First steps in goalunited

Probably the most interesting thing when you first log in is your team, and the individual players. Click on Team → Players and take a close look. Those men will hopefully bring success to your club. You start with 18 players, they are sorted by position. Every player has different skill values and abilities. First look at the base value Strength of each player (the column is marked with the 'Ø'); this gives you a rough idea of how good your players are. You can sort the player list differently by clicking the header of each column. This way you can get a good overview of your best players, at which positions you have good players and on where you might need better ones.

More about players 

Switch to the league view by going to Matches–> Official matches. You see the current league table with all clubs you will be competing against this season. Next to each club's name is a magnifying glass, which, when clicked, brings you to their contact page. Every league has 12 teams. The red line indicates, that teams below it are in danger of being relegated and the teams above the green line are eligible for promotion at the end of the season. You might also still play in the league cup. Each season a cup is played by all teams in your layer. (Layers 1-6 share one cup).

In the League table, you can also sort the ranking by home/away matches, and also check the ranking for the previous two seasons.

Besides League and cup, clubs also can play in the International Masters competition, you can find more about this HERE.

More about competitions 

This is one of the most important and exciting features of goalunited. Depending on which time of the season it is when you are joining the game the season might already be running for some time or it is just about to start. If the season has started already, then you will be taking over an (until then computer-controlled) club in its current position in the league. Depending on how well the team has been performing before you took over, you might be at any position in your league. Either way, you should first master the basic tasks and your first season should be used to prepare you for a grand long-term success rather than playing for promotion. There is just so much to do. Now go back to Matches → Official matches → League and check out your current league in detail. On the left side, you can see the most recent and upcoming matches. You can view details of your previous match by clicking on the info button next to the match. Once you open the selected match, on the left you can view the formations of both teams, and on the right, you have a few pages with interesting facts about that match. Next to your upcoming match, there is a small “Field”-button that will bring you to the formation screen. If you click it you can see which formation will be used in the match, and change it if you want (How to set a formation is the next point in this start-up guide). When a match has started you can watch it live via Matches → Live-Ticker.

Another very important task in the game is to set formations (Team → Line up). Each team is different, and with that, each team has different formations that work well. But there is still no perfect formation for any single team. Each opponent is different, and a formation might be perfect for today's match, but not work for the one next week. You can spend a good amount of time here to find the best formations for your team.

Each team should set a standard formation. It should be a formation that works well against any given opponent. If you do not set an individual formation for a match, the standard formation is set automatically.
We will now go through the steps of setting up an individual formation for the upcoming match, as well as saving it as the standard formation.

At first, you'll find the playing field on the right of the screen empty. You add players to the formation by dragging & dropping them on the field one after another. We'll just start with a typical 4-4-2 formation, which is a solid starting point. For this, we need a goalie, two central defenders, two outside defenders (left/right defender), two central midfielders, two wing players (left/right midfield), and two central strikers. To keep it simple at first, we'll choose the players with the highest strength and good form, and not look too much into the individual skills. Both strength and form give you a good feel for the current quality of each player. If you have two players of similar strength, always have a look at their form, since a player with better form will play closer to his potential during a match. A player with a lower strength is unlikely to perform better, even if he has a much higher form.

Start with the goalie and add the players one by one, until you have all 11 players in their positions (You can sort the player list by strength as well). You will start to see in which positions your team is strong, and in what positions you may need to strengthen your team. After adding the 11 players to the playing field, we continue with filling the substitute bench. With that finished, we have deployed 16 of our 18 players. 

Below the formation, we see a few different tasks to assign to the players on the field. With this, you choose your team's captain, and which players are assigned to execute corner kicks, penalties and free kicks. You should assign an experienced player to be your captain; if he also has the leadership ability, then he is even better suited for the job. Different skills are needed for the different tasks. You need good passing skills to shoot corners, a high-scoring skill for penalty kicks, and to shoot freekicks, you need both passing and scoring. There are also talents for each of the 3 tasks.

We also have to set the tactics used for the match. To do so click the “Tactics”-tab. The first setting is the engagement that your players will put into the match. The higher the engagement, the more effort your players will put into it, but they will also lose more energy and risk more yellow/red cards and possibly injuries. A common misconception for beginners is to choose high or extreme engagement frequently. This drains your players severely, and they may not be able to play to their full potential in future matches and they will get injured frequently. The rule of thumb should be to only go beyond normal engagement in very important matches, normal engagement also demands a lot from your players, and you won't get in trouble even if you set the engagement below normal. We will now choose “low” engagement for the match, setting the slider one step to the left of the middle position (75%).

Next comes the actual tactic used. Click on the dropdown list, and you'll see all tactics, currently, all of them are greyed out. This means we do not have a tactic trained well enough to use it effectively. So for now play with no special tactic and leave it at “None”. This will in no way penalize your team, but will simply not focus on specific positions. Below the tactic, you see the “marking” setting. Here you can choose between man-marking and zonal marking. Finally, you have to choose whether or not to use the offside trap. It is the same as with the tactics here, it should not be used until it is well trained. If it is badly trained your team will keep trying, but it will not work very often, and you risk goals. It should be at least trained to 60% before it is used, you can check how well your tactics are trained by selecting Team -> Training -> Training statistics tab.

After we have completed defining the tactics, you should save it as standard formation. Click on the “Pencil” button in the Presets section, and in the dialogue opened, pick the “Standard” slot. Now you can always choose this “Preset” easily by clicking on it when needed, and it's also the default tactic and formation when no individual tactic is set for the match. Premium users can also quickly pick from formations played in recent matches.
To set a formation for a specific match you have two ways of doing this. For the next match, you can simply click on the match time on the top of the screen. This brings you straight to the formation page. For all other games, you have to go to matches -> all fixtures and click on the "field"-symbol next to the match.

