How to Play Goalasso

Getting started

1. Pick a mode. On the home page, choose a game from the row of modes at the bottom of the screen.
2. Choose a difficulty if the game asks. Seven of the 12 modes offer four levels: Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert. The other five start straight away.
3. Play. Each mode has its own rules, length and scoring, all explained below.
4. Sign in if you want to keep your scores. An account is free (email or Google, plus Apple in the iOS app). It saves your best scores and puts you on the leaderboards.

The 12 modes at a glance

How each mode works

Box to Box

A 3D runner. You pick one of six players or create your own, then play a cup campaign: jump, slide or change lanes to get past defenders, sliding tackles, the referee and walls, and finish each stage with a shot at goal.

• Stages: Kick-Off (a missed shot there doesn't count), Group Stage, Last 16, Quarter-final, Semi-final and the Final, then Extra Time stages for as long as you last.
• Lives: you start with 3. A collision costs one; a goal wins one back, up to 3.
• Shooting: swipe or drag to aim and curl the ball past the keeper, within two seconds or less. A shot that comes too late counts as a miss, and three misses in a row get you subbed off, which ends the run.
• Score: the distance you run plus skill bonuses, multiplied by your FLOW (up to 5×), which near misses and dodged tackles build up and a collision resets. A goal adds 500 points in the first stage, 1,000 in the second, and so on. Power-ups include a magnet, a turbo, a shield and a hat-trick that doubles all points for 10 seconds. Each stage also has one mystery box, which can hold a hazard as well as a reward.

The VAR

A one-shot story game. You play a referee from your top-flight debut to the biggest final, after choosing a persona (Enforcer, Diplomat, Showman or Ghost) and an era, from the 1980s to the VAR years.

• Each match brings incident cards: on-field calls, offers of money, TV interviews and abuse from the stands. Each choice moves some of five meters: Integrity, Reputation, Bank, Heat and Stress.
• Your career ends in one of 11 endings, with a Career Score. Every name in the game is fictional.

Chain Reaction

A puzzle on a grid of player tiles, six across and seven high, each showing a flag. Drag across two or more neighbouring players from the same country to clear them.

• Longer chains score far more than short ones. Clearing again within 3 seconds builds a combo that raises your points, up to 3×.
• Superstar tiles are wildcards that join any chain, and mystery tiles give a random effect, good or bad. A chain of 5 leaves a Free Kick that clears its row; 6 or more leaves a Penalty that clears a 3×3 square. Close a loop and every player of that nation leaves the board.
• Marathon: you start with 12 moves and gain 6 more at each new level. Blitz: you play against the clock, for 15, 30, 45 or 60 seconds, with 5 seconds added at each level. Each Blitz length has its own record.

ValueGuessr

Each round shows a real player's card: photo, position, age, nationality and club. Set your guess of the player's market value on the slider, then see the real figure.

• A game is 5 rounds, each scored out of 100, so the best possible total is 500.
• Points depend on how many times too high or too low you were, not on the difference in euros. A guess twice the real value still earns about 77 points; one 20 times off earns nothing.
• Daily: the same 5 players for everyone, one attempt per day. Endless: pick a pack, either all leagues, one of the big five leagues, or a price band (over €50M, €5–50M, under €5M).

TransferChain

You get a start player and a target player. Link them through a chain of teammates: each player you add must have been a teammate of the one before.

• You can remove your last link at any time, and hints suggest a player or a club to look through.
• The search only offers real teammates of your last player, so there's no wrong answer to type and no limit on tries. Your result is the number of links you used compared with par, and the number of hints you took.
• Difficulty: on Easy the shortest chain has one player in the middle, drawn from about 250 famous names. Medium (600 players) needs one or two, Hard (1,200 players) two, and Expert two or three, with anyone in the database allowed.

Tier List

You're given a set of players, clubs or national teams from one category. Place each one in a tier: S (GOAT), A (Legend), B (World Class), C (Iconic), D (Great), E (Solid) or F (Underdog).

• Each item is worth up to 100 points, and every tier away from the expected answer costs about 17 of them. Your accuracy is the share of items you placed exactly right.
• The expected tier comes from popularity for players, and from Goalasso's own pedigree rankings for clubs and countries. There's room to argue, which is part of the fun.

Career Path

A player's senior career is drawn as a path of club crests, oldest first. The club where he spent the most seasons is hidden at every spell he had there, and you name the player.

• A game is 5 players. Each round is worth 100 points. A wrong guess or a clue costs 25 and opens the next clue: first the years under every crest, then his nationality, then his position. After the third clue, one more miss ends the round at 0 and shows the answer.
• Before the first player you pick Classic, with no clock, or Speed Run: 30 seconds per player, 2 extra points for every second left when you name him, and the round lost if the clock runs out. A Speed Run is worth up to 800 and has its own leaderboard.
• His full name counts, and so does his surname alone when no other player in the game's list shares it. Accents and capitals don't matter, and the suggestions also offer players who aren't in the game, so they never give the answer away.
• Difficulty sets how famous the players are, from the 300 best known as players on Easy to lesser-known names on Hard and Expert; the points stay the same. The careers come from the career boxes of English Wikipedia's footballer articles.

