Introduction

World Cup Manager 2010 is an online manager game, where real sports results affect your virtual team.

It's easy to join:

Build your team from a virtual budget of £50,000,000! These players are real players from real clubs, and their performance in real matches affects the value of your virtual team. You can see how values are affected in the point system :

See point system

Over the course of the game, you can change the players on your team, and thereby adjust your lineup to take into account real form, injuries, suspensions and schedules.

What else is important?

The main objective in the game is to increase your team's value as much as possible.

This is done primarily by buying players who manage to earn the most points. That means buying the right players, at the right time.

The game is divided up into rounds

The value awarded to your team in each round depends on which players you have on your team in that round.

Generally, it's a good idea to browse around in the game to learn the rules, point system and functions. A good understanding of the game will increase your chances of ending up higher in the final score ranking. You will also notice that there are several areas where you can "drill down" into the game, and see detailed stats for both your own and other user's teams, as well as real teams and real athletes.

Player units and formations

Defenders, midfielders and forwards each make up a different "unit" on your team. When you buy players you will be able to choose from the following formations :

5-3-2 4-5-1 4-4-2 4-3-3 3-5-2 3-4-3

If you (for example) choose a 3-5-2 formation, you will need to buy 3 defenders, 5 midfielders and 2 forwards. Regardless of your formation, you will have to buy a coach and a goalkeeper. You can always change your formation in the player trading windows.

Money that you don't use to buy players will remain in your bank, and can be used for later player purchases. Each virtual team starts with £50,000,000 in the bank.

Up to 4 players from the same country - mostly

Up to the quarterfinals you can't have more than 4 players (including coach) from the same country. When round 5 (quarterfinals) begins, this restriction falls away.

Updating of players

Naturally, we do our best to keep our game's player list up-to-date, but you have the final responsibility for which players are on your team. No compensation is given for points lost due to a player not making it to the World Cup.

Rounds

The game is divided into rounds. A round commences with player trading, and runs until all the matches have been played in that round. After this there is a brief pause where all game data is finalized. The round ends when player trading from the next round starts. Every round thus contains [Trading - matches - data verifying]

Trading closes 1 hour before the first round match (except for round 1)!

In round 1 teams can be created and players can be traded right up to the start of the first match. In all subsequent rounds, team creation and player trading is closed off an hour before the first match. We've done this to ensure that users are not tied to their computers each round, waiting for lineup data from the first match.

In each round, your virtual teams are awarded points for the performance of players on that team, taken from matches played during the round.

Rounds in World Cup Manger are time-based and fixed in duration. That means that one round needs to be finished before the next one can start, and matches that are moved to new dates after rounds are set, can end up moving from one round to another. Rounds in our games can therefore differ from rounds in actual tournaments where matches don't change rounds even if their dates change.

Important things to watch for :

• Kickoff time of first match: Trading closes one hour before kickoff.
• If one team is strongly favoured to win, then having as many players as well as your captain from that team, would give you a good chance of extra points.
• Round division : Are there teams which are playing two matches in one round, or some teams which aren't playing any? Both can influence the value of players associated with those teams.

Round division

Every nation plays one match in each round, until the knock-out stage is reached, but because of the official World Cup program, South African and Uruguay will have two matches in round 1 and no matches in round 2.

Players from the teams which don't play in a round, don't earn points for that round - either plus or minus. Players from the teams which play two matches in a round, earn points for both matches, though not double captain bonuses.

Captain

You need to select a captain from amongst your 11 players. Your captain rises and falls in value in the same way as other players, but in addition to that you earn extra value on this player (called a "captain bonus"), though only if the player earns positive points.

If your captain is from a team which plays two matches in a round, he earns a bonus on only one match, namely the first one in the round. A player can therefore in theory score a hattrick in his teams's second match for a round, without getting any captain bonus, if he does not play in the round's first match.

It doesn't cost anything to change captain, so always choose the player you think will do the best in a given round. Choosing a captain is part of the team creation process, and therefore can be done only when trading is allowed.

Your captain bonus is not awarded to your captain himself, but is deposited directly into your virtual bank, and is shown in the "Captain bonus" field on your team page. This is because the value is not a typical increase in value for the player, but rather a bonus for your team (there are typically many other users with the same player on their teams, but where he is not captain, and in those cases, the player's value can't reflect this bonus).

Trading

You have the chance to buy and sell players at the start of each round. When you trade a player, you incur a cost of 1% of the player's game value - this the transfer fee. The player is therefore always slightly more expensive than his stated value. For example, if a player costs £5,000,000 his actual purchasing price is £5,050,000, where the transfer fee is £50,000. This fee is not levied in round 1 though. You can always see the transfer fee on the page where you trade.

New teams

For teams created after the game has started, trades are also free from a transfer fee, but only in the round in which the team has been created.

When should you trade players?

If one or more of your players become injured, are not scheduled to play in a given round, or generally fail to live up to your expectations for them, it could be a good idea to exchange them for other players. Even though it may be tempting to trade players, you should always consider if the player you want justifies the transfer fee.

We strongly encourage you to ensure that all trades and captain assignments are finished 5 minutes before trade closes.

Note : There is are no transfer fees up to match kickoff in round 1 - which is 16:00, June 11th.

Choice of players

There is no simple recipe for success on sportsbox.com, as one can never know with certainty how a player and team will perform. You can keep the following in mind though when selecting your squad :

• Do a bit of research, but make your own decisions! Read the news and find reliable sources of information on player form, injuries, suspensions and line-ups.
• What is a player's price in relation to what you can expect from him? One can assume that the most expensive players are also the best available, and will therefore earn the most points, but there will always be players who are relatively cheap, in terms of how well they play. Our game to a great extent revolves around finding "undervalued" players, who give a high point yield relative to how much they cost to buy.
• Which team does he play for? Does the team have easy or difficult matches ahead? Is the player on a good team which will collectively contribute to his value, or is his team weaker and therefore his value will be based mainly on his own performance?
• How many matches will a team play in the given round? Is there a chance matches will be rescheduled, so the team plays two matches in a round, or perhaps doesn't play at all? Take note of how matches are scheduled relative to rounds.
• How much time does the player spend on the pitch? Some players are sidelined, and therefore have reduced playing time.

System updates

Matches in the game are updated live. You can therefore follow your player's value changes while a match is played. Growth and performance are based on match wins, ties or loses, as well as other points based on the final match results, and are awarded when the match ends.

Live updates are temporary and need to be verified before being accepted into the game score. The matches in World Cup Manager are verified 1-2 hours after they are played.

Sometimes a round extends over several days. Player trading starts at approximately 23:50 on the day of the last match in a round.

Once match results are verified and accepted, they are treated as final. However, in cases where changes are made to the official match results afterwards (for example, yellow cards annulled, or discredited scores being accepted), our game data will in most cases also be updated accordingly. We reserve the right to individually evaluate each change though, and it is Swush.com alone which has the final say over data in our games.

Hidden teams

• Round 1: All teams are hidden, until trading finishes and the first match starts.
• Other rounds: It is never possible to see which trades and captain appointments another user's team has, before trading finishes.. This means that when trading is allowed, a team will always appear as it did in the previous round.

When you see another user's team, it is always the latest valid team that is shown. All teams are finalized for the first time, at the scheduled start of the first match in round 1. If you attempt to view a team while trading is underway, the team will say "This is a snapshot of the team from the previous round."

Game end

World Cup Manager ends when the final round is complete and game data is verified, which will be on July 11th, 2010