup page used to just shrink its absolutely positioned pitch canvas down to phone width instead of actually adapting to it. It now switches to the same simple list format, Starting XI then Bench, the club Lineup page already uses on mobile, matching the phone-friendly layout that page has had for a while.

Substituted players were being tracked internally with a broken position field that silently fell back to goalkeeper, which could surface anywhere Match Center reads a sub's position. Substitution screens (club and national team) now also show a bench player's real position next to their name, and the safety net that auto-fills empty lineup slots was hardcoded around a 4-3-3 shape, meaning a team playing a back three (3-5-2, 3-4-3, 5-3-2) could have a player fall out of the lineup entirely, not a starter, not on the bench, nowhere, until you manually rebuilt it. Both now correctly follow the team's real formation.

Commentary lines in the Text Match Center now color the description text itself, green for a goal, yellow for a yellow card, red for a red card, instead of reading the same no matter what just happened. Booked players also pick up a small colored card badge on their picture in the stats table the moment they're shown one, red taking priority over yellow.

On the Lineup page (and the National Team Lineup page), dragging or clicking to swap two players who share the exact same position, two centre-backs, two central midfielders, and so on, silently did nothing: the two would just stay put. The lineup had no way to tell "left CB" and "right CB" apart, so a swap between two identical labels looked like no change at all. Both players now keep track of which specific slot they're in, so swapping them actually trades their places on the pitch.

Red cards were showing up far more often than they should, closer to a coin flip than the rare, match-defining moment they're supposed to be. Straight reds are a lot less common now, and a player already carrying a yellow plays it noticeably more carefully for the rest of the match rather than being just as reckless as before.

A round of changes to how players actually develop. Cup competitions now contribute to a player's experience growth alongside league football, not just as an afterthought. Coming on or off as a substitute matters too now, what you earn reflects the time you actually spent on the pitch rather than an all-or-nothing outcome. Every player also keeps developing quietly in the background over time, even the ones you don't get around to selecting. On the training side, pushing an attribute all the way to the very top now takes noticeably more commitment than the rest of the climb, so a fully maxed-out player stays something worth bragging about. The Training Complex pulls more weight than it used to as well, worth a look if yours has been sitting untouched.

The old "finish instantly" option on facility upgrades is gone, construction now takes the time it says it will. If you're in a genuine hurry, GL Coins can still rush a build to completion, but only once it's already well along, not from the moment you start it.

Every Watch link across the site (Fixtures, your Dashboard, League, Elite Champions Cup, Domestic Cup, and Season Planner) now lets you pick how you watch a match. Alongside the existing Visual Match Engine, still an early prototype, and now clearly labeled as one, there's a brand new Text Match Center: a live, minute-by-minute replay with a real scoreboard, a match momentum chart, full lineups for both sides, shot/pass/card stats that build up as the match plays out, and a scrubbable timeline you can jump around in. Tick "remember my choice" the first time and every future Watch link goes straight to your preferred viewer; you can switch back any time from a Change Viewer button on either page. The Text Match Center also got a proper mobile redesign: tabbed panels for each team and the commentary feed, a compact scoreboard, and everything sized to fit your screen with minimal scrolling.

The Friendlies page now lets you challenge an unmanaged team from another competition to a zero-stakes friendly, a great way to test your tactics. No waiting on another manager to accept, it's auto-accepted and kicks off within moments. Opponents from your own league aren't selectable, so it can't be used to scout an upcoming league opponent. Limited to 3 bot challenges per day; as always, a friendly counts for nothing, no XP, no cards, no bans, just a match for the fans.

A handful of small adjustments to how matches play out behind the scenes. Nothing about how players are built or rated has changed, everyone's attributes work exactly as before. Scorelines feel more realistic overall, and lower-rated teams in particular have a genuinely better chance of holding their own or springing a surprise result instead of getting steamrolled every time.

Score a goal in the new Text Match Center and play pauses for a proper celebration: a big photo of the scorer, their name, which goal of the season it was, and who set it up, over a repeating "GOAL" watermark that blinks as it appears. Yellow and red cards get the same treatment now too, complete with an actual card graphic and their own watermark, so a big moment in the match doesn't just scroll by as one more line of commentary.

