Where It Began

Touchline Logic began with Gerald Agyeman Badu, who was like a brother to me.

Sometime around 1996 to 1998, when Gerald was about sixteen or seventeen, he was grounded at home. He loved football, and during that time he began combining football with the stat-comparison mechanics of Top Trumps cards. His original idea was simple: put two players against one another, compare their abilities, and let the stronger statistics determine the winner.

Gerald developed that idea into a football board game. He worked out how to represent movement and distance on a hand-drawn pitch. We used rulers to measure centimetres. When players raced for the ball, their statistics determined who arrived first and how far behind the other player finished.

Gerald initially played with his family, including his brother Ryan, his uncle Mark and his other brothers. I joined them, and we all had teams of our own. We played leagues, bought and sold players, and recreated the activities of the football world around the matches. On the pitch, we used pencil markings, Xs and lines to represent the players, their movement and the ball.

Gerald did not know what to call the game. He saw the words “Thea Rice” on a bag of rice and adopted them as its name. From then on, that was what we called the game.

A Promise

I particularly associate those years with the 1998 World Cup. We spent countless hours playing Gerald’s game, developing it and discovering what else it could represent.

I promised Gerald that one day I would get the game programmed and turn it into software. For many years, I did not fulfil that promise.

A few years ago, I learned that Gerald had died. Losing someone who had been like a brother gave that old promise a new urgency. It became one of my strongest motivations for finally bringing the game to life.

Touchline Logic is being developed in Gerald’s memory. It is my attempt to honour his original idea, keep my promise to him and allow other people to experience some of the joy that we experienced when we were young.

Building On The Idea

The digital game is not simply a direct copy of the board game we played. Gerald created the foundation: footballers competing through their attributes, movement determined through measurable distances, and matches decided by the qualities of the players and the decisions of the people controlling them.

I am now building upon and expanding that foundation.

Touchline Logic has become substantially deeper and richer in its detail and methods. It considers positioning, movement, physical ability, technique, psychology, tactical instructions, match officials, weather, fatigue and the many circumstances that influence a real football match. But the principle at its heart remains connected to Gerald’s original idea: actions should have understandable football causes.

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.