What is ESMS, and how does its match engine work?
ESMS, the Electronic Soccer Management Simulator, is a text-based football match simulator. You give it two teamsheets (eleven players, the substitutes, their positions and a team tactic) and it plays the match minute by minute, writing a line of commentary for each event and a full set of match statistics at the end.
It was written by Eli Bendersky in the late 1990s, with Igor Oks, for play-by-email football leagues, and released as open source. It became the engine behind a generation of community-run leagues, and its rules are simple enough that a manager can understand exactly why a match went the way it did.
Manager11 is a free online football manager built on an ESMS-based engine. It runs ESMS matches for 2,087 clubs in one shared world, with a gameday every hour.
Where ESMS came from
In a play-by-email (PBEM) league, every manager emailed a teamsheet to the league runner before the deadline. The runner fed the teamsheets into ESMS, which produced a commentary file and updated each squad's statistics, and then published the results and the new league table. A season might take months.
Because the engine was free and its configuration lived in plain text files (tactics, commentary lines, league settings), league runners could tune it to their own taste. The original program was written in C++ and its source code is still available, although the original repository is no longer maintained.
The four skills
Every ESMS player has four core skills, each on a numeric scale where higher is better. Most players are strong in one or two of them, which is what makes a player a natural defender, midfielder or forward.
| Skill | Short code | What it does in a match |
|---|---|---|
| Stopping | St | Goalkeeping. The keeper's stopping is set against the shooter's shooting when a shot is on target. |
| Tackling | Tk | Winning the ball and stopping the other side from building chances. |
| Passing | Ps | Moving the ball forward and creating chances. |
| Shooting | Sh | Turning chances into shots and goals. |
Players also have stamina, which drains during a match, and an aggression rating that affects fouls and cards.
How a match is simulated
- Each player's skills are weighted by the position they play (GK, DF, DM, MF, AM or FW, on the left, right or centre) and by the team tactic. A defender's tackling counts in full; a forward's barely counts.
- Adding up the weighted skills gives each side a team tackling, passing and shooting strength for that minute.
- Every minute, one side's passing and shooting are set against the other side's tackling to decide who creates a chance. A chance can become a shot, and a shot on target is set against the goalkeeper's stopping.
- Fouls, cards, injuries and tiring legs are rolled along the way, so a tired or depleted side gets weaker as the match goes on.
- Each event is written out as a line of commentary, and the match ends with a full statistics table for every player.
Position weights: the Normal tactic
The weights live in a plain text file called tactics.dat. These are the values for the Normal tactic in the engine Manager11 runs. A 1.0 means the skill counts in full in that position; 0.3 means it counts for less than a third.
| Position | Tackling | Passing | Shooting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Defender (DF) | 1.0 | 0.5 | 0.3 |
| Defensive midfielder (DM) | 0.85 | 0.75 | 0.3 |
| Midfielder (MF) | 0.3 | 1.0 | 0.3 |
| Attacking midfielder (AM) | 0.3 | 0.85 | 0.85 |
| Forward (FW) | 0.3 | 0.3 | 1.0 |
Source: worker/engine/tactics.dat in Manager11. Other tactics shift these weights, for example Defensive raises tackling across the team and lowers shooting.
Tactics and which beats which
ESMS has a small set of team tactics, each with its own weights. On top of the weights, some tactics get a bonus when they meet a particular opposing tactic. That bonus is the whole of the engine's rock, paper, scissors, so it is worth knowing.
| Tactic | Code | Gets a bonus against |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | N | Nothing (and nothing has a bonus against it) |
| Defensive | D | Long Ball |
| Attacking | A | Defensive |
| Possession (Passing in classic ESMS) | P | Long Ball |
| Counter (Counter Attack in classic ESMS) | C | Attacking and Possession |
| Long Ball | L | Counter |
Source: the BONUS rows of tactics.dat, as used by the Manager11 tactic picker. Manager11 shows two tactics under friendlier names: Passing as Possession, Counter Attack as Counter.
Conditional orders
Because PBEM managers could not be there during the match, ESMS lets a teamsheet carry orders that fire on their own: change tactic, make a substitution or move a player, when a condition holds. A typical order is "switch to Attacking if we are losing after 70 minutes". Each order runs once, at the first minute all its conditions are true.
Manager11 keeps this: up to five in-game orders per teamsheet, with conditions on the minute, the score, red and yellow cards and injuries.
How players improve
ESMS players develop by playing. Match events earn ability points in each skill (a tackle won earns tackling points, a key pass earns passing points, and so on), and enough points turn into a skill increase. In Manager11 the classic rule holds up to a skill of 20: 1,000 ability points for +1. Above 20 each step costs more, which keeps the very best players in the low 30s.
Playing ESMS today
Running a PBEM league by hand still works, but it needs a league runner, a deadline and a lot of email. Manager11 does the league running for you: teamsheets are saved in the browser, matches are played automatically on a schedule (a gameday every hour, so a season takes about 2.5 days), and the results, tables, statistics and transfers update straight away.
- The same core: four skills, positions, ESMS tactics and their matchups, conditional orders and ability points.
- Live matches: many fixtures are played live, and you can make substitutions and change tactics while they run.
- A persistent world: promotion and relegation across a league pyramid, cups, a transfer market, youth players, finances and national teams.
- Free in a web browser and on iOS and Android.
Manager11 in numbers
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Price | Free to play, no download |
| Platforms | Web browser, iOS (App Store) and Android (Google Play) |
| Clubs in the shared world | 2,087 |
| Clubs with a human manager | 603 |
| Leagues | 164 across 14 tiers |
| Countries managers play from | 150 |
| Time between gamedays | 60 minutes |
| Season length | 61 hours (about 2.5 days) |
| Matches played to date | 4,894,066 |
| Current season | Season 190 |
Questions and answers
What does ESMS stand for?
Electronic Soccer Management Simulator. It is a text-based football match engine originally written for play-by-email football management leagues.
Who made ESMS?
ESMS was written by Eli Bendersky, with Igor Oks, in the late 1990s and released as free, open-source software.
Can I still play ESMS online?
Yes. Manager11 is a free online football manager built on an ESMS-based engine, with 2,087 clubs in one shared world and matches played automatically every hour.
How does ESMS decide a match?
It weights each player's tackling, passing and shooting by position and team tactic, then plays the match minute by minute, setting one side's passing and shooting against the other side's tackling and each shot against the goalkeeper's stopping.
Which ESMS tactic is best?
None is best on its own. Counter (Counter Attack) has a bonus against Attacking and Possession (Passing), Long Ball against Counter, Defensive and Possession against Long Ball, and Attacking against Defensive. Normal has no bonus either way.
Is Manager11 the official ESMS?
No. Manager11 is an independent game that uses an engine based on ESMS. Its league cup, the Eli Bendersky Trophy, is named in honour of the engine's author.
Manager11 figures on this page are read live from the game database (last read 18 Oct 2026, 09:22 UTC) and refresh every 15 minutes.