National Teams & the Election System

Running a club is the job every manager starts with. Running a nation is a second, later job that sits on top of it, and it doesn't work like the club side of the game at all. Nobody owns a national team outright. The post is voted on, it changes hands on a fixed schedule, and there are 32 playable nations all going through that cycle at once.

32 nations, each with a ranking

Every playable nationality has its own national team, and every national team carries a ranking that starts at 1000 points and moves after each international match it plays. It's a running number, not a snapshot taken once a season, so a nation's standing reflects its recent results rather than however it was seeded at the start.

Who gets to apply

Applying to run a nation is limited to VIP managers. If you qualify, you apply to a specific nation during that nation's Applications window, and you can attach a short campaign message for the managers who'll be voting. Nothing about the application locks in the job by itself; it's an entry in an election, not a claim. You can only hold one national team job at a time, too: once you're seated for a nation, you can't also apply for, or win, the seat for a different one until your current term ends.

How the election actually runs

Every one of the 32 nations shares the same election cycle, tracked on the game's own world clock: an Inactive period, then an Applications window, then a Voting window, then a manager is seated as that nation's manager for the term ahead. All 32 move through these stages together rather than each running on its own timer.

Voting has a specific rule behind it: you can vote in a given nation's election if you own at least one player of that nationality on your own club roster. Owning a Brazilian right-back gets you a vote in Brazil's election, nothing more and nothing less. It's a real, ownership-based check, not something every manager can do in every election.

If nobody wins the seat

Plenty of nations go through a cycle without a human manager in place, and that's fine: an unmanaged nation is simply run by the game's own AI, picking its lineup and setting its tactics like any other bot-controlled side. Every nation always fields a team in its qualifying and tournament matches, elected manager or not.

Running the squad once you're seated

The actual job looks a lot like managing a club. You pick a formation, set the same six tactical dials described on the tactics page, choose a lineup and plan substitutions, all through the same kind of screens your club uses. What's different is where it's stored: your national team's tactics, lineup and substitution plans live in their own separate records entirely. Changing your country's shape before a qualifier doesn't touch your club's setup, and setting your club up for a relegation battle doesn't touch whatever you left in place for the nation. The two jobs run in parallel and never read from each other.

From the National Team hub you can also see the state of that nation's road to the tournament: World Cup qualifying, and the tournament itself, are both just a click away from wherever your election or your seated job currently stands.