The International Game

On top of your club career, Kickoff Boss runs a full international layer: every playable country has a national team, run by a real manager who won an election, competing in a World Cup that comes around every couple of months. It is worth understanding even if you never manage a country, because a national team that goes deep makes every club in that country richer.

One Team Per Country

• Every country has a single national team, run by a real manager elected by the club owners of that country — not by the computer.
• The manager handles everything: call-ups, formation, tactics and the match-day team sheet.
• Each country’s national-team page shows the current squad, which clubs are contributing players, the fixtures, and who is in charge and for how long.
• The manager serves a fixed term of roughly two months — about one World Cup cycle — after which the seat goes back up for election.
• If a country ever has no elected manager, the game auto-selects a default squad by quality so the team can still play.

Manager Elections

When a country’s seat comes up, an election opens and any eligible manager can register as a candidate with a short manifesto — the pitch to voters on why they should lead the team. To stand you need:

• A club based in that country.
• A verified phone number on your account.

You can only campaign for one country at a time. The club owners of that country vote, and whoever gets the most votes takes the job for the next term.

Building the Squad

Once elected, the Drafting tab is yours. You build a squad of between 16 and 23 players. The eligibility rules are simple:

• The player must be from your country (his nationality), regardless of which club owns him or where he plays.
• He must be a senior player — youth-academy prospects do not count.

You set the formation and assign roles just like a club side. One important catch: once your team is alive in an active World Cup, the squad locks. Pick your selection before the tournament starts, because you live with it until you are knocked out.

Second Nationality

A player who has spent years playing abroad can be convinced to take the citizenship of the country his club plays in, opening the door to a new national team. When a player qualifies, a Second Nationality topic appears in his Player Talks panel.

Who Qualifies

• He is a senior player.
• He has played at least 4 different seasons at clubs located in his current club’s country, and that country differs from his current nationality.
• He has never been capped by any national team — a single senior international appearance closes the door for good.
• His average quality is 60 or higher.
• He has not switched before — the change is one-time per career.

Seasons are counted by the country each club was actually in that season, so relocating your club abroad does not instantly qualify anyone — players build residency in the new country from the move onward. Seasons with no appearances still count: it is about residency, not minutes.

If He Accepts

• The club’s country becomes his main sporting nationality, and that national team can call him up from then on.
• His birth nationality becomes a second nationality, shown as a small dimmed flag beside his main flag on his profile.
• If he was already in his old national team’s squad (uncapped), he is removed from it.
• The switch is permanent and cannot be undone.

If He Refuses

• Nothing changes, and the refusal is not final — you can try again after the standard 72-hour talk cooldown.

Acceptance Chance

The talk is free. Ambitious players are the most eager, since accepting finally opens the international door; Loyal players are the hardest to convince, and Hotheads often refuse on impulse. Experienced players and captains are a little more open to it.

Tracking Changes

Every switch is recorded publicly. Each country’s national-team Information tab lists the most recent players it has gained or lost through naturalization.

The World Cup

• The World Cup runs every other month. There is no separate qualifying tournament — the top 32 national teams by ELO rating qualify for the finals, so qualification is a slow-burn reward for being consistently good.
• The 32 finalists are drawn into 8 groups of 4, seeded by ELO so the strongest teams are kept apart.
• The top two from each group advance to a 16-team knockout: Round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and the Final, plus a third-place match. The whole tournament plays out across a single in-game month.
• Countries that miss out, and teams knocked out of the World Cup, keep playing friendlies. Friendlies still move ELO (with lower stakes), which is how a low-ranked nation climbs back into the top 32 for next time.

Why It Matters for Your Club

• World Cup prize money does not go to the national manager or the clubs — it goes to the country’s federation. Every group win and every knockout round survived pays Gold into the country’s coffers, up to a big prize for the Final.
• That federation is the same pot that pays your league and cup prizes. A national team that goes deep quietly makes every club in that country richer for the seasons that follow.
• A call-up costs your club nothing: national-team matches drain no energy and carry no injury risk. A player returns from international duty exactly as he left, with one extra cap on his record.

Predict the Tournament

You do not have to manage a country to take part. The predictions game lets any manager call the World Cup results across several tiers as the tournament unfolds, with harder later calls worth more points and trophies for the top predictors. See the Predictions League page for the full breakdown.