As in real football, training is essential, without training your players do not get better. Your players have a number of training slots per day, you decide what training to perform. In the beginning, you have one slot for your team to train a specific tactic, one slot to improve individual player skills, one slot for general training (like form training), and one slot to play a trading card from the training category. By building training facilities in your stadium complex you open up more slots for individual player skill training.

There are many training programs you can choose from. Hover over them to get details, and then drag the chosen program into the training slot. It is not possible to do two pieces of training of the same category on the same day unless you have built special decorations (Goalkeeper, Defender, Midfielder, Striker Clubhouses), in any case, you can still specialize your training a bit if you select different training programs that have the skill you want to push as a secondary skill. You can set your training always for the ongoing day and for the next day. As a premium player, it is possible to create a weekly plan.

There is no answer to what is the best training. Each team is different, and you can decide if you want to specialize in an area or train balanced. In the beginning, it is very important though not to let your players work too hard. Every training program your players perform costs them energy, and your physical therapist is not good enough yet to allow for really tough training. Have an eye on your player's energy and don't let it drop too low.
You can also decide which players are excluded from the training, you can do this by visiting Team -> Training -> Individual values, players excluded from the training won't have skills improvement and won't lose energy point.

You should also take a look at your staff soon (Club -> Staff). It is not needed to hire every kind of staff right from the start, but some are essential. But make sure you keep an eye on your spending. If you get a good candidate either by chance or if you put out a job ad, you can negotiate the income quite a bit, but there is always a chance that the candidate will withdraw the application completely.
The higher the staff members' qualification, experience and motivation are, the better the candidate will be. You can raise the qualification and experience by sending the staff members for further training, and experience also goes up while the person is performing his work. To raise the motivation you can give a pay raise.

At first, you mostly need 2 staff members. A coach and a physical therapist:

• The Coach leads the tactic training of your team, but most importantly gives a bonus during each match.
• The Physical therapist helps your player's in regaining their energy. Energy is used during training and in matches. It is very important to always have an eye on your players' energy, as it easily gets out of control. It's best to hire a good physical therapist as soon as you can. (To hire a physical therapist you need to build a 'massage centre', you have probably done that while playing the tutorial.)

If you click on the tab "Upgrades" here you can find special staff members which can help you significantly, for example, Facility Manager Jack Fountain regularly check the condition of your buildings and automatically sets the repair tasks instead of you. The Senior Marketing Manager will help you negotiate much better bonuses from your sponsor offers.

Note: Some special staff members can be obtained only if you play in specific Top Team challenges.

Your players, stadium and staff cost a lot of money, and they have to be paid every week. To avoid getting in debt, you should check your income sources regularly. A major income source are sponsors, which give you money every week as a base payment and additional bonuses for winning league matches. Click on Club → Sponsors and you will see two sponsor offers. They differ in “Agreement life time” “Base (per week)” and “League point bonus”. You decide which sponsor is the right one for your current situation. A good choice for a new team is usually a sponsor with a high “Base” as you do not rely on wins for income. Click on the “shake hands” button called “Sign sponsor agreement” for one of the sponsors you think fits best, and you have the first regular income for your club.
Sponsor agreement offers start out relatively low. You can negotiate the agreement terms and with luck get much better conditions. But be careful, they can also get a lot worse. At the beginning it is best not to risk too much, or you might end up without anything useful.

The stadium complex holds the stadium itself, but also a lot of other buildings, like the parking lots and training facilities. In the beginning it is most important that you create a good base, that means mostly to make room for more guests. To do that you need to do two things, you need to extend your stadium to create more seats, but you also have to make sure the spectators can get to the stadium by car or public transportation. Make sure that those two aspects are levelled out.

Another important thing to do early is to start building your training facilities. By building the 'training field' you open up an extra training slot; and by that, like every building in this category raises, the possible training's effect for your players significantly.

If you have completed the tutorial (which you really should), you have already built the massage centre; the first building of the medical department. This building is needed to be able to hire a physical therapist. Energy is one of the key factors in the game, and can pose problems right from the start, so the construction of the 'massage clinic' as step to hire the 'physical therapist' is essential.

Every part of the stadium complex is important and gives some benefit to your club, so take a good look around. But keep your eyes on your spending, buildings costs money not only for the construction, but also for upkeep and repairs.

More about stadium complex

While you have a somewhat solid foundation with your team you will need new players at some point. You can buy new players by going to Team → Transfers. All players that have been sold by other players are offered auction-style on the transfer market.

The most important advice here is to take it slow. Keep an eye on auctions for a little while until you know how much people pay for the players you are interested in. This will save you a lot of money. You should also think about what you want from a player. Older players are a lot cheaper than young players, but they do not have as much potential. Do not rely too much on older players, it's important to build a team with potential for the future. Young players do not only have more time, they also benefit more from training. If you are planning on selling a player you should look at his contract. If the contract is still going for a long time you will lose a lot of money as he wants compensation for that.

There are a lot of ways to earn money, but in the end the most important one is by raising your player's values through training and letting them play. The better a player gets, the more money you will get when you sell him. It is always good to have all 22 slots in your team filled, as that allows more players to raise in value.

Always keep your weekly expenses in sight, try to keep your proceeds and expenses balanced at the start and don't speculate on player sales until you have a feeling for the game.