You could already check any competition's league table from the World Leagues page, now there's a View Fixtures button right next to it that opens that league's full, matchday-by-matchday fixture list, the same view you get for your own league.

A handful of backend gaps meant certain stats weren't always being recorded, or credited to the right player: passes that didn't make the commentary highlights weren't counted toward a player's pass completion percentage, saved shots weren't always credited to the actual shooter, and corners and headers were sometimes missing their proper buildup. All fixed, pass completion percentage, shots, and card counts now always reflect what actually happened on the pitch.

Opening a match that hadn't been played yet (most noticeable right after arranging a bot friendly) could drop you straight into a playable-looking match with nothing in it, since there was nothing to show yet. Both the Text Match Center and the Visual Match Engine now clearly display the scheduled kickoff time instead, with no play controls, until the match has actually been played.

Some smaller nations weren't guaranteed enough real players across every position to field a full national team, which could crash a national team match in rare cases. Every nation is now guaranteed a full 25-man pool (3 goalkeepers, 8 defenders, 8 midfielders, 6 forwards) to draw from, checked and topped up automatically on every server start and every season rollover.

Two new tasks reward you with GL Coins for following the official Goal Legends Instagram and TikTok pages. We also added a TikTok link to the site footer.

Yesterday's mobile pass on the forum category overview dropped each category's Last Post detail entirely to keep rows compact. It's back now, shown stacked neatly under the category name instead of a side column, so mobile shows the same information as desktop, just laid out differently.

Every player now earns a real average match rating for the current season, built from their actual performance on the pitch. You'll find it on their Profile page next to Goals and Assists, as a sortable column on your Squad Overview, in the Lineup screen's Available Players list, and on the expanded player card next to Fitness. The Dashboard's old placeholder Top Performer card is gone too, replaced with a real Best Performers and Needs Improvement breakdown, your top three and bottom three by average rating this season, at a glance. This covers your national team too if you're an elected manager, its own rating kept completely separate from your club's, with the same Profile, Selection, Lineup, and Dashboard treatment. Thanks to the player who suggested this one.

The category thread list and a thread's own reply view both got a full visual overhaul, especially aimed at how cramped and same-colored they felt on a phone. Thread lists now show a compact row per thread with an avatar initial, pinned and locked badges, and reply count, with Views and Last Post detail kept for desktop only. Inside a thread, each reply now sits in an alternating light and dark card so it's obvious at a glance where one manager's post ends and the next begins, and the author sidebar got a proper gold-branded look with the poster's club and competition instead of just their registration date, on a much shorter card than before. A missing Back link from a thread list to the main Forum page has also been added, and the category overview itself is more compact on mobile so more categories fit on screen at once.

We can now publish a short announcement that every manager sees exactly once, as a popup the next time they log in. Dismiss it and it won't show again. Keep an eye out for these when something worth knowing changes.

Buttons on the National Team Hub were cramped and easy to mis-tap on a phone. They're now full width and properly spaced, and the Apply for a Job and All National Teams lists show as clean stacked cards instead of a tiny table you had to scroll sideways to read.

The National Team Hub's Apply table now shows how many managers have applied for each nation's job at a glance. And whenever an election's application window is open, a bright red National Team Jobs Open! link appears in the sidebar right under Season Planner, so you never have to remember to go check; it disappears again the moment applications close.

German, Portuguese, and Turkish Leagues now have their own forum category alongside the existing Dutch, English, Spanish, French, and Italian ones.

Logging into a different account in the same browser tab, without a full page refresh in between, could make Log Out throw an error page instead of logging you out cleanly. Fixed.

Placing a bid that outbid another club's standing offer, including the automatic bot bidding that runs in the background, could throw an error while trying to send that club its "you've been outbid" notification, silently failing the bid. Fixed.

A new Season Planner page gives you a genuine month-by-month calendar of every match on your schedule, league, cups, friendlies, and your national team's fixtures too if you're an elected manager, all in one view. Each match shows its opponent's crest or flag, Home or Away, kickoff time, and stadium right on the calendar, styled as a small match ticket; click any day for the full breakdown. Find it near the top of the menu, right below Dashboard. On a phone, the grid stays as a compact overview, and the selected day's matches (today's, by default) show below it as full tickets rather than a plain colored dot.

