How to play

The controls

The short version

Move the mouse

Your player runs toward the cursor. There are no movement keys.

Left button

Hold to charge a kick, let go to hit it.

Right button

Quick pass along the ground.

Space

Slide tackle. The middle mouse button works too.

That's all you need to join a training. The full key list is below, and the rest of this guide is what good players know.

Every key

Mouse

Run toward the cursor. When you have the ball, it sits between you and the cursor.

LMB

Hold to charge a shot or a long ball, let go to hit it. Cursor close to you lofts it, cursor far away drives it low.

RMB

Quick pass along the ground. Short range on purpose.

Space / MMB

Slide tackle. Once you press it, you are committed: there is no pulling out.

ESC

Does two things by default (you can split them in Settings): turns down a set piece you walked onto, so a teammate takes it, and opens the lobby and keeps it open.

TAB

Hold to see the lobby: teams, roles and, if you're the host, the room tools.

Wheel / + -

Zoom the camera in or out a step. Closer makes touches and tackles easier to read, wider shows more of the pitch. Zoom never changes your kicks: those depend on how far you move the mouse. Press 0 to reset.

F

Switch the camera: on you, on the ball, or free (it pans with your cursor).

M

Mute or unmute the match sounds.

Enter

Chat with the other players. Online only.

These are the defaults. Once you're signed in you can rebind most of them in Settings, under Game. Shooting and passing stay on the mouse buttons.

Your player

Three sliders shape your player's body: Height, Weight and Motor. Each one is a trade-off from the same pool. Tall players reach further but turn slower. Heavy players win shoulder-to-shoulder duels but get going slower. A sprinter is fastest in open space, an agile player is quickest over the first two metres. There's no best build and nothing to grind for: every option is free for everyone from day one. You set the sliders in the hub, on your player page, and that's the body you play with.

On the ball

Running and dribbling

Your player follows the cursor, and there's some momentum, so start your turns a little early. When you have the ball, it sits between you and the cursor, about a third of a metre from your body, and it goes wherever you point. That's all there is to dribbling, and you can do a lot with it.

Move the cursor around your player and the ball moves around you too. Point past a defender and the ball rolls into their path. Point across your own body and the ball switches to your far side, with you between it and them. A defender can only take what their leg can reach, so to get a ball on your far side they have to go through you, and that's a foul.

Two things get dribblers caught. Running in a straight line at speed, since a slide aimed at where you're going is easy. And dribbling into a crowd, since the ball is never more than a third of a metre from you and everyone in that crowd has a leg. Change direction before the tackle comes, not during it: while you turn, the ball swings across your body and for a moment it's nobody's.

Shooting and long kicks

Hold the left button to wind up. Power builds while you hold, and the ball stays at your foot until you let go. The cursor sets the height: close to your player lofts the ball high, far away drives it low and hard. A charged kick is also your long pass. There's no separate button for it.

Below: same player, same charge on the bar. The only difference is where the crosshair is.

Passing: the right button

The right button plays a quick pass along the ground, toward the cursor. No wind-up and no charge bar: it goes the moment you press, and you don't pick the pace. The left button gives you range and height but needs time you often don't have. The right button gives you neither, and needs no time at all.

Use it in tight spaces, and when the pass has to be gone before the defender gets to you. It's short on purpose and it stays on the ground, which also makes it the easiest ball for a teammate to run onto.

Hold it, don't just tap it. The pass keeps firing for as long as the button is down. Hold it and the next ball that reaches your feet goes straight back out, without you ever controlling it. That's a first-time pass, and nothing on the pitch is faster.

Playing it first time

Controlling a ball means stopping it, and stopping it gives a defender the half second they need. Playing it first time skips that. Hold the right button as the pass arrives and it goes straight back out. Hold the left button and let go as the ball reaches you, and you hit it as it comes, with its pace added to your shot.

A volley goes in harder than the same kick from a standstill, since the ball's own speed is added to the strike. A dropping cross with an attacker holding the button is the most dangerous half second in the game. It's also easy to get wrong: mistime it and you swing at thin air while the ball rolls past.

Off the ball

The first touch

You win a loose ball by running onto it, not by clicking. Time your run and the ball settles at your feet. The cursor steers that first touch, so a good run takes the ball into space in one move. Height matters too: a ball dropping onto your boot is killed dead, while one still rising off a kick bounces off your body.

