How MatchRewrite works

How the predicted line-ups are picked, how the match simulations are built, and what happens when you press play.

How the predicted line-ups are picked

For each upcoming match, the predicted line-up is the strongest eleven for each position from the club's current squad, in the formation shown on the page. Players who are injured, suspended or otherwise unavailable are left out, and the team news lists each one with the reason.

Every line-up page shows the date its squad information was checked. Team news changes, so the confirmed line-up, which clubs announce about an hour before kick-off, can differ from the prediction.

Line-up pages go up weeks before kick-off, and each one comes down once its match has been played.

How the match simulations are built

Each simulation is a real match rebuilt from the record: the real line-ups and shirt numbers, and the real minutes of the goals, cards and substitutions, checked against match reports.

You pick a side. At the moments that decided the real match, the choice is yours, from the tactics to the substitutions. Your decisions change how the match goes, and the result can end up different from the real one.

A match takes about two minutes: the key moments that decided it, each with three choices, while everything else happens as it really did. On a computer, live commentary talks you through it, with the crowd and the referee's whistle.

The 3D matches

Matches on the predicted line-up pages and in the Lineup Builder play in a 3D stadium with realistic ball physics: passes, shots, the posts, the crossbar and the net. The kits are plain colours chosen so the two teams, the goalkeepers and the referee are always easy to tell apart; they are not the clubs' real kits.

The Lineup Builder

Choose a club, a formation and an opponent, then drag or tap players into your eleven. When you press play, the match runs with commentary and an analysis of your team: how it rates, where the game should be won, and how it is going.