A one-time checklist of real actions, setting your first lineup, saving tactics, listing and buying a player, posting on the forum, and more, each paying out GL Coins the first time you do it. Find it near the top of the menu; it disappears once you've completed everything.

Player profiles now have a Trophies tab showing every individual award a player has won, Golden Boot, Player of the Year, Champions Cup MVP, and Rising Star, grouped together with the season and competition for each win.

The homepage's Top Clubs leaderboard now sits next to a matching Top National Teams leaderboard, showing each nation's world ranking points and elected manager, side by side for anyone visiting the site.

While our community is still small, every manager can now see all active transfer listings worldwide instead of only the countries their Scout Centre has unlocked. This is temporary, once there are enough managers to fill out each region's own market, Scout Centre range will control visibility again as originally intended.

Transfer values for players with a lot of growth still ahead of them, especially teenagers with a big gap between their current rating and their potential, were pricing well above what a club can realistically afford this early in the game (starting budgets are €10M). Prices for that kind of prospect are now roughly a third of what they were; players who've already reached their potential are unaffected.

From time to time, freshly generated Free Agent players will appear on the Transfer Market with no club currently holding them. Bidding works exactly like any other listing, so you can still be outbid, but there's no other manager's squad losing a player on the other end. They're listed for a week, with a starting bid of 90% of their value and a Buy Now price of 200%, giving you another way to strengthen your squad while the market is still growing.

The Previous Match widget on your dashboard now labels the result as League, Elite Champions Cup, or Domestic Cup, matching what the Next Match widget already does.

The Champions Cup MVP, Golden Boot, Player of the Year, and Rising Star trophies got a full visual redesign, both on the Awards page and in every player's Trophy Cabinet.

This page was previously only linked from various page footers. It now has its own entry in the Community & Help menu too.

A rare timing issue could leave an unmanaged nation's auto-filled squad short of a full 25 instead of topping it back up. Fixed; any affected nation will fill back up to a full squad the next time it plays.

A corrupted manifest file was silently breaking the "Add to Home Screen" install prompt on some browsers. Fixed.

Every manager now has a personal invite link. Invite a friend, and once they've registered and are still actively playing a week later, you're credited 300 GL Coins.

Elite Champions Cup and Domestic Cup ties used to keep only the final score. They now get a full watchable replay, the same as a league match, with a "Watch Replay" link right on each competition's page.

Added alongside Facebook, Instagram, Discord, and Reddit, linking to our new itch.io page.

The shield-style player cards, big OVR and position badge, real player photo, tier-colored border, are now what you see by default when setting your lineup, for both your club and your national team. Position labels are color-coded (goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, forwards), names are shown as initial-plus-surname for a cleaner fit, and an empty slot now clearly shows as an outlined empty shield instead of disappearing. The original card design is still available at /lineup-classic if you prefer it.

League and friendly matches already correctly benched a suspended or injured player at kickoff no matter what the saved lineup said. Elite Champions Cup and Domestic Cup matches didn't do this check at all, meaning a banned or injured player left in a saved lineup could genuinely take the field in a cup match. Both competitions now get the same protection.

A yellow or red card earned playing for your national team was, incorrectly, capable of suspending you from your next club fixture, and a club ban could keep you out of a national team call-up. Bans are now tracked completely separately for club and country, exactly like real football.

Saving a lineup with a suspended or injured player used to go through silently. You'll now get a clear message naming exactly who's unavailable and why, for both your club and your national team, before anything saves.

Saving an incomplete lineup, with one or more starting positions left empty, used to go through without any warning. You'll now get a clear message naming exactly which positions still need filling before you can save.

The inbox now has a Compose button. Search for any manager by name, and a live autocomplete shows up to 10 matches with their club attached so you can tell managers apart, pick one, write your message, and send. The inbox list itself also got better: every message now shows who sent it and which club they manage right there in the overview, not just after you open it.

The moment you claim a club, before anything else, you're offered one free rename of both the club name and the stadium name. Skip it and keep the defaults, or make it yours on the spot. Either way it's a one-time offer, and every existing manager keeps their current names untouched.

Opening a match used to drop you straight into the middle of play the instant the page loaded. Now the pitch holds on both starting lineups, grouped by position, for a few seconds before kick-off actually happens.

