# Starting 11

> Starting 11 is a free predicted-XI football game. Fans pick the starting eleven they think a manager will name for a given fixture, share it, and score points based on how close their XI is to the official lineup once it is announced. No account is needed to play.

Starting 11 covers the Premier League and major European leagues, plus the 2026 World Cup. The name reflects the core idea: you are predicting the eleven players who start, nothing more complicated than that.

## How it works

- Pick a fixture from the homepage, a club page, or a country page.
- Choose a formation and fill the eleven slots with the players you expect to start.
- Save before the deadline. You get a share link right away, and no account is required to predict.
- Once the manager names the official starting XI, each prediction is scored automatically.

## Scoring

- Your XI is compared to the official starting eleven once it is announced.
- Each correct player is worth one point, so a perfect prediction is 11 out of 11.
- Formation is tracked separately and does not add to the core prediction score.
- Substitutes who come on during the match do not count. Only the starting XI is scored.

## Deadlines and cutoff windows

- Predictions lock 120 minutes before kick-off by default, which is roughly when team news starts to circulate.
- A live countdown on the predict screen shows the exact deadline for each fixture.
- Some fixtures use a longer cutoff to stay ahead of early leaks, for example the FA Cup, World Cup ties, and end-of-season derbies.
- After the deadline a fixture becomes read-only. Late warm-up changes are scored against the originally announced XI, so they never cost a user points.

## Features

- Guest predictions with no signup required.
- Free accounts that save predictions to a profile and feed the leaderboards.
- Lineup alerts by email when a team you follow names its XI, including what changed since the last lineup, your score out of 11 and how you did against the crowd.
- Prediction result emails for any fixture you predict, even teams you do not follow, scored the moment the official XI is announced.
- A once-a-day prediction reminder before kick-off when a favourite club or country has a fixture you have not predicted yet.
- One-click unsubscribe in every email, plus per-channel email controls in your profile.
- Shareable lineup links that unfurl into a pitch image for X, WhatsApp, and Discord.
- A homepage activity feed and a crowd-consensus XI on club and fixture pages once enough fans have predicted, shown separately for each team in a fixture.
- A free embeddable crowd-XI widget for fan forums and sites, showing a club's predicted XI for the next fixture and inviting members to add their own pick, with no signup and nothing to maintain.
- Injury and suspension pages across the major leagues.
- Player pages with season-by-season career stats and a last-season availability profile showing how many games each player missed through injury.

## Data

- Fixtures, squads, player details, official lineups, and injury information come from a professional third-party sports-data provider, with a second independent source kept as a verification fallback.
- During transfer windows and pre-season, squad lists can briefly lag confirmed signings and loans, since clubs confirm moves before the data provider publishes them; the site shows a heads-up on the builder while a window is open.
- Starting 11 is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with any league, club, national team, or player.

## Key pages

- [Homepage](https://starting11.com/): live fixtures, recent predictions, and the activity feed.
- [World Cup 2026](https://starting11.com/world-cup): all 64 group-stage fixtures and qualified nations.
- [Make a prediction](https://starting11.com/create): the lineup builder.
- [Leaderboard](https://starting11.com/leaderboard): rankings by prediction accuracy.
- [Injuries and suspensions](https://starting11.com/injuries): current availability across the major leagues.
- [FAQ](https://starting11.com/faq): how the game works, scoring, deadlines, and accounts.
- [About](https://starting11.com/about): what Starting 11 is and who it is for.
- [What is Starting 11](https://starting11.com/what-is-starting-11): a plain explainer of the predicted-XI game and the crowd XI.
- [Partner program](https://starting11.com/partners): a free crowd-XI widget for fan forums and sites, with a club picker and an application form.

## Legal

- [Terms of Service](https://starting11.com/terms)
- [Privacy Policy](https://starting11.com/privacy): cookieless analytics, minimal data collection.