Proper Football Boss · published
A big one. Two weeks of work since the Next Fest build came out.
NEW IN THE DEMO
- Sound. Match and interface effects, a sound for a deal done, and music on the teletext pages. Separate SOUND EFFECTS and MUSIC levels in Settings, both on by default. A first pass - more to come.
- Club information page. Press I from the squad or opponent squad: ground, capacity, record crowd, honours, the club in 1986.
- Real football history is now one switch when you start a new game (default on): real player and manager moves land on their real dates. Or switch it off and squads stay as they are!
- The Soviet Top League is in the world and on teletext, with named squads for all sixteen clubs and its real calendar-year season.
- Two slower match speeds for anyone who enjoys a more leisurely affair.
Proper Football Boss launches soon. If the demo is your sort of thing, a wishlist helps more than you'd think.
FULL NOTES
The world of 1986-87
- Authored 1986-87 squads for the French First Division, Serie A, Spain's Primera, the Bundesliga, the Belgian First Division, the Eredivisie, Portugal's main five, the Soviet Top League and ten Yugoslav First League clubs.
- Domestic cups in the simulated leagues: the simulated nations now play their own cups, and the cup winners enter the Cup Winners' Cup.
- Ballon d'Or awarded in December on the calendar year, weighted by the strength of the league a man plays in - and a proper 1986 winner.
- Fifty-seven club reputations re-anchored on one scale, so a club's standing reflects its history rather than last season alone - Lokomotive Leipzig, Austria Wien, Roma, the Yugoslav and Norwegian clubs among them.
- Foreign managers: the rest of the system is in. Managers retire with age, and a sacked manager is back in the market in a fortnight rather than three months - the merry-go-round actually turns.
- Non-league and minnow clubs carry squads of a relevant size.
Players and ratings
- A full re-rating pass on the English, Scottish and non-league game: the 1986 man, rated for what he was that season.
- Over-rated stars outside Britain brought down, and forty-seven under-rated internationals brought up.
- Some future stars start at their real day-one clubs - Stoichkov, Caniggia, Boban, Romário, Pančev, Šuker, with Prosinečki, Hierro, Shearer and Batistuta as juniors.
- Development is no longer one size fits all: Gascoigne, Le Tissier, Stoichkov, Romário, Kohler and others grow at the pace their careers deserve.
- Mental attributes develop with maturity, and a blank attribute now varies from career to career and sits at the man's own level.
- Decline from thirty is steeper, and the elite no longer hold their peak.
- Youth intakes are sized to the club's squad target - at least two at every top-flight club and at yours, whatever your division.
- International signings of under 18s are no longer allowed.
- Improvements to how scout reports describe generated and lesser-known players, with a playing type for every man, such as box-to-box or destroyer.
- Day-one corrections: Jennings, Falcão, Roleder and Barmoš retired; duplicates removed; dozens of men put back at their real clubs; work rates filled in across the top tiers; French dual nationalities, caps, dates of birth and spellings fixed.
Matches
- Match difficulty re-calibrated.
- Penalty shoot-outs improved.
- Card rates and injury profiles follow the era rather than one modern setting.
- AI managers bench a man with very low fitness instead of running him into the ground.
- Drinking bites: a professional drinks it off, a dedicated drinker carries a fitness ceiling, and the board notices when the squad is at it.
- No club fields a man registered somewhere else, international call-ups are read on the right date, and a thin squad is topped up at its own level.
- Keepers: the emergency-keeper rules now apply abroad as well as at home, with a floor for continental clubs.
Money, transfers and grounds
- A listed player's asking price is now the most he will cost you - set a price and that offer always works.
- The free agent market reworked: authored men appear on the list, a good player holds out for a club worth joining in the first weeks, and AI clubs use the list to upgrade.
- Lower-division crowds and ticket prices re-fitted, and running costs put back to the book - the Second to Fourth Division books read right in season one.
- Depreciation now shows in the profit and loss screens.
- Grounds: a site has a cap, a club that outgrows its site moves, ambition stands are planned from the crowd you will actually get, and works loans are capped at three times revenue.
- Scottish club finances brought to parity with the English model - income lines, era lanes, the distress chain and the Old Firm's own lane.
- A solvent club can no longer go bust.
IN THE FULL GAME
Also in this build, for a career that runs past the demo's season:
- Transfer fees and AI spending re-shaped across the 1990s, with benefactors who actually put cash in.
- Foreign imports arrive by era - the ban years, readmission, and the post-Bosman opening.
- A free agent market between AI clubs in the simulated leagues, with pre-Bosman contract expiry.
- The break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia handled properly in a running career: nationalities, league names, the successor leagues and their entry seasons.