One sport, four layers. Players are employed by clubs. Clubs play in domestic leagues (plus continental cups). And when international windows open, countries borrow those same players for their national teams. Everything you'll watch for the next four years — every transfer, every table, every qualifier — is these four layers passing players back and forth.

A domestic league is a season-long round robin, August to May in Europe (calendar-year in MLS, Liga MX and most of the Americas): everyone plays everyone home and away, 3 points a win. The table decides everything — top spots qualify for continental cups, the bottom is relegated to the division below while its champions are promoted up. That trapdoor is why late-season games between bad teams are wars.

Finish high enough in your league and next season you also play midweek continental football — the Champions League (Europe's top finishers), the Europa League (the tier below), the Libertadores (South America). This is how leagues meet: Arsenal v Bayern only happens here. Knockout rounds are two-legged — a game at each ground, goals added up — so a single 2–1 tells you half the story.

Five or six times a year the club season pauses for an international window (roughly September, October, November, March and June). Each country calls up 23-ish of its passport-holders from their clubs, plays two matches, and hands them back. That's the whole trick of following internationals: club form is national-team scouting. Open any country page here and you'll see where its squad earns a living week to week.

The World Cup runs on a 4-year cycle, and the next one — hosted across Spain, Portugal and Morocco, with centenary openers in South America — is the destination this app tracks toward. The route:

Between now and then, national teams only get those short windows — which is why the qualifiers, the Nations League, AFCON, the Gold Cup and even friendlies are ingested here. The international story never actually stops; it just changes channels.

Clubs buy and sell players in two transfer windows — the long summer one and a short repair window in January. Contracts, loans, free transfers: it's the sport's stock market, and it re-wires the club↔country web twice a year. The pipeline watches rosters and logs every move it notices to the Movement feed on Today, so four years of churn stays legible.

One sport, four layers. Players are employed by clubs. Clubs play in domestic leagues (plus continental cups). And when international windows open, countries borrow those same players for their national teams. Everything you'll watch for the next four years — every transfer, every table, every qualifier — is these four layers passing players back and forth.

A domestic league is a season-long round robin, August to May in Europe (calendar-year in MLS, Liga MX and most of the Americas): everyone plays everyone home and away, 3 points a win. The table decides everything — top spots qualify for continental cups, the bottom is relegated to the division below while its champions are promoted up. That trapdoor is why late-season games between bad teams are wars.

Finish high enough in your league and next season you also play midweek continental football — the Champions League (Europe's top finishers), the Europa League (the tier below), the Libertadores (South America). This is how leagues meet: Arsenal v Bayern only happens here. Knockout rounds are two-legged — a game at each ground, goals added up — so a single 2–1 tells you half the story.

Five or six times a year the club season pauses for an international window (roughly September, October, November, March and June). Each country calls up 23-ish of its passport-holders from their clubs, plays two matches, and hands them back. That's the whole trick of following internationals: club form is national-team scouting. Open any country page here and you'll see where its squad earns a living week to week.

The World Cup runs on a 4-year cycle, and the next one — hosted across Spain, Portugal and Morocco, with centenary openers in South America — is the destination this app tracks toward. The route:

Between now and then, national teams only get those short windows — which is why the qualifiers, the Nations League, AFCON, the Gold Cup and even friendlies are ingested here. The international story never actually stops; it just changes channels.

Clubs buy and sell players in two transfer windows — the long summer one and a short repair window in January. Contracts, loans, free transfers: it's the sport's stock market, and it re-wires the club↔country web twice a year. The pipeline watches rosters and logs every move it notices to the Movement feed on Today, so four years of churn stays legible.