Balls in the air

A ball on the ground is yours to take. A ball in the air usually isn't. What you can do with it depends on how high it is and whether it's going up or coming down.

Below the boot

Around knee height and lower, you can do anything with it: trap it, pass it, shoot. This is the only height where you can bring the ball under control.

Coming down, up to head height

Hold a button and you can play it with any part of your body, up to about head height. You can't bring it down and keep it, though: above the boot you can only knock it away.

Going up

A ball still rising off a kick can't be played at all. It bounces off whatever it hits, you included. Get out of the way or live with where it goes.

So the one habit worth learning is let it drop. Chase a high ball in the air and all you can do is hit it. Take the same ball a beat later as it lands on your boot and it's dead at your feet and you're away. Go for the bounce, not the flight, unless you actually want to hit it first time.

The slide tackle

Space sends you into a slide, and whatever your leg hits first decides what happens. Hit the ball first at a dribbler's feet and it's a clean tackle: the ball is yours and you're up quickly. Hit a loose ball and you poke it away in the direction of your slide. Hit the player first and they go down, and the referee saw it. A slide that misses leaves you on the ground and out of the play, so only go in when you can see the ball.

The tackle that wins nothing

There's a third outcome, and it's the one you'll get most often: you reach the ball, but you went through the player to get there. A slide from BEHIND, or one that catches anyone else on the way, never wins the ball. It only pokes it loose, in the direction of your slide and as hard as you slid. It's not a foul, since your leg did hit the ball, but nobody has the ball either. It's a fifty-fifty for whoever is closest.

So the only slide that WINS the ball is one that gets to a dribbler's ball first, from the front or the side. Anything else just breaks up the play. That still counts for something in defence, but it's worse than it looks: you're on the ground, and the ball is loose somewhere you didn't choose.

No way back

Once you press it, the slide is yours to the end. There is no pulling out: the leg stays out until the slide runs down, and a miss leaves you on the grass for the whole get-up. So the decision comes before the press, never after it.

Two more things about the slide. It depends on your run: how far and how fast you slide comes from how fast you were going, so a slide from a standstill barely goes anywhere. And it stays LOW. A slide doesn't block anything in the air, and a player on the ground blocks nothing above knee height. That's why a chip over a slide is such an easy way to punish it.

Scoring

Where to shoot from

Closer isn't always better. From inside about seven metres the keeper throws their whole body across the shot, right as you hit it, with no reaction time for you to beat. It covers every height, so there's no trick around it. Over thousands of shots in this game, a shot from eight to ten metres goes in about a third of the time, and one from inside six barely one in seven. The best chance is usually one step BEFORE the obvious one.

What really decides a chance isn't distance, it's how much of the goal you can see: how wide the gap between the posts looks from where you are. That's why a shot from near the byline is a bad chance however close it is, and why a square ball to a teammate in the middle turns the same attack into a good one. If you can't see the goal, pass.

Where to aim

The keeper's reach isn't the same in every direction. Getting down is easy, reaching up isn't, so the bottom corners are better covered than the top ones. A ball that's both wide and high is the one the keeper can't reach. The crossbar is at 2.44 m and the keeper reaches 2.2 m, so the top of the goal really is out of reach.

That's what the cursor is for. Aim wide for the corner, with the cursor close enough to lift the ball but far enough to keep pace on it. Nothing on screen shows you the angle: cursor at your feet is a steep chip, cursor far out is a low drive, and the shot that goes in off the far post is somewhere in between. You learn the distance by practising it.

The keeper comes off the line to close the angle. The ball is already over them.

And from distance

The same kick from outside the box is a different shot, because what you're really up against is the keeper's reaction time. From nine metres the keeper is still moving when the ball arrives. From nineteen, they've read it and covered everything they can reach. That leaves you one place to put it.

From range, it's the top corner or nothing. Over hundreds of long shots in this game, the only ones that beat the keeper went in high and within a metre of a post. Along the ground, saved. At chest height, saved. Over the gloves and under the bar, goal. So pull the cursor in enough to lift the ball, aim wide, and let it dip.

