Rules

1. Registration
2. Sokker Rules
3. Your club
4. The players
5. Coaches
6. Training
7. Sub junior school
8. Transfers
9. The Stadium
10. The supporters
11. The Match
12. League system
13. The week in Sokker
14. National team rules
15. Menu of the game
16. Skill and supporter levels
17. Basic prices and costs

To set up your team, go to the menu Registration on the Sokker main page. After submitting your personal data and current e-mail address, you need to wait until you are granted a team. You will be notified by e-mail once this is done. All applications are processed on an individual basis, so it may take a few days to get your team. On rare occasions, your country’s leagues may be full. This may lead to a slightly longer wait. However, please be patient as all leagues are continually reviewed and expanded where necessary. Expansions usually take place during the off season.

The team you apply for must be settled at your real country, unless your country is not available in Sokker. If you are from a country other that the one you're currently living, and want to create a team within this other country, you must send an e-mail to admins@sokker.org.

Please follow fair play rules in Section 2. For example, if you believe that you share in IP address with another user, please email admins@sokker.org


Account management

Your Sokker account can be deleted for a number of reasons:
- You have not logged in for 50 days
- Your team has exceeded the bankruptcy limits for a period of over 14 days.
- Your account has been blocked due to failure to follow the fair-play rules or forum rules as stated in section 2.

In each case, if you would like to rejoin Sokker, you will be allowed to register one more time. You must wait for a period of 50 days from your last log in before doing this.

User invitations

When you invite your friend to join Sokker you can tell him to fill out your login ID during the registration process or just send them a link as below:

www.sokker.org/?buddy=your_login

You will receive 10 days free Plus every time a user that you have invited buys plus for the first time!
If you already have Plus, your subscription is extended by 10 days.

GENERAL SOKKER RULES

As an user you are obligated to obey the following major rules. In the game it is forbidden:
• to own or to totally control more than one team
• to sell or to hand over a team to another user (no matter if he was already playing in Sokker or is a new user)
• to have a team in a country other than the country of nationality or habitual residence. In case of registering from a different country or coming from a country not included in Sokker database, please explain it by writing to admins@sokker.org.
• to transfer any player between the teams that use the same IPs or that log from the same computer
• to help other teams by bidding intentionally on their players above the market value
• to transfer players over their fair market values
• to hack another user's account and to try to obtain other user's password
• to use programs that may be dangerous to Sokker
• to post or present material that is designated as illegal on this family-oriented site (i.e. to present any racist, fascist, or pornographic material, presenting illegal programs or the material breaking software licenses/copyrights) or causing potential harm to another user's computer (i.e. containing viruses, harmful behavior, etc).
• to use any encountered errors in Sokker to one's own needs (every traced bug should be reported to the admins)
• to break the Rules of Sokker Manager or the Forum Rules stated elsewhere


If you happen to use the same computer (or local network) with other users, it should be reported to admins@sokker.org. Please include in your message login and the name of the team with identifier (i.e. login rysio [1], team: Testowa [785]). As mentioned above, any transfers between users who ever have shared an IP is illegal.

Violations of these rules of Sokker, including the major rules above and breaking the registration rules above (such as attempted registrations for multiple teams), will be punished with penalties up to removing the user from the game.



SOKKER STAFF AND PUNISHMENTS

To supervise the game, the owners (developers) of Sokker have appointed the Game Administrators. Their purpose is to support other users, to enforce the rules and guidelines of the game, and ensure safety and appropriate registering of user accounts. Administrators are given powers to take steps to punish users who have broken the rules of Sokker. At their discretion, Administrators may:
- put a financial fine for user's team
- give a user the last-chance warning ("yellow card") - meaning giving him the last chance to play honestly in the game
- block the user's account (including disallowing any further return of the user to the game)
- put on user other sanctions, which haven't been specified yet.

Administrators have rights to use or combine those means in order to ensure fairness and safety in the game.


Administrators reserve themselves rights:
• not to reveal the details of their work or decisions to the users
• to ensure secrecy and limiting the access to the information that may affect the user, whose case is already been analyzed
• to adjust or settle manually the transfer price, if the value paid is/was far from the market value (i.e. overpriced or suspicious)
• to fine or block permanently a user's account if he spams other users or insults/uses vulgar vocabulary towards other users (including the private messages).
• to block the user's account for every suspicion of controlling more than one team (noticing the Administrators about the common loggings would be set aside here)
• to ignore all appeals for data recovery (players, stadium, trainers, juniors) if the account hasn't been properly secured (i.e. password was shared with others, was saved in browser on public computer) or that has been made by user's mistake. Other cases (i.e. hacking users accounts) may be restored if possible.
• to ask user for his real life identity, in case of security or game fairness concerns


Administrators will not generally perform the following actions, but reserve the right in extreme cases:
• to interfere in cases of not bidding a certain players on agreed price - those are the matters of the mutual agreements between the seller and the buyer and are not supervised by Sokker staff
• to remove any player from the transfer list at the request of the buyer or the seller or others
• to remove any player from the transfer list because they were listed by an emotional action of the owner
• to login on user's account without being granted user's permission (for example, to remove a racist newspaper article in the page of an idle or banned user)

Each issue will be evaluated on its own merit, taking into account general practices to ensure fairness. This may result in increasing or decreasing the penalty for certain transgressions, at the discretion of the Administrator.

