Real Football
A full 11-a-side football game in your browser: build a club in Seasons mode, enter four cups and nine leagues, set formations and play with tap controls.
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What is Real Football?
Real Football is a free 11-a-side football game for the browser in which you control a whole team with taps or clicks — running, passing, shooting and tackling — across a Seasons career, four cups, nine leagues, 5v5 challenges, a two-player penalty mode and an open training pitch.
GameDistribution lists the game under Gameloft SE and published it on March 27, 2023. The official description calls Real Football “the famous long-running football series” and promises “a real, free fantasy simulation and a comprehensive manager game, all in one football package.” Our testing bears out the second half of that line better than most browser football games do: behind the main menu sit six ways to play, plus four more screens for rewards, daily missions, team management and options.
Most of the games in our arcade are one-on-one duels — head soccer, penalties, free kicks. Real Football is the opposite. Both teams take the field in full, you watch from a high, angled camera, and a chevron above one player shows who you are controlling. The match clock counts up like a real one, only much faster: at the 5-minute setting it moved from 05:55 to 08:57 in about ten seconds of our test.
The depth of Real Football is in the management. In Seasons mode you create a club from scratch — full name, short name and one of 24 crest designs — and start in Division 10 with $3.00M in funds and a squad of 23 (the cap is 30). From there you choose a formation, set a line-up that the game rates for attack, midfield and defence, and use the Transfer, Release and Agency screens to reshape the squad.
If you only want a match, the Friendly tile on the main menu offers a random fixture with one tap — our first was Chile against Brazil — and the full Friendly setup lets you pick both teams, the kits, the stadium, the weather, the ball and day or night. The Mode screen adds four cup competitions and nine domestic leagues, each playable at five difficulty levels from Amateur to Hell.
Real Football was built for touchscreens — every instruction in it says “touch” — but on a computer a mouse click does the same job, so the controls work on phones, tablets and desktop browsers alike. GameDistribution lists it for iOS and Android in landscape, and that is the way to hold your phone.
Playing Real Football
- 1Choose how to play
Press Play, then pick a tile on Real Football’s main menu: Seasons for a career, Mode for cups and leagues, Friendly for a single match, 5v5 for short challenges, Penalty for a shootout against a friend, or Training for free practice.
- 2Set up your side
Before a Real Football match you can change the line-up, the formation and the tactic. In Seasons, Auto Line-up fills the team for you if you would rather get straight to the football.
- 3Move with taps
Touch or click the pitch to send your selected player running to that spot, and touch twice to sprint. The chevron above a player marks the one you control.
- 4Pass and shoot
Touch a teammate to pass to him, or one of the double arrows at the edge of the screen to play a long pass to someone out of view. Touch the name box in the bottom-right corner to shoot.
- 5Defend
When the other team has the ball, touch an opponent — or the name box — to press the ball carrier, and touch the opponent twice to make a tackle.
- 6Manage the match
The pause button in the top-right corner opens Resume, Substitution, Team Tactics, Replay, Options and Back to Main Menu, so you can change players or switch shape mid-game.
Real Football controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Click / tap the pitch | Run to that spot |
| Click / tap the pitch twice | Sprint |
| Click / tap a teammate | Pass |
| Double arrow at the screen edge | Long pass to a teammate off-screen |
| Name box (bottom right) | Shoot |
| Opponent or name box (defending) | Press the ball carrier |
| Opponent, twice | Tackle |
| Tactics button (bottom left) | Switch between your saved tactics |
| Pause button (top right) | Substitutions, tactics, replays and options |
Modes & progression
Create a club and start in Division 10. A league season has four matches, and the schedule shows the lines to aim for: 6 points for promotion, 7 for the Champion Cup and 8 for the title. A Division Cup runs alongside.
Internat. 2014, the Internat. Cup and the Club Cup each have 32 teams in 8 groups; the European Cup has 16 teams in 4 groups.
Nine competitions: the National, Spanish, English, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Argentinian and Brazilian leagues.
A single match. The main-menu tile gives you a random fixture; the full setup lets you choose both teams, kits, line-up, tactics, stadium, weather, ball, time of day, extra time and a penalty shootout.
Your team’s overall rating (OVR) against four challengers, each with its own OVR, star grade and difficulty label. A match is split into numbered scenes with a 20-second timer.
Two players on one device each pick a team and a kicker, then take turns shooting. Whoever scores the most goals wins.
Your team alone on the pitch — no opponent and no clock — for practising the tap controls.
How to win at Real Football
Learn on Amateur with a short match. The Mode screen sets both the difficulty (Amateur, Pro, International, Legend, Hell) and the match length (3, 5, 7, 10 or 20 minutes). A 3-minute game on Amateur is the quickest way to get used to Real Football’s tap controls before you start a Seasons campaign.
