Sponsors, coaches and doctors can be signed by taking part in auctions on the "Market" page. These auctions work in a "reverse" way, which means that, for instance, sponsors start off with a rather moderate offer and raise it every day until a team signs a contract with them. Of course they will not raise their offer forever; at some point in time the amount will stagnate. The same applies for the hiring fees for coaches and doctors, but in the other direction: They will start off asking a very high hiring fee and decrease it until someone is willing to pay the fee, or their lower limit is reached.

Ban

A player can be banned during a match. Depending on the severity of his action, he may be banned for up to 4 weeks. A banned player cannot play in a match (although he can be put in the lineup, so the team captain should be careful). The risk of being banned rises with match intensity, both personal and those of the other players in the match.
When you are banned, you can appeal against the ban once per day. If the appeal is successful, your ban duration will go down one day. The probability of success depends on your betting performance on the last matchday and on your level of willpower. Also, a decent team lawyer can improve this chance.

Betting

Betting is the core player action in the Football Center. During the season, twice a week, you can bet on real life football matches and invest the points that you win in your player skills (training) and in your match performance. There are rankings showing the best betters and the best betting teams. There is no real money involved in the betting part!
The odds system, however, works like in real betting - you get a certain factor for 1 (win team1), X (draw) or 2 (win team2), which depends on the probability of the result. If you get the result right, you will get just that amount on your account and can distribute it between your training and match performance.
Watch out for the betting deadlines! Betting closes usually about a day before the game actually starts (the betting administrator is a monk in Tibet, and your betting sheets have to be transported there). Bet early, you can always change your bet if there is still time.
ATTENTION when you are betting on Cup or Play Off games - while it is usually the result after 90 minutes that counts for the bet, things are different in "decisive" games (one team has to advance): In this case you will get a bet rate for team 1 advancing and a bet rate for team 2 advancing, but nothing for X because the end result cannot be a draw!

Every club team has a certain amount of money available. Income comes from sponsors and ticket sales, and the money is spent on salaries (for players, coaches and doctors), hiring and education fees (coaches and doctors), firing players, training camps and financial rankings. The captain and the financial officer of a club team can take and are informed about all actions with financial impact. They can also see the current cash status of all teams on the ranking page, which costs a small amount of money to pay the investigator.
National teams have money as well; the available budget is set at 500,000 at the start of every season, regardless of the amount left at the end of the season before. The only possibility to spend this money is on training camps.

Callup

Callup is the process of making a player a national team player. Unlike club transfers, where offers have to be made and accepted, callups become effective immediately (although they are always scheduled some days in the future, just like transfers). It can only be done by the captain of the national team, and only if there is space for another player in the team. If the captain of the national team is a computer player, professional players of the same nationality are automatically called up.

Captain

In every team, be it club or national, one of the players is the captain, which means that he's the one that takes on new players, fires players and does the lineup for the next match. Only professional players may become team captains. When a captain loses the board's confidence and there is another professional player on the team, the captain will be replaced and the board will name the next professional player they run across as the new captain. If the captain leaves his team, the board will also name a new captain. You may retire as a captain which will lose you all board confidence, so you will be replaced if possible. Computer captains will set lineups and prefer human players over computer players, but they may not always set the most effective lineup...

Cheating

Cheating means willingly exploiting gaps in the game logic to your own advantage, either by hacking the system, manipulating values, or even just not notifying the administrators about obvious bugs that you use for yourself. It is important to understand that cheating is NOT tolerated and may result in the retirement of your player! See also "multiplaying".

Club

There are 2 types of teams in the Football Center: Club teams and national teams. The difference is that club teams may take on players from all over the world, while obviously national teams have only players from that nation (gee!).
Note that in this game you do not create your own clubs or change the club names. Football Center provides a persistent universe of clubs, in which the teams are stable, whereas the players come and go. Imagine yourself being a young player joining the NBA or NHL... and even more so in football - how often does Real Madrid or ManU change its name?

A coach will help your team improve training and match performance. Coaches can be hired by the team captain or financial officer in a reverse auctioning system, which means the hiring fee they ask for gets smaller every day, until a team hires the coach. The hiring fee does not decrease indefinitely, but starts to stagnate at some point in time. The coach's salary depends on his ability. A contract with a coach lasts for 3 months, after which the coach is again free on the market. The team can improve the coach's level, which extends the contract by one month. This costs the team 75% of his current salary. A coach's salaray is 200,000 per season and level, with a maximum of 1,000,000 per season.
The team benefits from its coach in two ways: First, players under contract with the team get a bonus on their training, depending on the level of the coach. The bonus is bigger if the coach's skill specialty is trained. Second, if the team plays the coach's favorite formation, it gets a bonus on its match performance.