Do not contact with Administrators from accounts of other users. If your account was blocked, the only way of contacting Sokker Staff is writing to admins@sokker.org. In all other cases, if you need to contact an Administrator, we kindly request you contact no more than 2 Admins. Please check who is online, send sk-mail to up to 2 of them, and wait until the sk-mail has been read.

Every case not described in the rules will be handled by Game Administrators.



Administrators are supported by Forum Moderators. Moderators examine forum discussions, news postings, guestbook entries, logos and team names, and all the public activity of the user to keep all discussions on the cultural and non-offensive level. If Moderator notices that a user is breaking the rules, he has the right:
- give a warning
- block the forum access
- ask Administrators to punish the user more severely (up to fines and/or blocking his account).

The specific forum rules are available on the Forum Statute, available via link at the top of the main Forum page.

Your club, as a real football club has its own football stadium, players, coaches and assistants as well as sub junior school. Managing a team involves some costs, such as salaries, transfers, stadium building works etc. Your club must maintain financial liquidity, otherwise it will go bankrupt. You will find more details concerning the team management further on.

Bankruptcy

Teams that are about to declare bankruptcy (account balance less than -€500k (same as -$500 or -£300k)) will be able to log on for 24 hours from the last log in.

This is to allow them to correct their bank balance - sell players, sack coaches etc. After 24 hours they cannot log in again, until the account balance improves sufficiently (account balance more than -€500k, -£300k). If their account balance goes over that amount, they will then be able to log in as normal. However, if the account balance remains below -€500k for a period of 14 days, the team will be formally bankrupt as described in the Account Management portion of Section 1 above.

Each player has 8 basic skills. 7 of these skills (Pace, Passing, Playmaking, Defending, Scoring, Technique and Keeper) range from tragic to divine. Stamina ranges from tragic to formidable. The higher the level of each skill, the better the player will perform in a given discipline.

Basic skills

Pace

Determines how fast the player is. This impacts the speed a player runs after the ball, and speed of movement with the ball. Faster players have a better chance of running away from the opponent, as well as catching him. Additionally keepers with a higher pace skill are more effective at challenging strikers.

Passes

This skill determines the accuracy of player’s passes (both kicks and headers). The accuracy means both the right direction and power, so that the team-mate will be able to receive the ball as easily as possible.

Playmaking

Players with high playmaking skill make their decisions who to pass to quicker, aswell as choosing the best positioned player to pass the ball to. If your player’s playmaking skill is poor, he may start to look around for someone to pass to causing him to lose pace and therefore will be easier to tackle. Higher playmaking skill also increases a players ability to make running passes.

Defending

The higher the defending skill, the greater the chance of tackling an opponent. This is the skill most desirable for defenders. However both the midfielders and strikers may, thanks to their high defending skills, create an opportunity by intercepting the ball from opponent in his half. Whether a player is able to make a tackle or not is also dependant on the other player's technique. The greater their technique, the more chance they have of dribbling past the player.

Striker

Determines the accuracy and the force of kicks. Players with higher striker skill mis-kick the ball less often (e.g. sending the ball high over the bar) and their strikes are more difficult to save. This skill is important for all players that are likely to have a striking opportunity, not just forwards.

Technique

Many of the game aspects depend on technical skills.
- skill of controlling a pass; a player with a low level of technique may fail to control even the simplest balls.
- pace of dribbling; players with poor technical skills significantly lose pace whilst moving with the ball
- skill of passing a defender with a one on one duel and controlling the ball during a feint
- chance of mis-kicking while trying to make a one-touch pass.

Goalkeeping

This skill is only useful for keepers. It determines effectiveness of saves and their quality. Thehigher the skill, the more often the keepers catch the ball or clears it cleverly (away from the strikers).

Stamina

During the match, the players get tired. When this occurs they become less accurate as they lose some of their skills. Only playmaking remains unchanged throughout the match. The degree of fatigue is not directly dependent on length of play but on the activity of the given player. The more he runs and participates in the game the more he gets tired. Players with higher stamina will suffer less fatigue than others. Also be aware that untrained stamina goes down in time.

Additional players’ parameters

Form

Determines whether the player can take advantage of his skills in full. Players that are out of form will perform worse than they would if they were in a higher level of form.

Tactical Discipline

It reflects how accurately the player will follow the tactic during the match. Tactical Discipline is based on two subskills: Experience and Team-work.