Two exceptions worth knowing. Up close, height won't help you: pass, or take a step back out. And a ball that rises too steeply goes over the bar, which wastes the attack as surely as a save. The margins are fine, and that's on purpose.

The referee

Fouls and the sin bin

Take a player down without touching the ball and it's a foul: a free kick, and it gets worse each time. First a warning, then a yellow card. A booked player who fouls again goes to the sin bin for ten minutes of match clock, and their team plays a man down. A foul in your own box gives away a penalty and gets you booked straight away. There's no red card. The sin bin is the punishment, and once you're booked you're one tackle away from it for the rest of the match. The other team knows that too.

Offside

Called strictly, in every match with a referee. It's judged the moment a teammate plays the ball: if you're past the last defender then, your next touch is offside and the other team gets an indirect free kick. Level with the last defender is onside. A small marker on the left edge of your screen shows when you're in an offside position, before the ball even comes.

The dashed line is the last defender. In a real match it isn't drawn: you have to learn to see it.

Taking a set piece

Corners, free kicks, throw-ins and penalties don't take themselves. The ball waits on its spot with a ring around it, and it belongs to the team that won it: walk onto the ball to take it. Once you step on the spot you're locked there. You can't run, only aim with the cursor, until you play it. That way the kick is always taken from the spot, not on the run.

Don't want it? Press ESC. You step away and the nearest teammate takes it. Use it when someone better placed should take it, or when you'd rather be in the box. Nobody's stuck taking a set piece.

The rest of the rules are the real ones. Opponents have to stay ten yards away until the ball is played. And once you've played it, it isn't yours: touch it again before anyone else has and the other team gets an indirect free kick from where you did, so a set piece is always a pass. The one exception is being the only player on your side. A throw-in is thrown, not kicked: you step behind the line, the ball comes up into your hands, and you have two throws. Right button places it: the ball is thrown out in front and rolls to a stop on the crosshair, so put the crosshair on a teammate's feet. Left button is the long throw: charge it, and the cursor's distance sets the arc, far for flat and fast, near for a loop. For a penalty, everyone clears the box except you and the keeper. You don't have to shoot: a tap forward for a teammate to run onto is allowed, but play it backwards and the other team gets an indirect free kick from the spot. And keepers are always CPU-controlled on both teams: they take their own goal kicks, and nobody ever plays in goal.

Where to play

There are three kinds of games here, the same three the Play button asks about. A training earns XP but has no match page. A friendly is a team game with a full report and a match page, but no rating. A ranked match has all of that and a rating that moves.

Trainings

Offline

You vs bots, offline. No server, no account. Good for learning the controls and trying out a build. Start one now.

Public

A public room with whoever's around. Bots fill the empty seats, and anyone can open one. Browse the rooms.

The Kickabout

A public training that's always open, with the bots at full strength. They keep it running around the clock, so there's always a game to join. If the bots are too good for you, host your own room and set them easier. Nobody's watching. Find it here.

Friendlies

Friendly

Your team against another, or against Bots FC, just for fun. One player from each team is enough and bots take the empty seats. You get a full report and a match page, but no rating changes. An officer sets it up under Friendly.

Ranked matches

Solo match

Ten signed-in players, five a side, no bots. Press Play, pick Ranked, choose your main and second position and join the queue. It finds ten players, splits the sides by rating and gives you a position. Everyone's rating changes after the game, and leaving mid-match costs you more than losing. See the ladder.

Duel match

You against one other player, each running a side of five: your own player and four bots you take over with the number keys. The bots are the same on both sides, so it's down to how you use them. Queue from Play, then Ranked. A duel has its own rating and pays half the XP of a full match. See the ladder.

Team match

Your team against another team, on the ladder. With five of you online, an officer puts the team in the queue or challenges a team they know. Any five from each side accept, and a teammate can sub in if someone drops. Both teams are rated and only members of the two teams can play. See the fixtures.

What it all earns

You earn XP for time played with other people, plus a bonus for a win or a draw, in every mode above. A game full of bots pays a fraction of one full of people. Levels unlock looks and options, never power: everyone on the pitch has the same tools.

Then there's rating. A solo match changes your solo rating, a duel your duel rating, a team match your TEAM's, and trainings and friendlies change none of them.