What fitness and fatigue are in a football manager
Fitness measures how tired a player is. Fatigue rises with minutes played and demanding training and falls with rest; an exhausted player performs worse and gets injured more often.
Nobody plays every match flat out, and manager games reflect that with fatigue: each match and each hard session wears a player down, and he needs rest to get back to full fitness. Managing it is one of the most important jobs a manager has. Field the same eleven every time and output drops while injuries pile up, which is what rotation is for: spreading minutes so everyone arrives fresh.
In ELDT fatigue runs from 0 to 100. In the league every minute played adds 0.4 points, so a full match adds about 36. Cup ties and friendlies take far less out of a player. Fatigue recovers every day: 8 points plus 25% of the fatigue the player is carrying (the more tired, the more he recovers; at 80 he recovers 28, at 20 he recovers 13). The fitness coach adds 2 extra points of daily recovery per level.
Training counts too: hard intensity adds 20 fatigue to every player and light intensity recovers 15. If someone is running on empty you can set him to Rest for the week: he does not train, but recovers 25 extra points. With high fatigue the injury risk goes up.
See it in the game: the manager's guide.
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See also: online football manager · guides on the blog