How to write a substitution plan that fires

Most of your matches are simulated, not watched — which makes the substitution plan the most underrated screen in the game. We built it as a way for you to delegate the decisions you'd make yourself: who comes off before he breaks, who comes on when you need a goal. Here's how the engine actually executes the plans you write.

When your rules can fire

We simulate the match in five-minute segments, and substitution rules are evaluated from the segment covering minutes 45–50 onwards. No planned change can happen before roughly the 46th minute, no matter what minute you set.

Each rule has a minute field — the earliest minute the rule may fire, defaulting to 60. Once eligible, the rule still has to pass its trigger. And in any single segment, at most one planned substitution per team is executed — so a pile of rules all pointing at minute 60 doesn't produce a quadruple change; it produces one change and four disappointed rules.

The anatomy of a rule

• Player out / player in — the exact swap. If either player isn't on the pitch or the bench when the rule is checked, the rule is discarded on the spot.
• Trigger — exactly one per rule: at minute, if losing, if winning, if drawing, if tired, or if injured.
• Minute — the earliest firing time. Default 60.
• Condition threshold — used by the "tired" trigger. Default 60%.

Teams may make up to five substitutions, and the tactics screen allows up to five rules. A substitution swings momentum by +0.5 to the side making it — the quiet argument for using your changes rather than hoarding them.

A plan worth copying

This is the skeleton we'd start from:

1. Tired at 65% — the workhorse rule. It takes off whichever starter runs out of legs first, before the condition multiplier starts eating his afternoon.
2. Losing, from minute 70 — a defensive midfielder off, a second striker on. If you're behind, your bench should be a plan, not decoration.
3. Winning, from minute 80 — a striker off, a holding midfielder on. Closing a game is a skill; this is the automated version.
4. Injured — a rule for anyone you can't afford to lose, so a knock forces the change you'd have made anyway.
5. Leave the fifth rule for whatever your season keeps punishing you with.

If you write nothing

An empty plan isn't a safe plan — it hands the decisions to the assistant manager. He reacts to injuries, protects a booked player, checks tired legs around the break and makes the obvious calls late in the match. He's reasonable, and completely generic: he doesn't know which of your players you trust. A specific plan beats him.

Two things people get wrong

Cup ties do not have extra time. Matches are 90 minutes, eighteen segments, full stop — a level cup tie goes straight to a penalty shootout. There's no extra half-hour to plan for and no sixth substitution, so never hold a change back "just in case". And remember the plan is saved with your tactics: one plan applies to every competition, league and cup alike, until you change it.

The engine-level detail is in the wiki's Substitution plans article, the guide walks through the substitution screens, and the rotation numbers behind the 65% rule live in Condition & fatigue. If the rest of that panel is still blank, start with your captain and the four takers — and for the story of when these plans landed, this post has it.