Ignacy:
Today I pay respect to the Player. We often complain that celebrities earn too much. We complain that they are spoiled, that they are doing stupid shit, that they lost form, or lost engagement, or whatever.

And then, once in a while, they prove they can play. We can still complain about their salaries, about their celebrity status, we can complain about many things, but we must agree on this one thing – they became celebrities because they can play.

In this situation yesterday, 999 out of 1000 players would kick the ball to score a goal. 673 would hit a defender. 247 would hit the goalkeeper. 13 would hit the goalpost. 62 would kick towards the sky, far from the goal, 3 would miss the ball, and Neymar would dive for a penalty.

And then there is Kevin De Bruyne, cold minded player, who ran into the penalty area, who made everyone think he is going to try to score, and then he passed the ball to another player who was in a better position.

Cold-minded brain with the perfect analysis of the situation on the pitch. That’s why Belgium scored, and 999 other teams would never score in that situation. That’s why Kevin earns that much.

Because when there is this one split second that defines the whole 90 minutes match, he makes a difference.

Thomas:
I believe it was 2016 that I decided to go for it.

For your information: I’m watching Belgium play Denmark right now, but I’m disappointed in our southern neighbors this time. 0 – 1 down, and boring lousy play. So I might as well type you a little story.

I had always been designing lighter games, such as UGO! and Tavern. I wanted to do something different. Something I really liked, without thinking of what would be commercially best. Not thousands of boxes, but only a couple of hundreds. Just to purely enjoy designing your own favorite kind of games.

I looked at my Kallax. It was full of more complex games and mostly solo. I looked at my pc. It got too old to do any of the newest games. I’ve always been inspired by pc games for my designs. What complex game would I really enjoy as a board game? Of course. It had to be a football manager. And it had to be solo. I published the game myself. Only 100 copies were made at first. I didn’t have to do anything! People told each other the game was good. Soon I did another 100 copies. The game stayed the same, but the quality got better. Again, they went all over the world.

One thing I was surprised about was the love of football in the US. I’m sure most of the games were played over there.

BGG said people still wanted the game. At a certain point, there were more people wanting it than having it. But I really wanted to do something different. And I already had sent a copy to Ignacy because I was convinced it fits Portal Games like a Polish football jersey.

In the meantime, I started my next project, ‘Everything Lost’, the same way. Never change a winning team. Although it’s a big cliche quote, this one proved right. (You should check it on BGG:-) )

But then I got this e-mail from Ignacy. It was very short. Something like:

“We really like your game. We want to publish it worldwide.”

From there, it all started. Eleven was born.

And I can assure you if you thought Club Stories (which was the original name) was good, Eleven takes it off from there. It will be playable solo and competitive multiplayer. It takes the good things of Club Stories and puts new layers on top of it.

I’m sure you will enjoy it.

In the meantime, I see the referee blowing his final whistle. A 2 – 1 win for Belgium. It’s not always necessary to play well to win a game. Mmm… did we add this in Eleven?

Thomas Jansen is the designer of Eleven: the football manager game. Ignacy Trzewiczek is the developer of the game. They both will share their thoughts about EuroCup 2021 and also talk about the design or development of Eleven. Be with them every day during Euro! If you like football and board games, please, share the news about Eleven!

You can learn more about Eleven HERE!