WE ARE FOOTBALL 2027: Difficulty Settings and Career Start Options

Every save in WE ARE FOOTBALL 2027 opens on one screen before you see a single menu: “Was trauen Sie sich zu?” — literally, what do you dare to take on? This is where the game asks how hard you want your career to be, and it does so with more depth than a simple easy/normal/hard pick. Ten separate lines are set at once, and each one quietly shapes your whole save.

One screen, four presets

The screen offers four tabs across the top: Leicht (easy), Normal, Schwierig (hard) and Individuell (custom). A preset ticks one column across all ten lines, and the headline switches between “Schwierigkeitsgrad Leicht”, “Schwierigkeitsgrad Normal” and so on as you click. Every line offers exactly three values arranged from gentle to brutal, so the hard preset simply stacks the right-hand column in every row.

The ten lines at a glance:

The tutorial’s own choice is the Normal tab as a base, with the plan to adjust single lines afterwards rather than accepting a whole preset blindly.

That is exactly what Individuell is for: every line keeps its own checkmark, so a custom profile can pair instant construction with tough negotiations and low job security if you want that mix.

Budgets, grounds and construction times

The Budgets row does double duty. Groß, Mittel and Gering set how much money you start with, and a second dropdown underneath decides how the money is organised. Normal presets it to Getrenntes Transfer- und Vereinsbudget — a split between the transfer budget, which also carries player salaries, and the club budget, which pays for construction and the club grounds. Leicht simplifies this to Nur ein Budget, one big pot for everything, and the presenter mentions a third option that removes budgets entirely for anyone who wants to play without money pressure at all.

Clubgelände looks like a map-size slider, but it is not. The presenter asked Gerald Köhler directly and got a clear answer: the area is always the same size — the line decides how developed your facilities already are at kickoff. On the friendly end even a small Oberliga club starts with roughly three training pitches; on the harsh end a Champions League participant makes do with a single pitch and builds everything itself. If you plan to grow a ground from scratch, pair a low setting here with the advice in our stadium expansion guide.

Then there is Bauzeiten. Keine means the moment you confirm a construction, it is finished; Kurz shortens the waits; and the third option is genuinely labelled Berlin — presumably the game’s nod to a certain famously delayed airport project. Instant construction is also the one line the tutorial intends to flip for a test save after starting on Normal.

Transfer market, negotiations and scouting

Härte Transfermarkt sets how clubs treat you at the table. On Hoch you pay outrageously inflated fees for any player you want and recoup almost nothing when selling; on Mittel it stays reasonably balanced; on Leicht you can trade up and down freely. Verhandlungen works the same way for individual talks — on Hart, counterparts simply refuse, and the tutorial shows a deal collapsing over something as small as removing an exit clause. Both lines feed directly into the routines in our transfer market guide.

Wichtigkeit Scouting decides how much of the world you are allowed to know. Unnötig reveals every player immediately — by everything, the presenter means everything. Normal asks you to scout a little, while Essenziell turns you into a permanent detective: weeks, months, years of scouting before a player’s numbers are fully known.

Job security, training gains and injuries

Jobsicherheit is your sack risk. Hoch means you effectively keep the job, Normal behaves as expected, and Gering is hardcore — in the presenter’s telling, three lost games and you are job hunting. He recounts a WE ARE FOOTBALL 2024 save on a hard setting where his season goal was 15th place out of 18, he finished 12th, and the board still turned on him over a single defeat. How the board tracks exactly this kind of judgement — and how optional Vorstandsaufgaben act as their own difficulty layer — is covered in our board expectations guide.

Erfolgreiches Training scales how fast your players actually improve: on Hart, ability growth crawls along, while Leicht trains everyone up quickly. Verletzungschance is exactly what it says — the presenter considers Normal the sweet spot, calls Hoch hardcore because a third of your squad is permanently in the treatment room, and finds Gering almost injury-free. What the medical department can still do about the injuries that do happen is explained in the medical and injuries guide.

