You are the referee. Not a country — the little black & white one out in the middle. Sixteen countryball nations play a knockout cup around you, they kick lumps out of each other, and your job is to be close enough to see it and brave enough to blow the whistle.
Click a country above to drop it into the next empty slot; click a slot to take it back out.
Countryballs bump into each other constantly. None of it is a foul until you say so, and the game
will never tell you which is which — a clash just leaves a plain white ring on the grass for 1.6
seconds. Watch the challenge itself: a countryball lunging in, flaring white as it slides, has not gone for
the ball. You can only judge what is inside your eyeline, the dashed ring you drag around with you.
Whistle and play stops — always. Press space and there is a foul, whether or not anything
happened. Then you point at whoever you like: every countryball on the pitch is ringed and
selectable, both sides, keepers included. Click one, or walk through them with ←
→ and take it with SPACE. It tells you what that one is already carrying, and
the free kick goes to the other side. Then you choose what it is worth: 1 free kick, 2
yellow, 3 red. The other side gets the ball. Neither step is on a clock — play stays
frozen until you have made up your mind.
Bookings follow a countryball through the whole cup. Two yellows in the same match is a red and it
walks off there and then. Two yellows across different matches and it is suspended for its
nation’s next one — they play a countryball short. That goes for keepers too: card one off, or
suspend one, and nobody takes the gloves. There are no substitutes, and the net stays open. The prompt tells you what each one is already carrying before you decide.
A foul you give inside the box is a penalty.
Nobody grades you out loud during the match. Afterwards they will.
Before each round you write the score of every match on the card — all eight in the round of 16, then four, then two, then the final. The countryballs play out exactly what you wrote: goals arrive when they arrive, and anything past the quota is cleared off the line. Write a match level and a second row appears so you choose the shootout score too, which decides who goes through. Hit ? on any row to leave that one to chance. Then you referee every match on the card, one after another, right through to the final — and then you get graded. Short on time? Start the cup at the quarter-finals, the semis, or go straight to the final.