How Ratings & Results Work
Soccer DB Manager doesn't use made-up attributes — every player's rating is calculated from the real career they'd had by the season you're playing. This page explains how those ratings are built, how a team's overall comes together, and how match results are simulated. It's the "under the hood" companion to the tactics guide.
Player ratings
Each player gets a single rating from a score with three ingredients:
- Recent form — appearances and goals over the last few seasons. This is the biggest factor, so a player is rated on how good he is now, not just how famous he once was.
- Career pedigree — a smaller weighting of his whole career, so proven quality still counts.
- Age and level — the score is scaled by an age curve (peaking in the mid-20s, declining later) and by the strength of the leagues he played in, so a star season in a top division is worth more than one in a minor league.
Goals are weighted by position (a defender's goals count for more than a striker's, relative to expectation). The final number is deliberately spread and not inflated: an average professional sits around 70–73, a good starter in the high 70s, genuine stars in the mid-to-high 80s, and only the very best reach the low 90s. Fringe and faded players drop into the 50s.
Team overall
A club's overall is simply the average rating of its best eleven. Because player ratings are spread realistically, this naturally separates clubs into tiers — a few strong sides, most in the middle, and a few weak ones. It's an honest number: sign better players and it goes up; lose your best and it drops. There's no hidden adjustment.
Fitness (match value)
On match day, a player's effective strength is his rating scaled by fitness. A tired player performs below his rating, which is why rotation matters over a long season. The game's line-up suggestions already factor this in.
How a match is decided
Each side's attack and defence strength is built from its on-pitch eleven (weighted by position), adjusted for mentality and fitness. From the gap between one team's attack and the other's defence, the game works out how many goals each side is likely to score, then simulates the actual scoreline. Key principles:
- Quality dominates. A strong team rarely loses to a weak one — home or away. Upsets happen, but they're the exception, as in real football.
- Home advantage is real and asymmetric. It's modest by default and grows with the home side's quality: a top team at home is very hard to beat, while a weak home side gets little from it — so home advantage rarely overturns a big quality gap.
- Everything feeds in. Mentality, fitness, suspensions and injuries all shift the numbers, so your team selection and tactics genuinely change results.
A note on realism
These ratings and results are a simulation for entertainment, built from historical records — they're not official ratings or predictions, and historical data can have gaps. The goal is a game that feels right: the better team usually wins, stars stand out, and your decisions matter. Spotted something odd? Tell us via Contact.
Now that you know the numbers, go build a team.