Experience:
- More matches played, more experience
- Activity during each match
- Type of match (friendly, official, national team)
- Players at lower levels of experience increase the skill faster than players with higher levels
Team-work:
- Represents how well a coach can teach tactics and how much the player has learned with that club
- Changes during training each week like other skills, independent of the training type selected. The growth depends primarily on head coach's general appraisal. This means that it could even drop if you change to a coach with lower general appraisal.
- Depends on time played in week matches like any other skills
- Assistants help to increase team-work, but their influence is lower than on other skills
- Older players' team-work increases and decreases in slower (they are more "change resistant")
- After every transfer, team-work of the transferred player drops down to the lowest value

Talent

Hidden ability of the player to enhance his skills. Determines the efficiency of training for both a first team player and a junior training in the sub junior school.

Age

After each season your players get older by one year. Younger players enhance their skills faster. As a player approaches his 30's, his skills may begin to gradually deteriorate. The older a player the faster the deterioration.

Value

Approximate value of the player dependent on his skills. This value does not represent the market value for the player if he is sold.

Earnings

Specified in the contract weekly wage, also dependent on player’s skills. At the beginning of each season, the contracts are renegotiated and a new wage is determined.

Sacking Players

If a player is not up to scratch, and you believe he isn't worth transfer listing, you may sack him. If you sack a player, they will no longer play for your team and will not be available for any other teams either. They effectively will have left the Sokker World!

Players that are current members of a national team cannot be sacked. Players who are not on a national team may still be sacked, even if they are of NT-caliber quality.

NT players from bot teams will be released to the transfer list (if they are active national squad members and have played at least once for that team) prior to a new user being allocated the team slot with a new set of players.

Where would a team be without a coach? No where, as no progression would be made.
Your coaches enhance players’ skills during training sessions and take care of the junior team.


Training skills

Each coach is graded in their training effectiveness for each of eight playing skills. These grades are valid solely for the head coach, as other coaches only need the general coach skill (see below). You should try and have your coach with the highest skill possible in the area that you intend to train.

General appraisal

General appraisal of a coach depends on the sum of his individual marks for training each individual skill. It is very important for assistant coaches - the higher their appraisals the more efficiently they help the main coach. Additionally, for your sub junior school you should select a coach with the highest possible general appraisal. The higher their appraisal, the quicker your juniors will improve. The training of Team-work is solely dependant on your coaches general appraisal, mostly based on the head coach but affected slightly by the assistants.

Earnings

Generally, the better the coach, the higher the salary. At the beginning, you will not be able to afford a fantastic coach, unless you want your club to go bankrupt. The salary of the coach is not renegotiable - it remains at the same level throughout his contract with the club.

Age

Your coach is a human being, at some moment he may finish his coaching career. Do not be surprised when your aged coach hands you his notice and leaves for well-deserved retirement in Bermuda.

Searching for coaches

When you first start in Sokker, your club will already have a few coaches. They will not be the best coaches you could possibly have; they have been kept in the club thanks to their acquaintances amongst the previous owners of the club. However, they have one important advantage; their salaries are low. You can easily sack them and look for better staff.

Recruitment

You can search for a coach using the coach searching form. Recruiting a new coach costs money. The more precisely you define his skills the higher the charge is. You must pay this charge, even if the search does not find a coach that fits your requirements.
A coach will arrive with skills approximately comparable to those you have chosen in the coach searching form. If he meets your expectations you can choose to accept him, contracting him to the team. Signing a contract does not involve any costs, however when a contract is terminated the coach receives his salary for the whole week. However if he does not fit your requirements you do not have to sign contract with him, you can sack him and search for another one. Sacking a coach without a signed contract does not cost anything.
Tip: Set all skills in the form to requested general appraisal when searching for assistant or junior coach (i.e. all average for an average coach).

Sacking coaches

As stated earlier, sacking a coach that you have yet to assign a role is free. However once you have accepted a coach, it will cost you a weeks wages to sack that coach. If a coach is sacked, he is added to the contract list.

Coach assignments

Once you have accepted a coach, he is added to your team personnel and can be found in training screen under the section No Assignment. This means that the coach has been hired but has yet to have been assigned a post within your club. The posts of head coach, assistant coach and sub junior coach can be taken by any of your contracted coaches. You should therefore assign the coach to the post you recruited him to fill. You are able to swap coach assignments free of charge at any time (e.g. promote your assistant coach to head coach etc.) Any coaches that have not been assigned a role will continue to receive their salaries (even if they are doing nothing!)

Coach contract market

Coaches sacked from any club (if they were previously employed), if they wish to continue their coaching career, will go on the trainer contract list. If you wish to have one of them at your club, then you can place a bid on them. The money goes directly to the coach, his previous club will not receive any of the money.

If the auction does not finish in one week (auction winner does not finalise the contract), the auction is annulled and the winning club pays 10% of the placed offer.

For the sake of your team’s development and improvement, your players must be properly trained. Every week you can choose a skill that is going to be practised during individual training. Most types of training demand that the player played in the selected position during the week, in the friendly/cup game and/or the league game.

A player who played in the same position (ie, as a def) twice during the week will train better than one who played in only one game. Similarly, a player who played in an official match will train better than one who just played in a friendly. If a player played in two different positions during the week, the last match counts. The benefit of playing a player with the same match order twice is small - they will receive near full training by playing 1 match. If they play only in an international, they will receive around 33% of the normal training. Players do not receive training in extra time as they are too tired.

