Keepy Court

Barry Bellows has the microphone and the sheepskin coat. Dot Doyle has forty caps, a mug of tea that went cold at half time, a club tracksuit she never gave back and opinions about your first touch. Between them is a pitch, and on it is you: a target man who has never lost a header, a winger who once outran a bus, a playmaker with a secret notebook, a destroyer, a keeper who plays out from the back like it's the beach, a poacher, or someone you built yourself out of a role and twenty-seven points.

Keepy Court is a football card brawler on dungeon-solitaire bones. Four cards come into the row and you play three. Their moves are red and have to be answered: meet them head on in a fifty-fifty, stop them with the right defence (a tackle won't stop a through ball, an interception won't stop a mazy run), or hack the ball out for a corner and live with it coming back at the end of the half. Your moves come from your own deck: short passes and long balls, one-twos and through balls, step-overs and nutmegs, crosses, headers, volleys, chips and screamers, slide tackles, blocks and diving saves. Where the ball is changes everything. Five zones from your box to theirs, and who has the ball, decide which of your cards work at all and what theirs turn into: the same blue card is a clearance in your box and a shot in theirs, and the same red card is a press when you're on the ball and a through ball when they are. Shots, penalties and saves are a timing duel: tap in the green. Fitness and stamina, yellow cards and red ones, knocks and the physio's magic spray, momentum, two halves on a clock, and extra time and penalty shoot-outs in the cups.

Between matches there is a career. Start in the Sunday league with Dynamo Sunday and take them (or a bigger club that comes calling) all the way to the Premier Division, the Champions' Cup and, if your country rings, a World Cup summer. Pick your fixtures, train to add cards to your deck, hire coaches and a physio, buy boots, kits and goal celebrations, sign with an agent (Auntie Pat, Sunny Del Rey or Max Megadeal, in rising order of percentage) and decide which transfers to take. Then fill the trophy cabinet before your knees file for retirement. The dark arts are dives and time-wasting, and the referee is watching. Score is career earnings.