Let the ball do the running. In Real Football a pass is one tap on a teammate, while a dribble means steering one player with tap after tap. Moving the ball between players is the quicker way up the pitch, and the double arrows at the screen edges reach teammates the camera cannot see.
Pick your moment to shoot. Shooting is a single tap on the name box, so the only decision you make is when. Wait until the player you control has a clear sight of goal instead of shooting the moment you cross halfway.
Press first, tackle second. One touch on an opponent sends your player to close him down; a second touch commits to the tackle. Pressing first and tackling only when you are close stops a defender being left behind.
Change shape with the score. Save different tactics in the four slots, A to D, and switch with the button in the bottom-left corner during play: All Back Def. or Counteratt. to protect a lead, Possession or High Press. when you need a goal.
Turn on Radar Mode. The Real Football camera stays close to the ball, so most of your team is off-screen. Radar Mode, in Options › Settings, is off by default; switched on, it adds a mini-pitch at the bottom of the screen with every player shown as a dot.
Play the daily missions. The Daily Missions screen pays G coins for set tasks — on our visit, 500 for playing a match in the rain and 1,000 for missing a penalty. Set the weather to rain in the Friendly environment tab and the first is easy; coins unlock bonus content such as new goal nets.
Good to know — In Real Football’s Seasons mode the targets are printed on the schedule: a league season has four matches, and 6 points earns promotion out of the division, 7 reaches the Champion Cup line and 8 wins the title.
What makes Real Football fun
- Full 11-a-side matches with tap-to-move, tap-to-pass and tap-to-shoot controls
- A Seasons career: build a club, start in Division 10 and manage funds, transfers and a 30-player squad
- 8 formations, each in three variants, plus four tactic styles
- Four cup competitions and nine domestic leagues
- Five difficulty levels from Amateur to Hell, and match lengths from 3 to 20 minutes
- Friendly options for stadium, weather (sun, rain or snow), ball, day or night, and goal net
- 5v5 challenges, a two-player penalty mode and an open training pitch
- Daily missions, trophies, achievements and unlockable bonus content
- Free in the browser on desktop and mobile — no download, no signup
Why play Real Football on PlayFutbol?
Real Football runs free and instantly in your browser here — no download, no signup, on phone or desktop. And when you want to test your football brain rather than your reflexes, it sits alongside 48 original daily football trivia games made by PlayFutbol.
Explore PlayFutbol's daily gamesFrequently asked questions
Pick a mode from the main menu, then control your team with taps or clicks: touch the pitch to run, touch a teammate to pass, and touch the name box in the bottom-right corner to shoot. Without the ball, touch an opponent to press him and touch him twice to tackle.
Yes. The in-game instructions are written for touchscreens, but a mouse click does exactly what a touch does — in our testing every menu and every in-match control responded to clicks in a desktop browser.
Six, all on the main menu: Seasons (a career with your own club), Mode (four cups and nine leagues), Friendly (a single match), 5v5 (short challenges against rated teams), Penalty (a local shootout for two players) and Training (free practice).
You create a club — crest, full name and short name — and start in Division 10. A league season has four matches; the schedule shows 6 points as the promotion line, 7 as the Champion Cup line and 8 as the title. A Division Cup runs alongside, and reaching the Champion Cup line qualifies you for that competition the following season.
The Leagues tab lists nine: National, Spanish, English, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Argentinian and Brazilian. The Cups tab adds the European Cup (16 teams in 4 groups) and three 32-team, 8-group competitions: Internat. 2014, the Internat. Cup and the Club Cup.
You choose: 3, 5, 7, 10 or 20 minutes of real time. The on-screen match clock runs far faster than real time — at the 5-minute setting it advanced about three minutes for every ten seconds in our test.
Five: Amateur, Pro, International, Legend and Hell. You set the difficulty on the Mode screen before a cup or league, and in the Friendly settings before a single match.
Yes, in Penalty mode. Local Penalty is a shootout for two players on the same device: each picks a team and a kicker, you take turns shooting, and whoever scores more wins. The other modes are played against the computer.
In a Friendly, yes. The Envir. tab offers stadiums including Saint-Denis, Redbrick and Catedral; sun, rain or snow; three match balls; day or night; and four goal nets, two of which stay locked until you unlock them as bonus content.
GameDistribution lists Real Football under Gameloft SE, and the official description presents it as part of a “long-running football series.” The game itself does not show a developer credit in its menus.
Yes. Real Football was designed for touch controls, and GameDistribution lists it for iOS and Android in landscape. Turn your phone sideways for the full view of the pitch.
Yes. It runs free in your browser on PlayFutbol with no download and no account. The G coins used for bonus content are earned in the game through its daily missions.
Real Football is a third-party HTML5 game served via GameDistribution and embedded here for free play. PlayFutbol's own 48 daily football trivia games are first-party.