The differences in training effectiveness resulting from player’s appearances during the week are small. A player who played in one friendly only, will have only slightly less effective training than the one from the first team line-up. The difference is even smaller for a player that played in two games instead of just one.

The hidden individual feature of each player is his talent. The more talented the player, the more he takes advantage of training and improves his skills faster. With age the ability to improve weakens, the older the player, the longer it will take his skills to improve. In addition to individual training, a general training session takes place. All players that played in the current week’s matches participate in it. The effectiveness of general training is much smaller than that of the individual training session.

The quality of both individual and general training responsibility lies mostly with the main coach. The feature that counts most is his individual skills; his general appraisal does not influence the effectiveness of training. Select a head coach who has a high ability in training the skill you have chosen for the individual training. Decide yourself how important for you, are the other coach abilities and if you can afford to pay more for a better coach.

The assistants may be helpful to the main coach improving his training effectiveness - the better the assistant (in terms of general appraisal); the more he helps the main coach. However, do not hire too many assistants. If you hire more than 3, they will argue, resulting in training being less effective, or even lost.

Note that when you substitute a player, they will only receive training according to how long they played in the match. The player must play with the same match order (def, att etc) in both matches in one week, otherwise only the last match they played will count for training (even if you are training pace). The only time when the match order does not count is with stamina training.

Training of stamina

This skill trains the quickest. All players in the team train it irrespective whether they were playing in the team that week or not. The players train with the same efficiency regardless of age and talent. However, untrained stamina may go down, even for younger players. The maximum Stamina that any player can reach is Formidable.

Training of pace

Pace is trained by all players that played at least once during the week, regardless of position. Although this is similar to stamina training, pace is a physical training and thus its effectiveness depends on both a player’s age and talent.

Training of striker

Strikers (ATT position) train most effectively, a bit slower the midfielders (MID) and to a little extent, defenders (DEF) and goalkeepers (GK).

Training of passing

Passing is most effectively trained by the midfielders (MID), the remaining positions train slower. If you want to enhance training effect for other positions, you can do so. However, it will result in decreasing the training effectiveness for the midfielders.

Training of playmaking

The training of playmaking is similar to that of passing. The position that profits most from the training are playmakers/midfielders (MID). Similar to the training of passes, you can also enhance the effectiveness for other positions; however, it will also result in decreasing the training efficiency for the midfielders.

Training of defending (tackling the ball)

You can select the position that will train defending most effectively during the week, you can choose among ATT, MID and DEF. The remaining positions train slower.

Training of technique

Similar to defending, it is most intensively trained by the position selected for the current week.

Goalkeeping training

Only goalkeepers (GK position) that played during the week participate in the training.

Tactical Discipline
Tactical Discipline increases/decreases independantly from training of other skills. Experience is gained or lost based on matches played, activity in the matches, and type of match. Players at lower levels of experience increase the skill faster than players with higher levels. Team-work represents how well a coach can teach tactics and how much the player has learned with that club and depends primarily on head coach's general appraisal. Team-work depends on time played in weekly matches with that team. Older players' team-work increases and decreases in slower (they are more "change resistant"). After every transfer, team-work of the transferred player drops down to the lowest value.

Your club will have a sub junior school. This is where young players are coached.The juniors are young players with too little experience or skills to play in official matches.

You need to assign a youth coach to ensure that your juniors are trained. His general appraisal will determine how quickly the juniors will improve their skills. He will also decide when a player is ready for testing in the first team line-up.

For your school you should allocate a set number of places, this being the maximum number of juniors the school is able to train. Every week new players will join the school, provided there are some vacant places. If there are more applicants than places some of them will be turned down, but you will never know who was rejected…They could have been a useless youth or a potential star for your team.

Juniors enter the school with various skills, but it is their talent and the coaches general efficiency that determine how fast they develop and whether they will be valuable players after leaving the school. When the junior is ready to join the first team, you can promote them to the first team, where you will be able to see what skills the player possesses.

One of the basic ways of acquiring new players in Sokker Manager is to buy them from other clubs. The transfer market works as an auction. Note that it is not possible to list players for 0 - you will need to list them for at least 4 to have them successfully listed.

Placing a player up for sale involves a transfer fee that is a fraction of the starting price. After the transfer, the seller has to pay tax of 4% on the received price. If the player is not originally from your team and is aged 23 or under, then a further 5% of the received price will go to his original club.

After being placed up for sale, the player remains on the transfer list for two days unless he is withdrawn by his employer. Players can only be withdrawn whilst no bids are placed. When the bidding expires, the player will move to the club that offers the most money for him. After bidding, the player remains in his previous club until he is brought in by his new employer or is sent out by his former club owner. At that moment, the transaction is complete.

If the buyer does not bring the player in and the seller does not send the player away, it will be possible to cancel the transfer. To do this, if both individuals wait one week after the bidding has finished, the transfer will be cancelled automatically, and both users will have to pay 10% of the final bidding price to do this.

