The draft
How a league fills its squads by a live snake draft instead of balanced auto-assignment.
A draft is an alternative to balanced squad assignment. Instead of the game handing every club a ready-made, evenly balanced squad, all the generated players go into one shared pool. Every club, yours and the bot clubs alike, picks from that pool one player at a time, live, until everyone has a full squad.
Turning it on
The commissioner chooses draft squad assignment (rather than balanced) before the season's squads are generated. When the season starts, the league enters a draft instead of going straight to preseason. The draft room lives on the league's Draft page; that's where the whole group gathers.
The phases
Managers gather in the lobby and ready up. The host then reveals a randomized pick order. Picking runs through every round, and the draft is complete once every club has a full squad.
Snake order
The starting order is randomized at the reveal. From there it snakes: the order reverses every round, so nobody gets first pick every time. If round one goes A, B, C, D, then round two goes D, C, B, A, then round three goes A, B, C, D again. Squads hold 18 players, so the draft runs 18 rounds.
Your turn and the timer
On your turn a countdown runs, a per-pick timer of about 45 seconds by default. Pick any available player. If the timer runs out, the game auto-picks the best available player that fits your needs, so the draft never stalls waiting on you. Bot clubs pick instantly on their turn.
Keeping squads legal
You can draft freely for most of the night, but the pool narrows in the final rounds so every squad ends able to field a legal eleven. You cannot finish without a goalkeeper, for example. The guardrail only steps in late, and only to protect essential positions; the rest of your picks are yours.
Skip the rest
Once the interesting picks are gone and only scraps remain, the human managers can agree to skip the rest. The vote is unanimous among humans: when every human has voted to skip, the game auto-fills every remaining pick with the best available player, still keeping squads legal, and finishes. Bots do not vote. You can change your mind and retract your vote right up until it becomes unanimous.
If someone drops
The draft is built not to stall. Its state lives on the server, so you can refresh and rejoin right where you left off without losing your place. If the host goes quiet, another manager can take over after a short idle window of about two minutes. Even if everyone closes the tab, the draft still finishes on its own.
When it ends
When every club has a full squad, the squads are locked in and the league moves into preseason as normal. What you drafted is your squad for the season.
Draft vs balanced
- Balanced: instant and hands-off. The game hands every club an evenly matched squad, and the season begins.
- Draft: live and hands-on. You choose your own squad player by player, and pick order matters.
Next
See The league lifecycle for where the draft sits in a season, Squad basics for managing the squad you drafted, and Create and invite to a league for choosing draft or balanced when you set the league up.