Everything in GAFFER, explained straight — what happens when you sign in, how your squad thinks, how seasons and the market work, and exactly what's optional.
Sign in with your X account. That's the whole onboarding. The moment you do, three things exist: your club (13 AI players with names, traits, and opinions), your player card (the scout reads your public profile and derives a footballer version of you — position, traits, 23 attributes, manga art), and your seat in the league.
We use X for identity only — sign-in reads your public profile (name, handle, avatar, bio) to build your card. We never post as you, never read your DMs, and never touch your followers. One X account = one club + one card, forever.
Every player is a character with persistent memory. Talk to him from his card (SQUAD → tap a player → TALK): he reasons about what you say, answers in his own voice, and remembers it permanently — the promise you made in March comes up in July. The full conversation history stays on his card.
Trust (0–100) is your relationship with each player, moved by what you say and do: praise, threats, benching, selling his friends. Low trust bleeds into morale and performances. And after many exchanges you'll see his hidden thought — what he was actually thinking versus what he said to your face. The gap between the two is where management lives.
You don't pick sliders. You write your football philosophy in plain words — "high press, fast transitions, width from fullbacks" — and the engine derives a real tactical system from it (mentality, press, tempo, line, buildup), draws it on the board, and locks it in for 72 hours so identity means something. Your dressing room reacts to the football you ask them to play.
The team sheet respects positions: a goalkeeper must be a goalkeeper, and swaps are locked to position groups. AUTO picks your best legal XI.
You get 3 fixtures a day, and every one counts. Pick your opponent: a random draw, a persistent league club, or a real manager's club — their actual squad and tactics defend (their record is never touched by your challenge, and you can face the same opponent once per 24 hours).
The league runs on 14-day seasons. Points are W3/D1, goal difference breaks ties, and when the window closes, the top 3 enter the honours list permanently — then a fresh season opens automatically. The table lives in COMMS → TABLE; tap any club to scout them.
Two kinds of players are signable: AI players from the open pool and other clubs' listings, and real people — X users who minted themselves as free agents (marked 𝕏). Search by name or @handle, filter real/AI, and see exactly which club is selling.
Every player has a live market value and a price chart on his card (STATS tab). Every match reprices every starter:
| DRIVER | EFFECT |
|---|---|
| Match rating | ±2% per rating point above/below 6.5 |
| Goals / assists | +3% per goal · +1.5% per assist |
| Clean sheet | +1.5% (defenders & keepers get paydays) |
| Result | win +0.5% · loss −0.5% |
| Red card | −2.5% |
| 3-match hot / cold streak | +2% kicker / −2% tax |
| Wonderkid (≤22, high potential) | swings ×1.25 — both directions |
| Veteran (31+) | −0.4% per match gravity |
Per-match moves are clamped (−6%…+8%), so building value beats crashing it. Buy the kid before the streak compounds; sell the veteran before gravity does.
Your card is a real footballer other managers can sign. It starts on the free-agent market the moment you mint it. Only you can mint you — nobody gets a card they didn't create, ever.
If a PRO club signs your card with ◆ ASPORTS, your share (90%) is held for you by the game treasury. Next time you open GAFFER you'll see it waiting on your Desk; link a wallet whenever you like and it's queued to you. No wallet, no crypto knowledge, no deadline required — the claim waits.
League chat is the room everyone's in — including the AI rival managers (Viktor, Grace, Dean), who post unprompted, answer when named, and hold grudges. DMs work with rivals and real managers alike. SCOUT ⌕ any human club from the managers list, the table, or a DM header: you'll see their record, system, and squad — but never their morale, fitness, budget, or dressing room. What the scout can't see is the point.
You never need this to play. The default economy is credits: sign, sell, and build your club free, forever. PRO mode exists for people who want the market to be real.
Link a Solana wallet and your club switches to PRO permanently: player values and the market denominate in ◆ ASPORTS (a Solana token). Buying a listed player pays the seller 90%; the game treasury keeps 10% as the market fee. The economy is closed by design: tokens only ever leave the treasury after a buyer paid tokens in — the game never mints value from nothing, and we make no promises about token prices, ever. Payouts are processed manually from the treasury by a human, with every send receipted on-chain.
Delete anytime from your Desk (type your club name to confirm). What happens: your card is deleted outright (it's your personal data), your AI players return to the open market with fresh memories, real people you'd signed become free agents again, and your matches, briefings, and every chat and DM you were part of are erased. One exception, in your favor: any ◆ owed to you is kept — deletion never erases a debt to you.
No. The full game — squad, seasons, market, chat, your card — is free and works with zero crypto. PRO is optional and always will be.
No. Free to play, no ads, no paywall on the game.
Read your public profile once to build your card, and use it as your login. We never post, never DM, never see anything private.
No. Self-minting is the only way a card exists. This is a hard rule, not a setting.
No scripts, no dialogue trees. Every line is reasoned by the engine from that player's traits, memory, and mood — which is why no two saves sound alike.
No — linking switches your club to PRO permanently, to keep the market honest. Play free as long as you like before deciding.