A handful of managers hit a scary error page trying to log in or log out, almost always in the minutes right after we'd shipped a fresh update. It traced back to a security token their browser was still holding onto from just before the update went out. That's now handled gracefully behind the scenes instead of crashing.

Once the clock hit 90', the scoreboard froze there like it should, but the players kept right on playing an invented match forever underneath it. The pitch now genuinely stops at full time.

On the match pitch view, a team taking a shot would visually drag its entire outfield line up to (or past) the halfway line for the whole sequence, leaving nobody at all behind the play. Their real back line now holds its shape properly while the attack still reaches the box. This was purely a visual replay bug, it never affected match results.

After a keeper caught a shot, up to three opposing players would still rush in and crowd him as if the ball were still live. They now back off and hold their shape instead, same as a real defense would once the keeper has it safely in his hands. Also visual-only, no effect on match results.

Goalkeeping is no longer a single number, it has been split into three distinct traits that separately capture different parts of what makes a good keeper. Two brand new attributes, Heading and Composure, have also been added to every player. We are deliberately not detailing here which positions they matter most for or exactly what they change, that is something to find out by playing, training your squad, and watching your own matches.

Wingers and overlapping full-backs can now actually whip a cross into the box, not just after a corner. A well-delivered cross can be won in the air and headed home, and the player who supplied it now correctly gets credited with the assist.

The club Squad and National Team overview tables now group their attribute columns into labeled bands (Pace, Technical, Defending, GK, Mental, Physical), and each row carries a thin position-colored accent. Sorting and the player-name links work exactly as before. Also fixed a real rendering bug along the way, where the new group-header row's sticky styling painted over its own labels once the table was scrolled horizontally.

A fast run is now more likely to beat the offside trap, alongside good timing. A quick player breaking forward right after winning the ball back can also catch a slow defense out of position, the way a genuine counter-attack should.

The Bank Balance card used to show just one number. It now breaks that down into what's actually available to spend, how much is currently locked in your own active transfer bids, and your squad's weekly wage bill.

The Squad overview's "Transfer List" button actually does something now: it opens the same listing form as the Transfer Market page, pre-filled for that exact player, and once listed the button flips to a one-click "Remove Listing".

Every card in a dashboard row now shares the same height, so a freshly claimed club's dashboard reads as one clean grid instead of a patchwork of tall and short cards. Finances Overview's empty state also got a proper centered layout instead of a large blank void before you have any transaction history.

Listing a player is supposed to require at least 16 players left in the squad, but the check only ever subtracted one player at a time and never accounted for players already listed elsewhere. A big enough squad could list every single player, one after another, and never trip the floor. Fixed on both the Squad and Transfer Market pages.

Added alongside Facebook, Instagram, and Discord, linking to r/GoalLegends.

Every club starts identically weak and at zero reputation, no more hand-authored head starts. Reputation is earned afterward through match results, league finishes, promotions, and cup wins.

Managers can now stage a completely different starting XI for one specific upcoming fixture instead of the one lineup every match used to share.

Anyone visiting Goal Legends, logged in or not, can see the top 10 clubs by reputation. Also fixed two real mobile layout bugs found while shipping it.

The forum's single ten-row category list is now split into two labeled sections, Community and Leagues, sorted using each category's existing flag code rather than a hardcoded list.

Both pages forced horizontal scrolling on phone-width screens; both now collapse into single-column, properly-scaled layouts under 900px. Also fixed a squad table bug found along the way where positions sorted alphabetically instead of GK, DEF, MID, FWD.

Friendly requests no longer block on a same-day scheduling conflict. Friendlies carry zero effect on fitness, cards, injuries, or competition stats, so there was no real reason to stop a club stacking one alongside a league or cup match.

The homepage's small "Already have an account? Login" text link is now a proper Login button sitting right next to Play Free Now.

Why we added inactivity tracking, a 90-day club reassignment, facility decay, and a real one-click unsubscribe.

Goal Legends now asks for a date of birth at registration and blocks under-13 sign-ups, instead of relying on a line in the Terms of Service nobody reads.

Five new cards for the small subset of managers running a national team, off by default for everyone else.

Eight countries used to kick off at the exact same minute. Here's how we spread them across the day and let managers set a home kickoff preference.