Your country is watching. Two international breaks a season. Get called up and you play the friendly yourself; get left out and you are told, by name, who was picked ahead of you. The shirt is rare on purpose — most careers earn a handful of caps, and many never hear the phone ring. Every four summers, the World Championship: sixteen nations, groups, then knock-outs, played before the season is wrapped up. The team is picked match by match, a level knock-out goes to penalties — and you choose where to put yours. Win it, or finish top scorer, and it goes in the trophy room. Choose where you were born as well as where you grew up. Forty-five nations, from the hardest shirts in the world to doors that open for a good club player. Under-17 and under-21 sides pick the best of the academy and the young professionals. Their results arrive on your home screen. The app is also smaller: club crests are now sized for the screen.

The match, played at the speed it happens. Replays now run in real time, and every dot has a run of its own — nobody flies across the pitch alongside the ball any more. Defending looks like defending. When the other side has the ball, the move comes at your goal, and every pass is played to somebody onside. Corners come from the flag, throw-ins from the touchline, and a free kick in front of goal has a wall. Most goals go in from inside the box now, the way they do in real football, and whoever has the ball has it at their feet rather than hidden under it. The commentary follows what is actually on the pitch, beat by beat.

Watch the match. Key moments used to be a still picture and two choices. Now the move plays out on the pitch in front of you: the ball travels between players, the man closing you down gets closer, and the passage stops where the decision is. Choose, and it plays on into what your choice produced. Goals play too — theirs and yours — so a match has a shape rather than a final score. A line of commentary runs under the pitch throughout. You can turn all of it off in Settings › Matches, and the still picture comes back.

Where to change the language. The game follows your device's language. If you would rather play in another one, the Settings card now says where to change it — and the setting itself is now always offered, which it was not on a phone with a single language.

Japanese. The whole app — life events, key moments, attributes, training, transfer offers, season records — is translated. Club, player and league names stay in English. Also: a handful of places that were still showing English inside a translated screen — a button, a fatigue warning, a win-draw-loss record — now read in your language.

Three countries, two divisions, and a ladder to climb. The world is 122 clubs now, across England, Germany and Spain, each with a first and second division. You debut at the bottom of your country and work up. PROMOTION AND RELEGATION Finish top and go up. Finish bottom and go down. England and Spain settle the last promotion place with a play-off bracket — sixth can go up, third can stay — and Germany plays its sixteenth against the second division's third over two legs. Each country's own rules, because the difference is the point. THE ACADEMY YEARS From fifteen you play. A regional group of academy sides, real fixtures, a table with your name in it — and a call-up the week it starts. Your record follows you to the first team. THE LADDER, VISIBLE A new screen shows every division of every country, with the places that go up, play off and go down marked on the tables themselves. ALSO Your first professional debut still gets its own guaranteed start. Settings no longer drifts under your finger.

Your league, and a match that stops repeating itself. Name the clubs. All eight of them, and give each one a badge from your photos — the one you play for and the seven you play against, so the table you check every week is a table of teams you recognise. Everything you add stays on this device. Key moments go from thirty-six to a hundred and eight. A season draws about forty-two of them, and a striker used to see the same twelve come round three and a half times before May. Now the match has a shape too: the first twenty minutes are their own, and so is the ending — chasing a goal, protecting one, or an hour of nothing that somebody has to break. Thirty-one of them read the scoreline before they decide what to ask you.

A hundred life events now, and a photograph made for every one of them. The youth years run on forty-five events instead of fourteen. Picking a squad number out of a box nobody sorted. The peg on the wall with your name taped under it. A friend released on a Friday. Three in the morning before a final. One career sees a selection rather than the whole box, so the next one is a different story. Your first professional season has fifty-five, and a shape. The opening weeks are their own: the first session across the white line, a room above a shop, seventeenth name on the team sheet, four minutes off the bench. So is the run-in: five games left, an hour in the office about the years after this one, the last home game, and six weeks of summer with nobody watching. Also fixed: on a choice, rising fatigue now reads as the cost it is rather than a reward.

You no longer have to wait to play. Every training week now offers a second door — skip the wait and run the week now — and a routine already running can be taken early. Hurried work sinks in less, so waiting is still worth something, but it is a choice you make each week rather than a wall. Waiting is shorter too: a training week is thirty minutes instead of two hours, so a career you sit through takes about a day and a half. Also: the App Store listing was rewritten so people looking for a soccer career simulation can find the game at all.

Play it your way. When you start a career you now choose its pace: take your time — a week of training is two real hours and the career keeps going while the app is closed — or all at once, with no waiting at all. Same career, same results either way, and you can switch in Settings. Taking your time got better too. Come back after a night away and the weeks have played themselves: routines banked and repeated, matches resolved by your manager if auto resolve is on, and a summary of what happened. Real decisions still wait for you. Also: closing Settings no longer resets a routine in progress.