Computer

Football Center is so great that even the computer plays. At the beginning of the game, each club and each nation has a full set of computer players available. Those from the big football countries even place bets...

Players can bind themselves to a team by signing a contract for a certain number of months. This means that before the contract end date, the player cannot offer to join another club or be approached by another club. The advantage is that the player benefits in his training from the team coach. The binding is one-way, which means that the team captain is not affected by the contract and can fire the player anytime - but firing a player under contract costs twice the normal fee. If a player is unhappy at his current club, but still under contract, he might ask his captain to fire him so that he can join another club. When the contract has expired, the player can renew it, but only after a period of 3 days, to give the captain the chance to fire the player at reduced cost.
Note that contracts can only be made with human captains - if you join a computer-led club, you will always be free.

Cup

The 16 best club teams of a season qualify for the cup in the following season. The cup is played in a k.o. system over four matchdays; the first round is seeded, i.e. number one plays number 16, number two plays number 15 etc. After that, from the quarter final on, the rounds are drawn. Cup matches are extended by a 30 minutes sudden death period if there is no winner after 90 minutes. If there is no winner after 120 minutes, the penalties decide. If there is no decision after 5 penalties each, a coin is tossed. Gate receipts are shared between the home and the away team.

Division

In the league system, 10 teams are always grouped into a unit, called division. The actual names of the divisions differ; the highest leagues have special names ("Premier League" for club teams, "International Elite" for national teams).

A doctor will help your team by improving the healing chance of injured players. Doctors can be hired by the team captain or financial officer in a reverse auctioning system, which means the hiring fee they ask for gets smaller every day, until a team hires the doctor. The hiring fee does not decrease indefinitely, but starts to stagnate at some point in time. The doctor's salary depends on his ability. A contract with a doctor lasts for 3 months, after which the doctor is again free on the market. The team can improve the doctor's level, which extends the contract by one month. This costs the team 75% of his current salary. A doctor's salaray is 100,000 per season and level, with a maximum of 500,000 per season.

Einstein is a game in which you score points by building pairs of dice values. In every turn, five dice are thrown; you use four of them to build two pairs and discard ("tickout") the fifth one. In the beginning of the game you have to select 3 different dice values for tickout; whenever you have ticked out one of those values 10 times the game is over. Each pair can have a sum value of 2 to 12; extreme values like 2 or 12 are worth more than more frequent values like 6, 7 or 8. But watchout, because you have to tick a pair at least 5 times in order to score any points with it; otherwise you get a penalty for starting a pair row without reaching the 5. You have a "free round" if none of your 3 tickout values appears in the current roll. That means that you can play longer; which is why it is recorded in the highscores; the score reached with less free rounds will be valued higher. If you play a "blitz" game, you have only 5 minutes to complete the game; afterwards the score will be zero. Your current game is always saved in the database, until you finish it with "finish game". So you can always log out during a game and come back later to continue.
Here are all the pair values: 2,12: 100 points; 3,11: 80 points; 4,10: 70 points; 5,9: 60 points; 6,8: 40 points; 7: 30 points.

Experience

For you as a player, it is important that you play matches. In each match, the "man of the match" and one random player from each team will get an experience bonus on their skills.

Financial officer

The captain of a club team can name a financial officer to help him with financial decisions. He should really trust that player because the financial officer can take all financial actions such as hiring a coach, going on a training camp or investigating other teams' financial status. The financial officer is also informed about all changes to the club's cash status.

Form

The form of a player is determined by his results in his last 20 bets. The more points he has gained, the better his form, and therefore the better his match performance. Player form can be raised if the player's club visits a training camp, but only until the next training when the form is re-calculated.

Forum

There are several forums in the game that you can use to exchange your thoughts with the other players: A public forum which is moderated (i.e. monitored by the administrators) and where you may only post in English, a country forum which is not moderated and, if you are part of a club team, a team forum.
If you want to respond to a topic, select the topic and write your message. If you want to create a new topic, use "create topic" on the right top of the page and then respond to your topic.

A free agent is a player who is not bound by any contract to any club, and therefore free to join a club anytime. He will not get any training bonus if his club team has a coach.

Game

Game is the Football Center term for the real life football matches that you can bet on.

