Dev diary · October 2026
1.7
Board and build-up
Your scouts now go out with an assignment and you can expand your stadium. The board judges you with its own patience, and there's a new medical department. Lower down the pyramid the summer gets busier, because small clubs hand out shorter contracts and sign more players on a free.
At a glance
- Scouts on an assignment report back with players who fit. Anyone nobody has watched stays a question mark.
- Expand your stadium: more seats and fair prices make it louder – that is your home advantage.
- The board judges you during the season too – and every board has its own patience.
- Players have a say: league, reputation and wages count – and their old academy club can bring them home.
- The trophy cabinet shows your honours – and your record in every competition.
- Now in seven languages – and your assistant explains at the start how everything fits together.
- Transfers and finances show every figure with its unit – and you decide how much to keep in reserve.
- Your medical department: focus on prevention, physio team or rehab – each has its own strengths and price.
In numbers
8.8%of players in squads are on loan 150 days into the season. It used to be 16.5%. The CIES puts real football at 9.5%.
51 to 52%of permanent signings from the third tier down are now free transfers. It used to be 32%. In Germany's 3. Liga it's 72%, in League Two around 70%.
88%of professional clubs pay at least one fee in a season in our test runs. In real football it's 80 to 100%.
47%of new signings at clubs in a rebuild are 23 or under, counted over a season. It used to be 39%. At win-now clubs it's just over a third.
3.9%of their revenue is what clubs around the world put into their academies. It used to be 3.4%, and in real football it's 2 to 5%. Rich clubs spend more now, before the money made no difference to that choice.
12%of injuries are re-injuries at a club with no medical department, about one in eight, just like in a UEFA study. With the medical set-ups clubs around the world pick, it's just under one in ten.
59%of youngsters are loyal or modest when the academy goes for loyalty. Go for numbers and it's 12%.
435checks ran in the second full test round on the finished 1.7, and every one came back green. We played five seasons twice, and both times they came out exactly the same, season by season.
What went wrong while building it
We misread our own research
On the market, the first mistake was ours. We misread our own research and thought only 35 to 65% of clubs pay a transfer fee at all, and our clubs were above that. So we figured they were buying too much. Then we looked into it twice more and checked it by hand, and in real football 80 to 100% of professional clubs pay a fee. So buying was never the problem, the problem was that too few players lower down move on a free. On top of that there was a crash in testing, about one time in ten: you set up a new career and suddenly it said "Something went wrong." The game clears out old save files in the background, and sometimes it was too late with that and caught the files of the world it had just built. We made it happen on purpose by letting the clean-up run late, and it crashed three times out of three. Now it clears up straight away. And while we were recording the pictures for 1.7, the money tile in the office showed minus 303 million to the end of the season on day one at London United. Play the season through and it ends at plus 277 million. The sponsor only gets picked on day two, and until then the tile was counting without the sponsor's money. Now, until you pick one, it tells you the figure comes once you have picked a sponsor.
All changes in 1.7
New
- Send your scouts out on an assignment and they report back with players who fit. Anyone nobody has watched yet stays a question mark.
- You can expand your stadium. More seats and fair prices make it louder, and that's your home advantage.
- The board judges you during the season as well, and every board has its own patience.
- Players have a say in whether they join you, and the league, your reputation and the wages all count. A player's old academy club also finds it easier to bring him home.
- The trophy cabinet shows your honours and your record in every competition.
- The game is now in seven languages: English, German, Croatian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French. At the start your assistant explains how everything fits together.
- There's a new medical department at the club. You pick one of three focuses. Prevention means far fewer injuries but eats into training time. A physio team gets players back from minor injuries faster and makes long lay-offs a bit shorter, but anyone rushed back too early gets injured again far more often. Rehab only has upsides, but it only helps with long lay-offs. Computer-controlled clubs choose by the same rules.
- There's a membership in the main menu now: Bronze, Silver or Gold. From Silver you can put a name of your choice on the roll of honour and vote on one question about the game with each version. With Gold you can ask to turn up in the game as a youth player or manager at a club.
- If you want, your club sends you a reminder on your phone when it needs you, for example when another club bids for one of your players. You switch it on in Settings under Reminders, and it all stays on your phone.
- At the end of each of your first three seasons, the World comparison card shows you how other managers got on with the same club. That works because everyone starts in the same world. It's up to you whether you take part, and it only ever shows percentages.
- With the bug report you can now send me your save as well. Then I can play through exactly your career instead of guessing.
- If you say yes, the game counts without your name at which of the first steps new players stop. That way I see where getting started still gets stuck.
- "What's new" in the main menu shows the card "New in 1.7 · Board and build-up", with eight lines.
Better
- Small clubs hand out shorter contracts. From the third tier down, and in leagues without much money such as Slovenia, Finland or Malta, a young player wants two to four years instead of three to five, a 22-year-old two to three, and anyone 30 or over just one. That goes for computer-controlled clubs and for your own negotiations. Higher up, in the Bundesliga for example, nothing changes.
- The summer is busier lower down: small clubs sign more free agents and pay fees less often, and semi-pro and amateur clubs hardly ever buy for money. You see it in the transfer news over the summer and in your opponents' squads.
- Small clubs, meaning the third tier down plus semi-pro and amateur sides, don't pay fees in every window. That goes for deals between them and for your players too, so you get fewer offers to buy.
- A small club under pressure from its board will buy in a window where it normally wouldn't, just like in a real relegation scrap.
- A free agent your scout doesn't know no longer shows his wage demand, the same as with the asking price. With a scouting report you see a range, and the exact figure only once you know the player fully. I spotted that on a screenshot, the wage demand was basically handing you the answer on a silver platter.
- Fewer loans: about one pro in eleven is out on loan, it used to be one in six.
- Form now counts in every league in the world, not just in yours.
- Like the medical department, the academy now gives each of its three focuses its own strength and its own price. Numbers brings the most youngsters but hardly ever a gem. Elite brings the fewest and costs the most, but gems come through far more often, and then the big clubs come calling. Loyalty is the cheapest, and many stay when a big club calls, about one in two in the game. Computer-controlled clubs choose by the same rules. That came from me, when I saw the pictures of both I thought damn, I actually want all three.
- Clubs in a rebuild buy a lot younger: over a season almost half of their new signings are 23 or under. At win-now clubs it's just over a third.
- Rich clubs put more money into their academy.
- After a big sale, computer-controlled clubs are more likely again to follow it up by signing a young player.
- Selling a player uses the same words on every screen now.
- The scouting department now says what its slots are: your home country is fixed, and next to it comes one country of your choice. I asked that myself when I saw the picture.
- Your own country is now called "home country" in the scouting department, the country list and the transfer market. The old word read like a home game, I noticed that in my own test round.
- The academy and the medical department now show their quality twice, as it is now and with your budget, also for the academy in the squad. Before it showed a level and a target, and that wasn't clear straight away when I tested it.
- Every figure in transfers and finances now comes with its unit, and in the books you decide yourself how much to keep back for running costs.
- All new texts in all seven languages got one more read from a proofreader, an AI that reads like a native speaker, because I wanted that. 17 spots got better.
Fixed
- On the first day of a career, the money tile in the office showed a minus to the end of the season that was never real, because the sponsor only gets picked on day two. Until you pick one it now says "This week: once you have picked a sponsor". The forecast to the end of the season is gone altogether, because without bonuses and transfers it was often misleading.
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