Player fines: the line even veterans get wrong

Hilfe bei Strafen für Spieler is, according to the tutorial, the sneaky hardest setting in the game. The options are Viel, Wenig and Keine — how much help the game gives you when picking a punishment. The presenter has 1,400 hours in the predecessor and still plays with Wenig, because both failure modes sting: with lots of help, a wrongly picked 50-euro fine leaves the player deeply disappointed, his relationship never turns green again and selling him becomes the only option. With too little help, the culprit laughs and the squad turns angry because he got off far too lightly. He openly admits he still cannot consistently pick the right punishment — and on a hard save this friction may well be intended. Since fines land directly on squad mood, the dynamics in the morale and satisfaction guide show you what you are gambling with.

Choosing your start country and league

Confirm the difficulty screen and the game asks “Wie möchten Sie spielen?” — six tiles from Weltmeisterschaft and Europameisterschaft to Vereinsgründung, Karriere, Vereinsauswahl and Zuschauermodus, with the Startland dropdown sitting above them. What each card means and how a career actually unfolds once you have picked one is the subject of the career mode and game modes guide. This walkthrough follows Verein selbst wählen, the free club choice; the tournament tiles are one-off affairs where the save ends when the final whistle blows, and found clubs start in the lowest league with sacking switched off by design.

Every country in the database is a valid Startland, and the choice is a genuine difficulty lever. The presenter’s tip: a country with a single strong league makes life easier — his example is Mexico, where finishing near the top means continental football in the North American Champions League. That competition pays far less than the European one, but, as he puts it, it is about the titles. A strong league in a smaller footballing nation is also the classic entry point for a hexagon-challenge style career.

Clicking a country opens its profile: the number of leagues and clubs, the national team with kit and records, climate data down to rainy days per year, the five-year ranking — and the Talentpool, which for Germany reads “Sehr groß”. Young-player hunters should treat that line as part of the difficulty calculation.

The club table and the sackings switch

The club selection screen, “Die erste Station einer großen Karriere”, lists every club of your chosen league with columns for Teamstärke (star rating), Ansehen (reputation bar), Kontostand, squad market value and Stadionkapazität. Two dropdowns up top — Land auswählen and Liga auswählen — swap the whole table to another country or division at will.

The right-hand card previews the highlighted club in detail — league and current table place, trophy cabinet, squad size, average strength, best player, biggest talent, most valuable player — as the Monterrey example shows, complete with a squad value of 130 million euro.

Between the table and the card sits a panel that is easy to miss: Entlassungen, with the toggle Mit Entlassungen spielen. Switch it off and you can never be dismissed. The presenter’s advice is aimed at fan saves: if you are a Dortmund supporter who wants to make Dortmund great, take Dortmund, turn sackings off and play your club forever — no dismissal will ever force you out. Anyone who prefers the pressure keeps it on, and the intermediate route is the high Jobsicherheit line from the difficulty screen. Whichever you choose, the budget realities waiting inside the club are the same ones covered in our wage budget guide.

Your first contract before kick-off

Pick a club and the Vertragsangebot arrives. The Dortmund offer in the tutorial reads: contract until the end of the 2027/2028 season, 150,000 euro salary, plus a season-goal bonus, a title bonus and a signing fee (Handgeld). Below sit four wishes you can toggle — a contract one year shorter, one year longer, the right to leave whenever you want in the final contract year, and 100 percent instead of 50 percent of the remaining salary after a dismissal — with the catch that your manager level only allows one of them.

The presenter turns the exit clause on, accepts, answers the national-team question, checks into the hotel and receives his equipment points — then come the budget and TV-money negotiations, shirt design, assistant choices, the team’s style of play, a chat with the board and the squad numbers, and the season begins. If you want to squeeze more out of that first deal, the levers are the same ones used all career long in the contract negotiations guide, and the beginner guide takes over from the first training session.