Injury

Players can be injured during training or during matches. Depending on the severity of the injury, the player may be out for up to 4 weeks. If a player is injured, he can neither train nor play matches (but still be placed in the lineup, so captains should be careful), but still place bets. The risk of injury rises with intensity (both training and match) and becomes very high at high intensities. In a match, the risk of injuries rises with the total match intensity of all players. You can decrease your injury risk by training bodypower!
When you are injured, you can visit a physio therapist once per day. If he succeeds treating you, your injury duration will go down one day. The probability of success depends on your betting performance on the last matchday and on your level of willpower. Also, a decent team doctor can improve this chance.

Knightjump is a game that you play on a field with 10x10 squares. You choose a starting position and from there you can move on to the next square, but only making moves like the knight in a chess game (northnorthwest, northnortheast, northwestwest, northeasteast, southsouthwest, southsoutheast, southwestwest, southeasteast). The game is over when you cannot move anymore, and the number of squares you covered is your score. Each square that you cover shows your image (or a cookie monster if you have no approved image).
Highscores are kept for the whole game, for each player and for each (starting) square. Each square shows the national flag of the player with the highest score on that starting square.
Your current game is always saved in the database, until you finish it with "finish game". So you can always log out during a game and come back later to continue.

Level

Many things in the game are measured on a level scale. The levels are not displayed numerically, but with terms which you can always recognize because they are written in italics . Find out for yourself how high you can get...

League System

The league structure of the Football Center follows a pyramid structure. There is one division on the highest level, two on the second level and four on the third level. Every division consists of 10 teams, and each team plays every other team twice, once at home and once away. At the end of a season, the best 2 teams of each 2nd and 3rd level division move up a level, and the worst 4 teams on the 1st and 2nd level move down a level.

Lineup

The lineup determines which players play in a match, and on which position. Lineups are done by the team captain, i.e. by the human player being the captain or by the computer player being the captain. The computer player will make sure that human players play, but might not do the most effective lineup or take care of injured or banned players... WATCHOUT for the end of lineup date of a matchday! It is usually around a day before the match is actually played (the lineup administration agency is located in a space colony on the planet Melmac, and the transfer takes some time).
When a lineup is done, the system will give feedback: A lineup can be OK (green), not so great (orange) or invalid (red). If there is an invalid lineup for a match, the team will lose 0:5. What are the reasons for invalid lineups? You must have exactly one goalkeeper and between 8 and 10 field players in your lineup. Reasons for warnings may be that you have injured our banned players in your lineup, or a position is overloaded: It doesn't make sense to field more than 6 defenders, 6 midfielders or 3 attackers, because the additional ones will find no space on the pitch, play badly and add nothing to the team's performance. On the other hand, your defense or midfield will be underrepresented with less than 3 players, because there will be too much space to cover with too little personnel. The team's performance in that part of the game will then suffer considerably.

Lounge

There are 4 player positions in the game: Goalkeeper, Defender, Midfielder and Attacker. Each position demands a certain set of skills, and the better the skills, the better the player is evaluated in the position. On the team page, the player is listed under his best position, but he may also play on another position.
The positions and their skillsets:
Goalkeeper: Very important - saving and reaction, less important - willpower, bodypower, speed and tackling
Defender: Very important - tackling and marking, less important - heading, speed, bodypower and willpower
Midfielder: Very important - technique, playmaking and passing, less important - speed, stamina and willpower
Attacker: Very important - shooting, passing and heading, less important - speed, technique, bodypower and willpower

Possession

For each match, the ball possession rate of both teams is calculated. It depends on the strength of the teams' midfields, and will determine who gets more chances in the match. At halftime, the possession rate is published in the match report.

Professional

By donating a moderate amount to the Football Center, or by successfully betting, answering trivia questions, spending their cash earned in the game, or playing the "Blockbuster" lounge game, human players can become professional players and have certain features available. Only professional players can become team captains, they can write press releases, they can train their skills to the highest levels - and they support the maintenance and development of the game.

Promotion

Promotion is the process of a team moving up a league level. Teams who finish within the top 2 teams of their division move up one level (unless they are already on the highest league level).

Relegation

Relegation is the process of a team moving down a league level. Teams who finish within the low 4 teams of their division move down one level (unless they are already on the lowest league level).

Salaries

A club team needs to pay salaries for its staff - for its players, coach and doctor. Each staff member has a season salary, which is distributed over the 18 (club) matchdays of the season. That means that on each matchday, the club pays 1/18 of the total season's salary. It does not make sense to fire players before the payday, because firing a player costs 1/18 of his salary (2/18 if the player is still under contract). A player earns 50,000 per (best) position level and season, with a maximum season salary of 350,000.

