Where It Began

Some of the best afternoons of my life were spent around a hand-drawn football pitch.

Around 1996 to 1998, my best friend, someone who was like a brother to me, was grounded at home. Being sixteen and football-mad, he did what we did with any spare time: he invented a game. He took the stat battles of Top Trumps and put them on a pitch. Two players, two sets of numbers, and the better player won the duel.

He played it first with his brothers and his uncle, and then I joined them. We all had teams. We ran leagues, bought and sold players, and argued over everything. The players were pencil Xs and the ball a pencil line. We measured every run in centimetres with a ruler: whoever had the pace got there first, and a slow centre-back could be left a ruler’s width behind.

I associate those years with the 1998 World Cup. We spent hours at that table, playing, changing the rules, and finding out how much football you could fit onto a sheet of paper.

The Promise

I told him that one day I would make a football game for the computer, one that gave you the feeling of winning a match with football decisions, not with a joypad. Life got in the way, and for many years I didn’t.

A few years ago, I learned that he had died. Losing someone who had been like a brother turned that old promise into something I had to do.

What I Built

Touchline Logic is the game I set out to make. I designed it and I am building it: its rules, its match engine, its systems and every line of its software. It isn’t a computer version of the game we played as teenagers. It is something new, built from years of my own work, and it goes far beyond anything we could draw on paper. It weighs positioning, movement, physical ability, technique, psychology, tactical instructions, match officials, weather, fatigue and the many circumstances that shape a real football match.

But if you play it and feel that one football decision truly mattered, that is the feeling I first knew at that table. Those afternoons showed me how much joy there is in thinking about football, and I’ve carried that into every part of this game.

Touchline Logic is dedicated to my friend’s memory.

Why Football

My relationship with football began when I was about four or five years old. I remember watching the Nigerian goalkeeper Peter Rufai and being captivated by him. My father was also a good goalkeeper, and watching him strengthened that inspiration.

I became a goalkeeper myself. I enjoy playing in midfield, but when the match is serious, I prefer to be in goal.

That experience shapes what I want Touchline Logic to become. Controller football games have their own skills, but they often reward mastery of the controller more than an understanding of football. Management games offer depth, but the match itself is largely resolved behind the scenes. You prepare the team and then watch the simulation determine what happens.

I wanted something between those experiences: a game in which you participate in the match through football decisions rather than button combinations, while still experiencing the depth and consequences of real football.

The Timeline

The Purpose

Touchline Logic is not intended merely to simulate the final result of a football match. Its ambition is to represent football turn by turn, action by action and decision by decision.

If a player reaches the ball first, there should be a football reason. If a pass succeeds, a defender makes an interception, or a goalkeeper produces a save, the outcome should emerge from the players’ abilities, their positions, the circumstances and the decisions made by the manager.

The guiding principle is that if something can happen on a real football pitch, then, given the correct circumstances, it should be possible in Touchline Logic.

I want the game to be enjoyed by everyone: young and old, professional managers and coaches, devoted football thinkers and ordinary supporters. I want people to test their ideas, deepen their understanding of football and experience the same excitement we felt when a plan came alive on our hand-drawn pitch.

The digital game comes first. Once people are playing and enjoying it, I hope to bring it full circle by creating a physical board game based on what Touchline Logic has become.