Imagine stepping into the shoes of a football club owner – responsible for transfers, tactics, finances, squad building, and the pressure of competition – that’s the fun of MFL, and what keeps me coming back for more.

Now, for the first time, you can do this without paying a penny upfront – that’s the premise behind MFL’s Trial Clubs. More than just a demo or teaser, they let you take the reins for a full season and experience the push for promotion, a cup run, transfers and negotiations. You get to learn the ropes risk-free and then decide after the season whether you want to lock in the club permanently, taking everything you’ve built with you.

Sounds great, right? Let’s see what it really looks like…

In the rest of this post, I’ll walk through setting up my own Trial Club – the fun parts, the frustrations, and everything in between.

Getting started

The first step is perhaps the most exciting of all – the reveal of your club’s location. It mirrors the minting process of a ‘real’ MFL club: a digital dice roll that spins across the map before landing somewhere in the world (complete with a slick little animation and some pumping tunes).

Mine landed on Kloten, Switzerland – which, naturally, I had to Google straight away (one thing about MFL: it’ll quietly expand your world geography as you play).

Next comes naming your club, choosing your colours, and generating a badge. When you buy a permanent club you can upload your own design, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from the AI-generated option – but I have to admit, I was impressed.

Meet MFC Mittelmässig.

Building a squad

There are some guidelines on how to build your squad – how many players you’ll need in each position to rotate effectively – but the real twist comes with the contract restrictions.

You can only:

• Use a maximum of 30% of your revenue share to sign players
• Offer up to 3% per contract, including match clauses
• Have no more than three contracts with the same Agent

You don’t face these kinds of limits in a standard club, so I was a bit nervous about how I’d build a competitive squad under them.

At first, I thought I’d breeze through the recruitment stage. After all, down in Flint, where all Trial Clubs begin, most players are expected to be lower rated, meaning Agents are usually happy to offer up players for minimal revenue share.

So I headed over to the Scouting tab to see who I might be able to loan in… and, well, it turned out not to be quite that easy. The player pool was much thinner than I expected – maybe because tons of other people were setting up their own Trial Clubs at the same time – and the players on auto-accept were looking pretty ropey. I picked up a few, then turned my attention to those open to offers instead.

Handily, if you open the Scouting tab from your club page, it defaults to showing only players with an accepted revenue share of 3% or less, so you don’t end up chasing players you can’t actually afford.

Finding enough players to build a team took some serious effort. I must’ve sent out three times as many offers as I got replies to – and probably half of those were declines anyway. Still, after a bit of persistence (and by adding some leftover players from my own agency), I managed to pull in a handful of solid signings.

It was clear this wasn’t going to be a squad of world-beaters, but after 24 hours I had 14 players through the door and still time to find a few more before the season kicks off. And who knows – maybe a few Agents will start getting desperate before the window closes and I can sneak in a couple of late deals.

What next?

Next up was setting my formations and tactics – and with that, my first go at Match Plans, the other big new addition to MFL this season. That’s always pretty fun to do – although I won’t know if any of it actually works until my players hit the pitch. Maybe I’ll line up a few friendlies in the meantime to see how things are shaping up.

Hopefully I’ll land in a well balanced league and not end up getting thrashed 6–0 every week by clubs running overpowered squads!

As much as possible, I’ve tried to approach this like a genuine new user. I haven’t reached out to anyone for cheap deals or inside help (except myself!). If it gets close to the start of the season and I’m still missing a bit of oomph, I might cave and buy in a couple of bargain players – but so far I’ve resisted. The whole idea of a Trial Club is to try before you buy, so it should be possible to play and have fun without spending a penny.

I’m not gonna lie, though, that’s starting to feel like a tough ask. Everything in MFL’s control – the club reveal, the branding, the animations – feels super fun and welcoming for new players. But once it shifts over to the community side, things get trickier. Trying to find ‘good enough’ players to loan from Agents who don’t respond to offers is a grind, and it definitely takes the shine off the early excitement. I do wonder if the 3% revenue share cap is just a bit too low (though I get why it’s there), or whether MFL could’ve given each Trial Club a small head start – maybe two or three Common players on loan, bought back from the market.

That said, I genuinely love that MFL is experimenting with ways to lower the barrier to entry. It’s smart, and it’s exactly what the game needs to attract new players. I’m just not totally convinced the current model is quite there yet – though to be fair, this is only the first iteration, and it’s already a big step forward.

If you’re serious about getting into MFL, I’d still recommend starting the traditional way – grab a club from the Marketplace if you don’t want to pay the higher cost of a new licence and jump straight in. But if you’re curious, or just want to get a feel for how it all works, a Trial Club is the perfect no-risk way to dip your toe in.

Ready to go? Make sure you use someone’s referral link to sign up – it helps them and it helps you (you get gifted a free Common player after your first pack purchase). You can find plenty posted online or feel free to use mine: https://app.playmfl.com/?referrer=3D7036

And if you want to learn more about how the game works before getting started, head over to my Beginners Guide.

Registrations for Season 9 close on Sunday 12th October – so get your club ready now, and have fun!