Daytrading

Sokker includes rules designed to limit daytrading of players. Every single player could refuse the proposal of being auctioned by their team.

The chance that a player will refuse being auctioned will depend on:
- the number of matches played for the club - the less he played, the higher the chance of refusal
- the number of players put up for sale by the team within the past 2 weeks
- form of the player - the lower the form, the chances of his rejecting the transfer increase (lower affect)
- mood of the supporters - the worse, the more likely that player will agree to a move (lower affect)

The daytrading regulations exclude all players from your initial squad and youth school.

You should remember the fair-play rules listed at the beginning in regards to transfers.

For each team, the stadium has eight sectors for building places for the fans to view the matches. The stands can be expanded or demolished, depending on your budget. In order to get the costs of building works of the desired stand, go to the menu Stadium and insert the places you require. Be aware - the price of seats grows proportionally with the size of stand. It might be cheaper to build two smaller stands than a single bigger one.

The stands

There are four types of stands. Each type determines the ticket price and the number of spectators. Some of your fans may not come for matches unless you provide them with a satisfactory place to view a match - a proper stand. Supporters select the cheapest stand from the ones that suit them. However, a spectator is likely to buy a ticket for a stand with a higher cost, if their preferred seat is sold out.
Each stand can be covered by a roof to make attendance independent of the weather conditions.
During construction work, the stand is closed and only a small number of supporters are able to stand in the area.
Construction times are estimated dates provided by your builders & may vary slightly from predicted.

The stand types are as follows:

- Grass (standing): No stand has been built. In each sector with grass, only 100 spectators are allowed by the sideline.
- Terraces: Standing places made of concrete. The second cheapest type of stand, however there are certain regulations imposed by the Football Association, restricting the size of stands with terraces. Your stadium cannot be solely made up of terraces.
- Benches: The cheapest stand with sitting places.
- Seats: A more expensive and luxurious stand. Seats are more expensive than benches, but you can expect more spectators that expect seats to sit in when watching their team to turnout for your matches.

Every club has a number of faithful fans ready to support their favourite team. The most fanatical ones subscribe to the Supporters’ Club (the total number is available in the Office menu). Irrespective of fan club size, for each match there are always additional casual spectators, depending on weather, the size of the fan club and moods among the members of the Supporters’ Club of the visitor team.

The current mood of your fans can be found in the Office menu.
There are certain groups of supporters, some of which will not attend matches if you will not provide them with the best possible conditions in the stadium. For instance, some of them may not come if there are no covered seats for them to view the game in.

Every week the supporter club size will be updated. The amount of supporters that sign up depends on:

- Club division
- League prestige
- Opponent rank

Qualification games have more influence on supporter moods than league games.

Matches are played according to the rules of real world football.

Selection of the line-up

For each match you should select eleven players and up to five on the bench. Players with an injury lasting longer than 7 days cannot participate in a match. The players not fully cured (less than 7 days to recovery, marked as having a slight injury) may take part in the match but will play below their full capacity. A player with 3 or more yellow cards or a red card misses one official match (you will find a red card next to his name). The players not fit for playing or penalised will not participate even if you select them to the line-up.

For each player you should select their position out of:
GK - the keeper
DEF - defender
MID - midfielder
ATT - forward

This assignment determines the way a given footballer is going to play (e.g. defenders should tackle the ball rather than try to dribble past the opponent and thus leave his team in trouble if the ball is lost). Each position has a maximum number of players that may be assigned to it. These are: 1 for GK, 5 for DEF, 5 for MID and 3 for ATT. If you play more than the maximum allowed for an area (for example 6 DEF) or do not set a lineup you will lose training unless you switch to stamina.

Read the chapter ‘Training’ to find out how a given position trains.

If any of the teams assigns less than 10 players or deletes the tactics set for the match, the opposition team will automatically win the game. The footballers set as starters in the match from the winning team will train the same way as if the match had been held without substitutions.

Substitutions

During the match it may be necessary to replace a player on the pitch with one from the bench in the result of an injury. At that moment the player on the top of the substitution list for the given position goes on to the pitch.

Other than the lineup, it is also possible to make other orders for the match. In order to make a substitution, you need to set the minute for it to take place, and the condition in which you want it to take place in. It is also possible to set the player which you want to take a penalty kick or free kick (only in the opponent's half). You can not set the player that takes the corner.

For the conditional orders listed below, the minute will mean minute to start checking condition, not minute when condition is checked (if you set a condition in the first minute, it could happen in the 89th minute for instance as the event will be checked all game, rather than just in the 1st minute as it would have been before):

* player has yellow card
* red card or no player
* player is slightly injured

Note:
If You do not set a player to take a free kick, the free kick or corner kick will be taken by the player who is closest to the ball.

Walkovers

Team will receive a walkover when:

- The opponent sets less than 10 players in the match (5:0),
- The tactic is removed from the tactic editor before the game and a new one is not selected (5:0),
- If both teams lineups mean the game is a walkover, the following will happen:
* 0:0 - if this is league game,
* 1:0 - if this is cup game.

