You start at 16 with a kitbag and two pairs of boots

Nobody knows your name. The manager calls you "kid". It is a long road from

here to a statue, and most players never make it to the plaque.

DE POTRERO is a football career game where you play as a single player:

yours. You do not pick the squad or sign anyone. You decide what to do with the

ball when it reaches you, and you make your living from it.

The match is played by deciding

Every match comes down to a handful of moments that actually matter. The ball

drops to you in the box with the keeper closing you down: do you go low and

safe, or do you go for the impossible angle? Nobody tells you which one is

the easy one, or what your odds are: you read the play, you go with your

gut, and you live with what happened.

Set pieces and one-on-ones are played as quick time events, and the bigger the

league, the more they ask of you.

A career is not played on the pitch alone

• The week before. Rest like a professional, put in a double session, slip away to see your family, or stay up until 3 AM playing. It all gets paid for sooner or later.

• The mixed zone. You lost and you have to face them. What you say ends up in the papers, your manager reads it, and the terraces sing it back.

• The dressing room. A teammate in trouble, a manager who does not want you, a captain sizing you up. Things that show up in no statistic.

• Injuries. Eight months out are felt for real: the rehab month by month, the matches you missed, and the fear the first time you plant that foot hard.

• The legacy. At the end it all gets counted, and there is more than one ending. How you played decides which one you get

• Your family. Your private life matters as much as the professional one. Your family and your old neighbourhood will always count on you to help them out. Or at least that is what they are hoping...

• And plenty more.

What is in the game

• 386 match moments with 779 decisions, different for strikers, midfielders, defenders and goalkeepers

• 24 leagues and 452 clubs, all invented

• 110 events between fixtures, and 34 achievements

• Several different endings, depending on how you played it

• Over 65,000 words of writing

• Rioplatense Spanish and English

• And counting: the game is constantly growing

A full career runs fifteen to twenty seasons and plays out over a couple of

afternoons. No two are the same.

The clubs, leagues and competitions are invented. Any resemblance to reality is

folklore, not a licence.