Season

A season consists of 40 matchdays - 18 for club teams, 18 for national teams, and 4 for the club team cup. Usually, there are 2 matchdays per week, one during the week and one no the weekend. The matches are played and can be watched in realtime (usually) on Thursday and Sunday evenings (central European time). There are two seasons per year, and the breaks are usually when there is little football played around the world (January, July).

Skill

Skills are the attributes of the players. They can be categorized according to the position they are important for (see under "Position"), and they can be improved by investing training points in them. There is one special skill that has no direct influence on position evaluation, but can be very handy in certain situations: The "set pieces" skill. Any team should be happy to have a good set pieces taker on the team, especially in combination with a high mastery of "shooting".
Willpower and Bodypower are also special skills - because they both improve certain positions AND help you to prevent or fight injuries.
When you start playing, you can choose one skill in which you are especially talented. As an amateur player, you can only train your skills up to a certain level - but don't worry, it takes quite some time before you cannot advance anymore as an amateur.

A sponsor will give money to your team for being displayed on the team page. The captain and the financial officer of a club team can sign a contract with a sponsor. Every sponsor contract lasts 3 months, after which it expires and you can get a new sponsor. Each club team can have up to 3 sponsors at a time. Sponsor contracts are available in a reverse auctioning system, which means that the sponsors start off with a moderate offer, which is raised every day, until a team accepts the offer. The amount is not raised indefinitely; at a certain point the offered amount starts to stagnate. In addition to the base amount, each sponsor will pay a 1.5 percent bonus on that amount per point scored in the league. The sponsors also have a minimum requirement of the league for which they will sign; for instance, some will only sign with a Premier League team.
NOTE that you can sign only one sponsor contract per day!

Squad

The squad consists of all the players of a team. A maximum of 18 players can be on a team at the same time.

Status

The status of a player in the game. There are computer players, amateur and professional players.

Takeover

Takeover means that a player becomes captain of a team. This happens automatically when a professional player joins a team with a computer captain, or when the board becomes impatient with the current captain. Note that only professional players may become team captains. The new captain will have some degree of board confidence to start with.

Tell a friend

What makes an online game great? Correct, the human players you can compete with! Help the Football Center to get bigger by recommending the game to friends and other people you know! Just fill out the form on the homepage, after logging in, with your friend's email and a comment and off you go. If the friend then actually registers (with the email address you specified), you score a point in the "tell a friend" ranking on the ranking page.

Training

Training is the process of investing part of the points gained from betting in your skills. It happens twice a week, at around the same time the matches are played. On the player page, you can set the training intensity in percent. WATCH OUT - the intensity value is usually fixed at around the "end of lineup" date of the next match; which means that if you change your intensity later than that it might only become effective on the matchday after that! This percentage of points will be put in your skills, and the rest will be invested in your match performance. You get a message confirming your training result.

Team coaches can improve the training results, but only for players who have a contract with the team.
Players can be injured during training; the risk of injury rises with training intensity (and becomes very high at high training intensities). Keep that in mind when you push up your training intensity because you know you will not be fielded in the next match.

Training Camp

A training camp can improve the form of the team's players for a short period of time. The more expensive the camp, the more players will improve. The team can only visit one camp per week, and also a player will not benefit again if transferred to another team and visiting another camp within a week.
ATTENTION: the form increase holds ONLY until the next matchday/training, then the form is re-calculated in the normal way. You can only hold club training camps if the next matchday is a club match (league or cup), and national training camps if the next matchday is a national matchday.

Transfer

This is the process of a player joining a club team - if a player joins a national team, this is called "callup". The difference is that there needs to be an offer made and accepted for a club transfer. The offer can come either from the team captain, or from the player and has to be accepted from the other party. An offer expires after a couple of days. If an offer is accepted, the transfer is scheduled several days in the future. At that date, the player will join the team.

Transfer Offer

This is the prerequisite for a transfer. Offers can only be made and accepted if the team does not already have 18 players (current and pending transfers).

Trivia

Every once in a while, you have the chance to prove your football knowledge by answering a trivia question. Try to log in every day, because the question is only valid on the day it is assigned to you. On average, you can expect one question per week. Once you have clicked on the link, you will see the question and you will have a short period of time to answer it. If you succeed, you get a small bonus on your training, and there is also a trivia ranking (season and career).

Vacation

As a professional player, you can set yourself in vacation mode on the profile page. This means that you will automatically bet on new bet games, and if you are a team captain, the computer will do lineups for you. Don't forget to turn this mode off when you are back, otherwise the computer will overwrite your lineup!