How to play

The draft, the season, and how to give your XI a real chance of the treble.

A treble is the league title, the domestic cup and the European Cup in the same season. In Treble Winner you draft an XI from football history, one spin at a time, and then find out whether it could have done what only a few real sides ever have.

The game in one minute

1. Pick a game and a pool. Clubs or national teams; Easy, Normal or Hard.
2. Spin. Two reels stop on a side and a decade — Arsenal in the 2000s, say.
3. Draft one player from whoever that side had in those ten years, into a shirt he can play.
4. Repeat until all eleven shirts of the 4-3-3 are filled.
5. Play the season and see whether your XI wins the league, the cup and Europe.

The draft, step by step

The formation

Every XI is a 4-3-3: a goalkeeper, a right-back, two centre-backs, a left-back, three central midfielders, a right winger, a striker and a left winger. A player can only go into a shirt he actually played. Many players can play more than one — a full-back who also played centre-back, a forward who played on either wing — and when you pick one of those, every shirt he can wear lights up so you can choose where he goes.

The reels

Each spin lands on a side and a decade, from the 1960s to the 2020s. Whatever the reels give you, you take: there is no spinning again until you like the look of it. The reels will only ever stop on a side and decade that still has someone who can fill one of your empty shirts, so you can never be left with a shirt nobody can play. The same player can never be in your XI twice, even if he turns up again for another club or in another decade.

Re-spins

You have exactly two for the whole draft: one club re-spin, which keeps the decade and moves the club, and one era re-spin, which keeps the club and moves the decade. They do not come back. If a re-spin has nowhere useful to go, the reels stay where they are and you keep it.

No numbers

Every player has four ratings — finishing, creativity, defending and physicality — but you never see them, and they are not even sent to your browser. You draft on what you know about the player. That is the whole game. The About page explains where the ratings come from.

The season

Once all eleven shirts are filled, your XI plays three competitions:

• The league — 38 matches against a mostly mid-table field, with three title rivals to beat to the line.
• The cup — five rounds, one match each, penalties if it is level. Opponents get stronger every round, and one bad night is enough. The classic treble killer.
• Europe — an eight-match league phase (take too few points and you are out; a middling total means an extra play-off tie), then two-legged knockout ties and a one-off final against the strongest opposition of the season.

Each match is played out as goals: your attack against their defence, their attack against yours. Better sides win more often, but not always — football is an upset game and the model is built to keep it that way. Win all three and it is a treble.

What makes a side strong

Your XI is reduced to four numbers: attack, midfield, defence and goalkeeper. A few things about how they combine are worth knowing:

• Midfield counts twice. It feeds both how many chances you create and how many you allow.
• The goalkeeper is part of the defence. A great back four in front of a weak keeper leaks.
• Full-backs who can pass help the attack, and forwards who defend help the defence. Both effects are small but real.

Chemistry and balance

• Club spine. Two or more players from the same club earn a bonus that grows with each extra team-mate, up to a cap. They played together; they understand each other.
• Generation. Three or more players from the same decade earn a bonus of their own, also capped.
• Balance. The gap between your strongest and weakest line costs you. A side that is all attack and no defence loses the league in November. A big enough gap is called out on the result screen.

Chemistry is deliberately small: total chemistry is capped, and it is there to break a tie between two good XIs, not to rescue a weak one. In the national-team game the club spine bonus does not apply, because every player shares the shirt anyway.

The odds

The season you watch is one season. After it, the game replays the same XI two thousand times and shows how often it wins each trophy and the treble. That is the honest measure of your draft: a lucky treble with a 4% side and an unlucky miss with a 40% side are very different results.

Easy, Normal and Hard

Difficulty does not change how matches are played. It changes how many sides and decades the reels can land on. Sides and decades are ordered by how strong the game's pool says they are, and each difficulty takes a slice from the top:

• Easy — six clubs and three decades. Almost every spin is a side you would want.
• Normal — fourteen clubs and five decades. Big names are likely, but you will build round a few of them.
• Hard — every club and every decade. Most spins are a mid-table side in a lean year.

The fourteen clubs in the Normal pool each have an article on their best decades, with the game's own numbers for every decade. Each difficulty has its own leaderboard.

The Daily Treble

One puzzle a day, the same for everyone: the same eleven club-and-decade cells, dealt in the same order before you start. It is always the clubs game on Normal. You still get one club re-spin and one era re-spin, and where they take you is fixed for the day.

Because the cells are dealt up front, you can strand yourself — fill all three midfield shirts early and a later midfield-only cell is no use. That is the puzzle. What cannot happen is a day that was impossible before you started: every puzzle is checked before it is published. Your first run of the day is the one that counts for the daily leaderboard; you can replay as often as you like for practice. A new puzzle arrives at midnight UTC and the day's board goes with the old one.

Ten tips for a treble

1. Draft the scarce shirts with care. Goalkeepers and full-backs are the positions most often missing from a squad list, so a good one is worth taking when you see him.
2. Value players who can play two shirts. They keep your options open for the spins still to come.
3. Do not neglect midfield. It counts in attack and defence alike.
4. Keep the lines level. An even side beats a lopsided one with the same total.
5. Save a re-spin for late in the draft, when one bad cell can leave a key shirt filled by a reserve.
6. Know your decades. A club's best ten years are often not the ones it is famous for — the club articles show where each club is strongest in the game.
7. A spine is a tie-breaker, not a plan. Take the second Milan defender if he is good; do not take a weak one just because he is from Milan.
8. Mind the turn of a decade. Players whose careers straddle two decades appear in both, which can give you a second chance at a name.
9. Respect the cup. Single-leg ties mean even a great side goes out sometimes. Check the odds, not just the one season.
10. Read the result screen. It tells you which line let you down and whether chemistry or balance cost you.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an account?

No. Everything can be played without signing up and without agreeing to analytics. To put a result on a leaderboard you type a manager name — use a nickname, because the board is public.

Why can I not see the ratings?

Because then the draft would be sorting a list by a number. Hiding them makes your own football knowledge the thing that matters. You see how your XI rated, line by line, after the season.

Who decides the ratings?

We do. Most are derived from a player's record — appearances, goals and honours — and the best-known players are tuned by hand. They are an opinion, and you are welcome to disagree. See how the ratings are made.

A player is in the wrong decade, or missing. Why?

Squads come from Wikidata, and a player is placed in every decade his recorded spell at a club touches. If a spell is recorded wrongly, or not at all, the game inherits it. Write to info@async.ge and we will look.

My XI looked unbeatable and still lost the cup. Is something wrong?

Probably not. The cup is five single matches with penalties, and the strongest sides in history lost cup ties all the time. Look at the odds after the season: if your side wins the treble in a large share of the two thousand replays, the draft was good and the season was unlucky.

Does Hard make matches harder?

No. The season is played the same way on every difficulty. Hard is harder because the players you can draft are, on average, much weaker.

When does the Daily Treble reset?

At midnight UTC. Yesterday's puzzle and its leaderboard are not kept.

Can I share my result?

Yes. "Share result" creates a link with a picture of your XI and season that anyone can open. It carries no name and no id.

Is there a Georgian version?

Yes — the whole game, this guide and the policies are available in Georgian under /ka/. The language button in the top bar switches between them. The history articles are in English only for now.