Soccer Stats

Soccer Stats is a play-by-mail stats game, the idea of which is to provide a game that can be played in a competitive league format with as much skill and as little luck as possible. 

Unlike the usual “soccer league” games the results of matches are determined by real life events, not by rolling dice or generating random numbers. The players you sign for your team and select to play each week score goals in the game when they score goals in real life (while goalkeepers make saves if they keep clean sheets in real life).

Unlike other play-by-mail games Soccer Stats doesn’t go into limbo between the deadline when you submit your instructions and the arrival of the game report. From real life results reported on your radio or TV you will know a lot about your Soccer Stats result before it arrives. Live games take on an extra edge when “your” players and “your opponents” players are involved. 

The rules for transfers and signing players in Soccer Stats have been designed to make it virtually impossible to form cartels or make private deals between teams. Soccer Stats is a game about football players, not football management. The major skill of the game is your judgement of the ability of players to score (or save) goals in real life. 

Elements of management that are included in the game are ground development (increasing ground capacity and income per head), finance (balancing a budget of capital investment and expenses against receipts), marketing (spending money in an effort to increase attendances) and merchandising (making extra money from goods and services, at the risk of losing fans). 

The game includes competitive bidding for signings, and even poaching from other teams (but then the only people that get rich are the players and their agents). Wage demands from your playing staff escalate according to your success. The more you win, the more you have to pay your players to keep going (if you eventually have to disband a successful team to rebuild then no matter : the same rules will then be in your favour as you fight your way back to the top).

Soccer Stats allows you to follow the real life transfer market to sign star players who are rumored to be moving to English Clubs. Use the full resources of the world wide media including; papers, TV and the internet to hunt down real life transfer speculations. Sign those foreign stars before anyone else. 

Soccer Stats is actually two games in one. The stats based “league rules” are used during the season when there are real-life stats available. In the off-season and in quiet weeks during the season the “cup rules” are used instead. Under cup rules the same squads  and players are used, but results are decided by game strategies. The cup rules are intended to encourage weak “league” teams, as a good cup team can usually be constructed far more cheaply than a league team.

We are also trying to find players to open waiting lists for versions based on the Scottish Premier League (SPL) and the Australian National Soccer League (NSL). Click here for details of waiting lists.

There are over a dozen games of Soccer Stats already running in the UK. All run with weekly deadlines (so you've seven days between turns). We have positions available in most of these games that will allow you to start play immediately (as in real-life, you take over a team and try to turn their fortunes around). You can join during the season - teams are always available whose coaches have stopped playing and are currently being run by the computer.

Turnfees in Soccer Stats are £8.00 for four, £18.00 for ten and £32.00 for twenty. Click here for more details of turnfees.

We welcome players from outside the UK, though you'll probably need to play Soccer Stats by email because of the short time between deadlines (weekly). Click here for more details of overseas players.

How to join