Video coverage of the match

For each match you can watch TV coverage to see how your players did during the match, see their most interesting action and find out how your tactics worked.
For navigation use the following keys:
- [Home], player names displaying on / off
- [Space], panel with keys on / off
- [left][right] arrows, slowing / acceleration of the coverage, live coverage cannot be edited
- [down] arrow, pause
- [alt] + [F4], terminate the coverage

After-match statistics

After the match the statistics for both teams are available:
- keeping the ball, possession time counted from the moment of gaining to the moment of losing. Set pieces do not count.
- playing on the given half, the time when the ball remained on one team’s half. If your team’s ratio exceeded 50%, do not celebrate - it means ithe players mainly defended rather than attacked!
- shots on goal
- fouls
- bookings
- efficiency of shooting, passing and defending, calculated as an average of marks for individual moves of all players (e.g. defender tackled the ball from his opponent or just attempted to then his defending skill shown during that move is taken to the total marks for the team). What he contributes depends on his defending skills, current form and whether he was successful. Even the best players mis-kick sometimes.
Remember that the marks concern the average individual performance of your players and do not take into account the fact how your players played as a team. That depends on you, specifically from the tactics you choose.

Individual after-match player marks

Upon clicking on individual marks you can see a table with marks and statistics for all players participating in the given match. The columns indicate the following:
- The mark: general mark for the player, depending on the overall performance. The more chances the player gets to take advantage of his skills the higher mark he gets. The mark depends on position; different factors are taken into account, e.g. for forwards the most important thing is the quality of his strikes (if he had any opportunities). Player’s form determines his skills utilisation so it also influences his marks.
- Time of play minute of entering / leaving the pitch
- The number of strikes on the goal
- Fouls
- Off. - percentage of offensive actions - time of play when the player moved with the ball, passed it, dribbled it past opponents.
- Def. - percentage of defensive actions, the time when the player tackled the opponent or chased the player moving with the ball. Note that this factor does not have to be highest for defenders - for teams constantly attacking; the most active players are midfielders or even forwards.

Commentary

Summary of the most important actions, such as:
- Goals.
- Shots when the ball hits the bar, post or a near miss.
- Shots when the keeper had problems with saving.
- Yellow and red cards.
- Substitutions.
- Penalties.

League competitions

The league system in each country is divided into divisions, comprising a number of teams dependent on the level of the division. At the top level, there is always one league - the most important and prestigious for the given country. Each lower division consists of 4 times more leagues than the division directly above it, and so:

Division 1: 1 league,
Division 2: 4 leagues,
Division 3: 16 leagues,
Division 4: 64 leagues,
etc.

Each league has 8 teams playing each team twice, giving 14 matches over the course of the season. The points are assigned as they are in real life leagues; so for a win, the team gets 3 points and for a draw, the team gets 1 point. The order in the table is determined based on the following (from the most important downwards):
- points
- goal difference
- number of goals for
- position in the league at the end of last season

At the end of the season, the winner of the league from the top division becomes the champion of the country.

Promotion & Relegation

The best 25% of league winners from lower leagues will promote without having to play a qualifier match. This also means that the worst 25% of teams (ranked by points, goal difference, number of goals, and position in the league at the end of last season as described above) will be relegated automatically. This means that the 8th place team is not always the one to be automatically relegated. The winners of the remaining leagues play in play-offs with the remaining teams placed 5th to 8th.

Play-off pairs are determined on the point and goal difference basis with the weakest teams from the higher leagues playing against the strongest contender. In the event of a draw, the teams play extra time or eventually penalties. The match is played on the stadium of the team from the higher league.

The Cup

National cups start before the first round of a new season. The number of teams that qualify for the cup is the highest possible exponential of 2. And so, in a country with 3 divisions (21 leagues, 168 teams) the number of teams participating in the cup is 128, which means the following teams qualify: all teams playing in Divisions 1 and 2, all teams ranked 1-5 in Division 3 and the best teams ranked 6. The qualification is determined by the position in the league table at the end of the last season as described in the League Competition section above. This classification is also important as far as seeding is concerned.

In each round the teams will be allocated into two baskets according to their seeding based on their previous year's league position, with the 1st basket containing the "strongest" 50% of teams, and the 2nd containing the "weakest" 50%. Once this is done, the pairings will then be random - i.e. any team from the 1st basket could play any team from the 2nd basket.

The teams play one match only, at the stadium of the weaker team. Matches are played in the cup system, with extra time and penalties if necessary.

Friendlies

The teams that did not qualify for the cup or have been already eliminated have additional time in mid-week. They can join one of the friendly leagues (if such exist) or agree with another team to play a one-off friendly. The match can be played using the league system (without extra time and penalties) or using the cup system. If you want to invite a team for a friendly, go to their match calendar. If they are available for a friendly you will find a link, if you have not booked a match already.