Stay Quiet (website only)

A target is shown first. Then other players in the same position appear one at a time, every 4 seconds. Press I Can't Stay Quiet! as soon as one is more famous than the target. If none is, stay quiet until the end.

• A game is 5 rounds, and some of them use clubs or stadiums instead of players.
• A correct round is worth 100 to 300 points depending on difficulty. Speaking up early adds a speed bonus of 10 points for the item on screen and each one still to come, and correctly staying quiet adds 50.
• Difficulty changes how famous the target is, from stars on Easy to little-known players on Expert. Stay Quiet is only on the website, not in the iOS app.

Trophy Hunt

A list of ten people from football history, such as the Ballon d'Or winners of the 1990s or the World Cup-winning managers from 1986 to 2022. Each list is written by hand and checked against published records. You have 5 minutes to type all 10 names.

• Each name you find is worth 10 points. A hint reveals 3 letters of a missing name and costs 5 points.
• A surname is enough, and well-known short forms such as Zizou or CR7 count, but a first name on its own does not.
• The lists you can get depend on the difficulty you choose.

Stadium Roar

Two players, one question: who has more? Each game draws a theme, such as clubs played for, career length, age, transfers or countries played in, and a few themes mix several stats.

• There's no timer. Every correct answer is worth 100 points, whatever the difficulty, and your streak is shown as you go.

The Bomb

A criterion appears, such as a nationality, a position or a club, and the countdown starts. Type as many players who fit it as you can before the bomb goes off.

• A game has 10 criteria. The timer for each is 30 seconds on Easy, 20 on Medium, 15 on Hard and 10 on Expert. You can skip a criterion.
• Each valid name is worth 100, 150, 200 or 300 points depending on difficulty. A wrong or repeated name costs no points, only time: the answer box locks for under a second.
• Criteria get stricter as the difficulty rises, from one nationality or position on Easy to combinations such as a nationality and a position.

Rank It

Ten players are revealed one at a time, with a criterion such as market value, age, height or popularity. Drop each player into a slot from #1 to #10 as they appear. Once placed, a player can't be moved.

• Only exact positions score: 50 points each on Easy, 75 on Medium, 100 on Hard and 150 on Expert. Being one place off earns nothing.
• Getting 5 or more right adds a bonus worth one exact position, 8 or more a bonus worth two, and a perfect 10 a bonus worth five.
• Difficulty widens the pool of players, up to a mix of legends and obscure names on Expert.

Difficulty levels

Seven of the 12 modes ask for a difficulty: TransferChain, Career Path, Stay Quiet, Trophy Hunt, Stadium Roar, The Bomb and Rank It. In Stay Quiet, The Bomb and Rank It, the level picker shows 1×, 1.5×, 2× and 3× next to Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert.

That ratio sets the points per correct answer in those three (bonuses aside). In the other four, a harder level changes the puzzle rather than the points: longer chains from a bigger pool in TransferChain, different lists in Trophy Hunt, and less famous players in Career Path, where a round is worth up to 100 points, and in Stadium Roar, where every answer is worth 100 points.

Scores, levels and leaderboards

• You can play every mode as a guest. Signing in is free and keeps your scores.
• In each mode, what counts is your best single game. The Overall leaderboard adds up your best scores across the modes.
• Your level goes up by one for every 1,000 points of your Overall total.
• Most modes also have their own leaderboard tab, and Chain Reaction has separate tabs for Marathon and the 60-second Blitz.

Tips that actually help

• ValueGuessr: get the order of magnitude right first. Points are relative, so guessing €20M for a €40M player scores the same as €2M for a €4M player.
• Rank It: placements are final, so keep #1 and #10 for players who are clearly at the extremes, and put uncertain ones in the middle.
• Chain Reaction: look for one long chain rather than several short ones. Points rise steeply with length, and a loop clears the whole nation.
• Box to Box: every shot is on a clock of two seconds or less, so aim fast. A goal gives a life back, while three misses in a row end the run even with lives left.
• The Bomb: wrong names cost no points, so type any player you think might fit.
• Trophy Hunt: a hint costs half of what a name earns, so a name found with a hint still nets 5 points. It goes to a missing name picked at random, though, so keep hints for the names you cannot reach.
• TransferChain: players who changed clubs often have the most teammates, which makes them good stepping stones.

Where the questions come from

Most quiz modes build their rounds from Goalasso's database of 9,318 players, with their clubs, nationalities and positions. Rank It also uses an AI model to check its popularity rankings. Behind Our Questions and our editorial policy explain how, and you can report a mistake through the contact page.

Common questions

Is Goalasso free?

Yes. Every mode is free to play, on the website and in the iOS app.

Do I need an account?

No. An account only saves your scores and adds you to the leaderboards.

Can I play in French?

Yes. The site is available in English and French; use the language selector, or add /fr after goalasso.io in any address. Only Box to Box's in-game text is English-only.

Is every mode in the app?

All except Stay Quiet, which is only on the website.

Anything else? The FAQ covers accounts, privacy and the app in more detail.