What’s new

The dressing room. Harmony now reads who runs the room and who sits with whom: the leaders beside the captain, the men who have been together a season, a room split into two camps and two men chasing one role all move it a little. Selling a friend upsets the men who sit with him. You can call a team meeting to pull the unhappy toward the room, once a fortnight; a leader can back you after a run of defeats or undercut you, and computer clubs now name a captain and call meetings of their own.

Sponsors can now pay for more. A bonus clause can reach for the league final, promotion, a place in the Crown of Europe, or a round of the national cup, wherever your club plays that competition, and every offer is still priced to be worth the same on average. Partner and sponsor marks appear on the match page and on a club page, and the choice an AI club makes of a sponsor can be explained.

Hiring a person another club employs. A club may approach a scout, coach or physio under contract elsewhere: the page says before the press what the person would ask, whether the move is acceptable to them and whether their club would say yes, and the price is compensation to their club, a signing-on sum and a relocation package if they play abroad. Every signing from abroad now carries a relocation package, on by default on a free agent sheet; with it the player settles a week sooner and a relocation event cannot hit them.

Sponsors. Your club now sells seven places: the shirt front, the kit, the arena name, the sleeve and three partners. Before each season every slot gets offers of the same expected value, a safe fee or a smaller one with bonuses for finishing well, and one big sole sponsor can take the shirt, the sleeve and the partners for two seasons. Sign what suits your club, or hold the sleeve, the arena or a partner open for better offers mid-season; a slot you leave alone signs its safe offer on the opening day. A club with no deal is paid as before.

Foul contact now hurts as it should. About a quarter of match injuries come from contact (a hard foul, a collision) instead of one in twenty, and a flagrant foul still hurts most. The overall rate of injuries a game does not move.

Clubs the game runs counter a trade the way a real front office does. The first thing a club asks for is what it takes (the Clubs are looking for board says it), a club short at a position because of an injury asks for the man who fills the hole, and a club over its wage ceiling asks for money or a pick and never another contract. Every counter says why in one line, a counter you receive shows the figures behind its ask, and a club answers within the hour when you meet what it asked for.

Discipline. Aggressive and hot-tempered men now pick up technicals, unsportsmanlike and disqualifying fouls, and a second technical or a violent foul sends a man off. The league fines the club and keeps the money; you decide whether the man pays it, with a word or by backing him. Bans are served at the next competitive game, the season has its own ladder of technicals and flagrant points, a man's page shows his record, and a hothead is a hothead from his attributes. An aggressive driver also draws more fouls. Ask a man to keep his head and he may.

A new signing arrives in a slightly different mood, depending on how he takes to a move, and two new events tell you whether a man settles in: some find their feet early, and some families find a move hard, where the club can help with a relocation package. A man still settling in carries a chip on your squad page.

Injuries cost more time and size now matters: heavier players are hurt a little more often and for longer, a foul can injure the man fouled or the man who fouled, and a serious injury can now end a career, more often for older, heavier and overworked players. The club pays half of what remained of his contract. Injured players miss about a third more games overall.

Players cost what they are worth. The best men are now much dearer than the rest, in wages and in fees, a famous player costs more, and a transfer fee is paid in the money of the league that sells him: a man from the North American league costs far more than one from a small European league. A European player bought out by a North American club now costs three quarters of his value, not just the price of ending his contract. New worlds start with eight stars, most of them in the richest league, and the richest leagues begin with stronger squads. Worlds that are already running keep their players; only the prices, wages and fees change.

A club whose offer for a listed player is accepted now has its own 48 hours from that moment to agree his personal terms, however little of the listing's shared window is left, so a fee accepted late is no longer wasted. The player still chooses between the clubs only once the last of those windows has run out.

The Crown of Europe is fairer to start: a country with no cup history is now rated on a straight scale from strongest to weakest, so the table does not drift upward when real seasons arrive. The Final Four is one weekend in the best seed's arena, and that club keeps the gate of every game of it. Head coaches' new contracts can carry a Crown of Europe title clause and a Final Four clause, the cup now counts for a coach's reputation and a second title for the winner's players, and the Final Four has its own most valuable player.

Units: the squad page has a new page that shows which five players work best together, and every match report has the five-man units of the night under the box scores. Nothing in how a match is played has changed.

A Crown of Europe for the Europe leagues. In a world on the long 98-day calendar the champion of each of the ten top flights, plus the runners-up of the six best countries, play sixteen to a cup: four groups of four on the odd nights the leagues leave free, best-of-three quarterfinals and a Final Four. It pays a prize at every stage, the winner takes a club honour, and a home night draws a quarter more. Worlds on the 42-day calendar play none.

The board asks for more. A second-tier club built for the first tier may now be asked to win promotion within the vision, and a club with a strong academy may be asked to have two of its own academy men among the ten who play most. And you can ask the board to back one named signing: open a player of another club and press Ask the board to back this signing. If the board agrees it stands behind a credit line for the fee, signing bonus and agent fee of that one man alone; if the window closes and the player is not yours, that costs you more confidence than an unused ordinary line.

Players now have a position of their own for each of the five spots: how at home they are there. Every man is Natural at his own position; elsewhere he is Accomplished, Learning or Unfamiliar. Play him at a spot or give him that position as his training focus in the second slot, and he learns it, at the price of his second attribute; leave it idle and it fades by about a level a season. Standing out of position costs every attribute up to 18 percent, less the more he knows the spot. The player page has a new Positions tab, the squad shows who can play where, and the lineup shows what a man out of position costs and who could cover him. A man nobody has trained plays exactly as before.

A man you want to part with is now one action in every league: open his page and press Make him available. Where clubs pay a fee he goes on the transfer list; where they never do he goes on the trading block and clubs offer players, picks or cap room. You choose what you want for him and for how long, he carries a Listed or Available mark everywhere he appears, and you can pull him back. The players filter finds both with one switch, and the captain and vice-captain wear a gold or silver C and VC. Clubs the game runs now call about the men you make available in the North American league. The day after you put a man on the trading block, up to eight clubs a day read the man and send offers that carry what you asked for: anything fair, a man at a position, a younger man, a pick or cap room. A shopped man is read a little under full value, no more than three offers stand on one man at once, a club you turned down waits a week, and the offers arrive as ordinary trade proposals you accept, counter or decline. If nobody calls in a fortnight, you hear about it. The Looking for page lists the men made available at clubs people run above the clubs the game runs.

Clubs can now loan players for the rest of the season. Open a young man who is not playing and press Loan him out, or open another club's man and press Ask for a loan: the borrower pays an agreed share of his wage, can promise him minutes, and he goes home when the season ends. Clubs the game runs lend and borrow too. Nothing in the match changes, except that a loaned man does not play against his own club.

You can now make a private world for your friends: pick a league, a pace and a name, and send them your invite link. The world starts when three people hold a club, and only the people in it can see it. Nothing in the match changes.

Asking the board is no longer answered on the spot: it considers a few game days, and answers on the facts of that day. The board also sets a vision of two or three aims over three seasons when you are appointed, with a first-week conversation about it, and the board page deals the requests as cards, including one for the youth academy. You can now set a season target for a player from the Talk page: points, rebounds, assists or minutes a game, a shooting percentage, or games played, at a safe, fair or bold mark worked out from his own rate. The game judges it on the last day of the regular season. A kept target lifts his mood and he asks a little more at his next contract; a missed one dips it a little. A bold mark may be turned down. The match does not change.