Ageing and retirement

ManageFC stores age as years and months, and it moves in two different ways. While the clock runs, the daily tick adds a fraction of a month to the month counter — twelve months spread across 365 in-game days, carried into the year counter as it fills up. A player does not jump a full year on a single date; he drifts older every time you skip time. A 30-day skip is worth roughly one month on every player in the world.

On top of that continuous drift there is a hard step at the season rollover. When a season closes, the engine adds a year and clears the month counter — once per season, with a log entry that stops the step from firing twice. Since a season is 245 in-game days (see the season cycle article), a squad ages faster than one year per season. Worth remembering when you sign a 29-year-old.

The decline curve

Growth and decline are resolved by the weekly development pulse, and the rules are age-gated:

• Up to 30 — a player can still grow, but only while his current ability sits below his hidden potential. The weekly growth base falls with age: strongest at 19 and under, then stepping down at 22, 25 and 28. Mental attributes and recent match minutes scale the result up or down.
• 31–32 — decline begins. Each week there is a 30% chance that one physical attribute (pace, acceleration, stamina, agility, strength or jump reach) drops by a point.
• 33–34 — the weekly decline chance rises to 40%.
• 35–36 — 50% per week.
• 37 and over — 65% per week. Veterans can still hold a low-tempo role, but the physical columns keep thinning.

Only those six physical attributes are ever touched by the decline roll. Passing, shooting and the mental attributes are not — a technical veteran loses legs, not technique.

Retirement

Retirement is not something that happens to your squad. At the end of a season the engine removes free agents aged 37 or older and players at AI clubs aged 39 or older. Players at your club are never retired automatically — if you want a 40-year-old gone, you release or sell him yourself, and until you do he keeps playing.

Planning around age

A healthy squad has a spread of ages: two or three veterans for leadership and set pieces, a peak-age spine through the middle, and a few teenagers coming through the academy. The trap is letting the whole spine cross 30 in the same season — from then on the weekly decline roll works against all of them at once, and the physical base they lose is the one that takes longest to replace.