Friendly leagues

Only Plus subscribers can start their own friendly leagues; however, every manager can join one of the existing leagues.
The founder is allowed to set up only one friendly league. The application for setting up a league can be found in a “Friendlies” file in the Reception.
The founder determines the following:
- when the league begins
- which of the submitted teams would take part whether the second leg round would be played

The founder is not allowed to give up playing in his own league, he may not activate it or simply delete it.

The moment the league is set up, the teams can be submitted to it. The founder invites the teams he selects for his league. Once he’s decided that the list of the teams is complete and is willing to start the league in the first possible term, he approves the league.
The league can be approved under the following conditions:
- The number of teams is not odd, not less than 4 and not greater than the given Max. number of teams, dependant on the number of weeks left until the end of the season.
- All teams selected for the league do not already have a friendly or cup match booked.

A League approved between Thursday and Sunday, will kick off the following Wednesday, the calendar would be drawn on Monday. Between Monday and Wednesday, you can create a new league or join one of the inactive leagues; however, you can not approve/activate your league.

The status of a league that has not been approved remains unchanged. It can be activated in the following weeks or can remain inactive forever.

A friendly league that has finished the tournament becomes inactive again, so you can start a new round, invite new teams etc.

Depending on the day of a week, various updates take place:

Every day

- Medical check-ups of the injured players.
- Revision of building works on stadiums.
- Value of players are updated.
- The weather forecast for the given day is published.

Saturday

- Pay day for salaries and stadium costs.
- Draft of juniors for junior schools.
- Weekly money transfers from sponsors are received on club’s account.

Sunday

- Skill update for older players.
- League matches take place.

Monday

- The draw of rounds for approved friendly leagues.
- Supporters’ clubs update number of subscribers.
- Players’ form update.
- League tables update (press in newsagents’).

Tuesday

Nothing special happens on Tuesday.

Wednesday

- Information on proposed friendly matches is deleted, the friendlies can be arranged until Wednesday.
- Friendly/Cup matches take place.

Thursday

- Draw of the next cup round (provided the cup has not finished yet).
- Table and friendly league status update .
- Junior training progress update, including pulls from the junior squad.
- Updating of players’ training progress and their form.

Friday

On Friday, nothing worth your attention occurs.

Every country in SK has its own National Team, once they have been in the game for a full season. Each country can only have players of it's own nationality called up, and they are called up by the individual chosen to be the manager of that particular nation. It is possible for everyone to see the international matches, whether you have plus or not.

Election of the coach

Anyone can apply for any NT job, no matter what country they are from. NT coaches are elected democratically at the end of each season. The NT coach will not be able to see the skills of the player. The only exception to this is if the NT manager owns some of the players, or the players are on the transfer list.

Players

Currently there is no limit to the number of players within a national team.
National Team members cannot be sacked.
National Team players are also protected, if the team that owns them turns into a "bot". As long as they are a current member of the national team and they have played at least once for the national team, they will be transfer listed when the "Bot" team is replaced.

Matches

Friendlies

Friendly matches take place every week, unless a World Cup match is being played. It is up to the NT coaches to arrange friendlies - just like friendlies between normal SK users. The NT manager may call up any players of the nationality of the NT that is managed, and use them in any way which is possible.

World Cup Qualifications

All teams take part here. The teams are split into different pots according to their NT ranking. Teams from 1-7 go to pot A, teams 8-14 to pot B and so on. Teams from Pot A will be drawn to each group as the first team, from B as the second, etc.

Qualification Matches are not every week, so friendlies may still be played.

World Cup

Only the 32 best teams qualify for the finals, according to:
1. Final standing in the qualification group
2. Points in the qualification group
3. Goals scored
4. Goals conceded
5. The number of victories
6. Ranking points at the time of the draw.


In the finals all teams will be drawn into 8 groups of 4 teams, according to the results in the qualifications - the 8 teams that finished the highest will go into the first drawing pot, next 8 to the second, next 8 to the third and the last 8 to the fourth.

In this chapter, you will find a short manual to the menu regarding individual topics described in the rules.

User menu - the right frame

On your right you will find a bar with 9 icons with links to the most important places in your club:

- News - a link to the home page where the news regarding the game are displayed
- The club page - takes you to the main page of your club, you will get access to your league table as well as to your profile where you can edit data such as your login, password, e-mail etc.
- The Players - a list of the players currently employed by your club, here you can obtain all the needed information on your line-up. You can go to the individual players’ pages to find out more about him or to take an action (place him on a transfer list, sack him)
- The matches - a list of the latest matches and a fixture list of matches not yet played.
- Training - here you manage and coach your team, recruit new coaches, assign jobs to coaches that have valid contracts. You can also access the coach page where you can watch his individual skills, sign a contract with him, sack him etc. On the training page, you also select the individual training and training position.
- Finance - here you can check the pay-ins and pay-outs of your club in the following and previous week and monitor the balance of your account.
- Stadium - on this page you can view your stadium and get an estimate cost of stand expansion or start building works.
- Office - in the Office you will find additional information on what is going on at your club, read the reports, and find out about the supporters’ club’s condition and the mood of the subscribers. You can also monitor the current transfers. Additionally you will find useful links to other important pages.
+ Juniors - check your sub junior school, determine the max number of participants, and promote the ones ready to join the line-up.
+ Friendlies - various data on friendly matches and leagues
+ Media - determine the club’ match kits, the club’s emblem, publish press articles etc (option available to Plus subscribers only).
+ Briefcase - here you can find the list of observed players and teams option (available to Plus subscribers only))
+ Mail - send internal Sokker mails to other Sokker managers.

