Launchway
← Play something else Soccer career · Build 9 · Playable

Back of the Net

Your athlete, your club, your season.

Back of the Net
Works on phone, tablet and desktop · No download · No account

What it is

Eleven a side on a full pitch under the lights, and you play one athlete the whole game: you never switch to whoever’s nearest the ball. Make your athlete (look, number, foot and position, keeper included), then play the trial match, ten other hopefuls with you and the league’s scouts on the touchline. How you play there decides which clubs call, and each offers a place and a role: a strong club the bench, one in between the squad, a weaker one the first eleven. No money changes hands.

A match is two halves of five minutes, the clock never stopping. The keeper can’t read your mind: he moves after you strike, and reads a clean strike worse than a scuffed one. Offside is called when the pass is played, not when it arrives.

The season

Fourteen weeks against the league’s other seven clubs, home and away, the week’s other matches played out by the game while you play yours. After every match you get a rating out of 10, and the manager’s trust moves with it: earn your way from the bench to the squad to the first eleven. Off the bench, your match plays at speed until you come on. Your teammates learn your game the more you play together, and training makes one rating a little better each week.

At the season’s end: the champions, the awards (in your first season, Newcomer of the Year, for an average of 7.0 over seven matches or more), your records, and next year’s offers. Stay, or go. Start every match of a season in the first eleven and stay, and next season you wear the armband.

How to play

  • Run and dribbleThe stick, bottom left; it points your passes too
  • Shoot, pass and moreThe buttons, bottom right
  • Back into the shapeLet go of the stick

The buttons change with the play. With the ball: Shoot (hold it, and let go in the green; tap as a pass arrives to hit it first time), Pass, Step over, Through and Cross. Without it: Tackle, Call and Run. In goal: Save, Kick and Throw. Through balls, runs in behind, crosses, fouls by a stated rule, free kicks with a wall, and penalties: on yours the stick picks the side, and their keeper has to guess one.

On a desktop, use the keys: WASD or the arrows to run; J or Space for the first button, K the second and L the third; H for How to play, and Esc to leave a game.

What isn’t settled yet

It is one player: your teammates and the other side are the computer’s. Your career lives in the browser it’s played in, so clearing the site’s data loses it. The captain’s armband is words only: it shows on the title, the league and your card, and changes nothing in a match. An older phone may struggle, as eleven a side and a full stadium is a lot to draw. There is no gamepad support, the keys can’t be remapped, and it isn’t playable with a screen reader.

Build Log

  1. Build 9

    Back of the Net went up: eleven a side, and you play one of them. Make your athlete, impress the scouts in a trial match, and choose between the clubs that call. Every match ends with a rating out of 10 that moves the manager’s trust, from the bench to the squad to the first eleven. Fourteen weeks later come the awards, your records and next year’s offers: stay, or go.

Credits and licences

Built on three.js, used under the MIT licence with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Typefaces are the ones already on your device; nothing is downloaded. Cover drawn from the game’s own pitch, players and stadium code.

Back of the Net is original work by Launchway Games.