The record, then the game
Sources
Two different things sit on a Seven Nil card. The name, the country or club, the year, and the role are taken from a real tournament or a real league season. The number beside the name, the chemistry, and every score the simulator prints are original to this game. They are not a FIFA rating, a league table, or a betting price.
What is taken from the record
A national card is a World Cup or a European Championship year people still argue about. Brazil 1970 means the players who made that summer, not a fantasy Brazil. A club card is one season from 1980 onward in the English, Spanish, Italian, German, or French top division: a title side, a European run, or the best version of that club. Shirt numbers follow the tournament or the season when a number is well known.
The public record used to check those squads is the usual one: contemporary lineups, tournament squads, and reference pages such as the World Cup, the European Cup, and the season pages of the clubs. Seven Nil does not copy those articles onto this site. It keeps a short squad, the year, and a role, then writes its own notes. The reading lives on World Cups and club seasons.
What is original
The overall is a judgement of that year inside this game. A low-70s card is a squad role or a poor year. A mid-90s card is a summer or a season that still organises how people talk about that team. Pelé in 1970 and a famous name who barely played are different numbers on purpose. Nothing here is licensed from EA, FIFA, or a data company.
Chemistry is also original. It looks at shared nation and year, and at whether two neighbours can actually play together. The manager adds a link-up lift. That formula is described on How a rating is set. A match result is then a chance built from attack, midfield, defence, the goalkeeper, fit, and that chemistry. It is not a replay of the real final.
What this site does not claim
- It is not affiliated with FIFA, UEFA, or any club or league.
- A simulated 2–1 is not a prediction and not a tip.
- A gold name is a display rule for 91 and above. It is not an official award.
- If a shirt or a year is wrong, that is a correction, not a statistic. Write the squad, the year, and the name on the contact page.
How to read a card
Split every line into three piles. The first pile is a fact we tried to keep: the person played for that side in that year, in a role close to the one on the card. The second pile is a judgement: the overall. The third pile is a simulation: chemistry, the manager's lift, and the score. Mixing the piles is how a 2–1 gets quoted as if it happened.
| On the card | Kind | What it is allowed to mean |
|---|---|---|
| Name, side, year, role | Record | Checked against tournament and season squads. Send a correction if a shirt is wrong. |
| Overall, gold text | Judgement | That year inside this game. Gold is the display for a number above 90. Not an official rating. |
| Chemistry, manager, score | Simulation | A chance from the XI you drafted. Not a replay and not a tip. |
Wikipedia and club season pages are used as a map of who was there. They are not copied onto this site, and a sentence on those pages is not a source for the overall. If two public lists disagree about a squad number, the game keeps both names and moves the duplicate number so the cards stay distinct. The name is the record. The number is a label.
A correction, not a new history
If Pelé is on a year he did not play, or a 2014 full-back has been given a 2017 squad-mate's number, that is a mistake in the record pile. The note that fixes it is the side, the year, and the name. The overall is not corrected by pasting a paragraph from a season review. Two people can disagree about a 86 and an 88. That disagreement is a judgement. It is welcome on the contact page, and it does not turn the number into an official statistic.
The archive stays finite for the same reason. A roll is supposed to mean a side people can still picture. A mid-table season with no claim on that season is left out on purpose, not because a source failed to list it. National cards and club cards never share a pool. A World Cup friends room cannot draft a club XI, and a club room cannot draft a country.