Football management for PC · Steam · 2027
The football management game for PC
The Touchline is a football management game in which you run a club — from the training plan to the stadium roof. Coming 2027 on Steam and as a download.
What is The Touchline?
A football management game in the classic sense: you don't play on the pitch, you decide who does. Line-up, tactics, training, transfers, contracts, finances and the stadium — everything that makes a club is in your hands. The game takes its cue from the management games of the early nineties: clear, calm, with time to think. Underneath runs a simulation of the entire football world.
The world keeps living when you're not looking. 53 associations and their leagues play every week; around 12,900 players find form, develop, grow older and change clubs. The other clubs buy and sell on their own account — based on need, budget and ambition. There is promotion and relegation across every league, plus domestic cups and a European competition.
Two ways into your career
Manager career: from the third tier upwards
At the start, three clubs make you an offer, usually from the third tier. Your reputation grows when you beat expectations, win promotion and lift trophies. Then bigger clubs call — with a strong reputation, even from abroad. Moves happen at the end of the season. Get sacked, and you sit without a club, waiting for the phone to ring.
Your own club: start at the very bottom
You choose the name, short name, colours, crest, country and city. Your club starts in the lowest league and can climb through every division to the very top. The stadium gets your look: skins, free and changeable at any time.
Matchday: live or simulated
Matches play out like a sports broadcast — ticker, graphics, goal scenes. You make substitutions, change shape, sit deeper. At half-time you go into the dressing room, give a team talk and see how it lands with the players. Penalty shoot-outs play live, kick by kick.
If you'd rather move quickly, simulate and read the match report afterwards. Both use the same engine — simulating is never the better or worse option, just the faster one.
A transfer market with a mind of its own
A top club won't let its best player go — not on the last day and not for twice the money. What's available: players who've been frozen out, expiring contracts and talents who have outgrown their small club. Without scouting you only see a rough estimate of a player; have him watched for a year and you really know him.
On Deadline Day the phones ring until the final minute. And every Saturday the sports portal EVERGOAL reports on transfers and rumours — some of which turn into real offers for your players, from exactly the club named in the paper.
The board, your contract, your responsibility
Five people on the board negotiate your contract, set season targets and judge you at four points: after matchday 10, at the winter break, in the run-in and at the end of the season. Miss twice and you get a warning; miss three times and you clear your desk. Every season earns you experience and unlocks abilities in a skill tree with 50 nodes — from negotiations to the dressing-room rant.
A club is more than the first eleven
- Youth academy: trial day, a year of observation, then the reveal — what a talent really has only shows over time.
- Training: weekly plans with focus and intensity, plus training camps in pre-season.
- Tactics: six levers and two special instructions, from very defensive to counter-attacking.
- Staff: fifteen roles from assistant manager to scouts, doctors and head of marketing, each with their own profile.
- Finances: a wage budget built from income — gate receipts, TV money, sponsors and merchandise.
- Sponsorship: twenty brands and six kit suppliers, negotiable deals with bonuses for titles and Europe.
- Stadium: thirteen building plots with three upgrade levels each, stands expanded block by block.
- Cups: the draw as a ceremony, a league phase, two-legged knockout rounds.
Who is The Touchline for?
For anyone who would rather plan a season than hold a controller. For players who miss the football management games of the nineties but want a world that moves. And for everyone who wants to know why their club wins or loses — The Touchline shows the reasons instead of hiding them.
When and where is it coming out?
The Touchline is coming to PC in 2027, on Steam and as a download. The price has not been decided yet. Until then, alpha and beta testing is under way — sign up on the home page to take part. The game is in development; individual features may still change before release.
Play it before everyone else
As a tester you play new builds ahead of everyone else and tell us what feels wrong.