Main menu - left frame

In this menu the links to the general pages about your country and Sokker are found:
- Country - the main page of your country, all basic information, browser of official and friendly leagues. In files, additional pages are available:
+ Regions - the list of regions for the given country
+ Statistics (available to Plus subscribers only)
+ Events - the list of today’s events in the country
- Search - the browser of users, players and teams
- Transfers - the browser of players placed on the transfer list
- Forum - here you get access to the forums, where you can have discussions with other managers. If there are numbers in the form of (+x / +y) next to a forum’s name it means that there are x comments in y threads that remain unread by you. Remember to observe the rules of the forum.
- Rules - a link to the rules you are reading right now :).
- Plus - here you can find out about the advantages of subscribing to Plus and subscribe to it if you wish to do so.

Editing the line-up

On entering the list of your matches, you can find a link Line-up next to the matches not yet played. It leads to the page allowing you to select players fro the given match, determine their orders and choose the right tactics. The view of the tactics shows the average position of the players and may appear slightly different to what you see in the tactics editor. Put your players on the selected positions, choose the tactics and click on Save. You will see the page with the selected line-up again. To be sure leave to line-up editor and check it again. Some browsers may generate errors.

Editing the match orders

On entering the list of your matches, you can find a link Match Orders next to the matches not yet played. It leads to the page allowing you to select players for a given match determine their orders and choose the right tactics. The view of the tactics shows the average position of the players and may appear slightly different to what you see in the tactics editor. Select your 16 players (first 11 plus 5 substitutes) by selecting their names against positions 1 to 16. make sure that you do not have more than 1 GK, 5 DEF, 5 MID and 3 STR. Then choose the tactics and click on Save. You will see the page with the selected line-up again. Remember to check that the line-up has been saved, by leaving the line-up editor and then checking it again. Some browsers may generate errors.

Editing the tactics

The tactics editor can be found in the Training file, or on the Line-up editing page. You can only edit your own tactics, if you do not have any you will need to copy one of the existing tactics. To do this, use the Create new tactics based on: dropdown and choose a tactic that will be a basis to the new line-up from the list. Then you should choose a name, so it is easy for you to find. Upon clicking on Create, the user tactics will be displayed under the standard ones. Above the tactics editor, the tactic name is displayed.

Select the tactic that you want to edit. It will then appear in the football pitch to the right. To alter the tactics, “drag” the ball in the centre of the field with your mouse pointer by pressing the left mouse button. You will see how the players move around the pitch. They will do the same on the pitch provided their pace and stamina will allow them to. The current position of the ball indicates how the players should be lined up at the moment. If you want to change the line-up, simply “drop” the ball in the chosen place and place the players in the desired positions. Pay attention to whether your players change their positions smoothly with the moving ball. Improper line-up may cause that your players would not be able to reach their positions on time, making your tactics useless.
You decide yourself on the style of play that your team delivers, e.g. decide how far defenders can go during offensive actions, placing the players wide or closer to the centre of the pitch, thereby strengthening or weakening selected parts of the field etc. There are millions of potential combinations for you to use!

On pages with players’ line-up for the match and with the individual marks, the view of the applied tactics is generated. Do not be surprised if this view differs significantly from that you can see after opening you tactics in the editor as this highlights the average position of each player.

Skills order

0. tragic
1. hopeless
2. unsatisfactory
3. poor
4. weak
5. average
6. adequate
7. good
8. solid
9. very good
10. excellent
11. formidable
12. outstanding
13. incredible
14. brilliant
15. magical
16. unearthly
17. divine

Supporters moods

1. are furious
2. are losing hope
3. are depressed
4. believe in their club
5. are satisfied
6. are delighted with their club`s performance
7. are madly in love with their club

Weekly stadium`s maintenance expenses (1 place):	0.75 $
Weekly expenses on single place in junior school:	1 000.00 $
Interest rate in case of debt:	4.5%
Max debt:	-250 000 $
Bankruptcy limit:	-500 000 $
Supporter`s subscription card`s price (per season):	125.00 $

Tickets` prices (rounded)

Stand	along line	behind goal
Standing places	2.00 $	2.00 $
Standing places under roof	2.00 $	2.00 $
Terraces	4.00 $	4.00 $
Terraces under roof	5.00 $	5.00 $
Benches	6.25 $	6.25 $
Benches under roof	7.50 $	6.25 $
Seats	7.50 $	6.25 $
Seats under roof	8.75 $	7.50 $