Wrong answers cost a life, and the run is over when the lives are gone. Correct answers build your streak — so the game is a survival run rather than a fixed number of questions.

Why does it feel easy at the start?

Because it is. The opening pairs are deliberately lopsided as a warm-up, and the margins tighten as your streak grows. By the time you're deep into a run you're splitting two players separated by a handful of goals, often from an era you half remember.

Any way to improve beyond just knowing more?

Favour the player with the longer career when the pair look close. Most of these stats are cumulative, so availability quietly beats peak quality — the flashier name is the classic trap once the margins narrow.

What changes when a second player joins?

It becomes Tug of War. You alternate calls on a shared rope and every correct answer drags it toward your end, so it's first to pull it home rather than a race on separate streaks.

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Head to Head

Pick whoever ranks higher. Keep the streak.

Head to Head is the simplest question in football, asked over and over: of these two players, who has more? More Premier League goals, more caps, more appearances — you're shown a pair, you back one, and the truth is revealed on the spot. Right answers build a streak; wrong ones cost a life, and when the lives are gone, the run is over.

It starts generous — pairs so lopsided they're a warm-up — and tightens as your streak grows, until you're splitting two strikers separated by a handful of goals from fifteen years ago. That ramp is the whole game: the longer you survive, the less your certainty is worth.

With two of you it becomes Tug of War: alternate calls on a shared rope, every correct answer dragging it toward your end. First to pull it home wins, and there is no dignity in losing it.

How to play

Two players face off — tap whoever ranks higher on the stat.
Every right call extends your streak, and the next pair gets closer.
Three wrong calls and the run ends.

From the coach
Back your gut — bigger number wins. Keep the streak rolling and the pairs get tighter every round.

Free to play in your browser — no download, no sign-up — and every round is built from real player and season data. More about the app and the dataset.

Where to start

Pick a competition you know deeply rather than one you know broadly. This game asks for comparisons rather than recall, and a shallow familiarity with a big league produces confident wrong answers, which are the expensive kind. A division you have watched properly for years will carry you much further into a streak than one you only know the headline names from.

For a first run, treat the early pairs as a warm-up and pay attention to the moment the gaps start closing — that transition is the whole game and it arrives sooner than most people expect. When the run ends, the useful question is not which player you got wrong but which assumption did it: better player, wrong competition, or simply not knowing how long somebody stayed.

How to get better at Head to Head

The pairs get closer as the streak grows, so the round has two distinct phases and they reward opposite behaviour. Early on the gaps are wide and the answer is obvious; take those quickly and without deliberation, because thinking about them buys you nothing. Save your attention for the point where the two names are genuinely comparable, which is where the run will actually end.

When the pair is close, stop comparing players and start comparing careers. The board asks which of two totals is bigger, and a total is a product of rate and longevity. The more celebrated player is frequently the one with the higher rate and the shorter career, which means the correct answer is often the name that feels less impressive. Ask how many seasons each of them spent in the competition on screen before you ask which of them you would rather have watched.

Hold the competition filter in mind throughout. The stat belongs to the competition shown and to nothing else, so a player with a monumental international record or a decade abroad brings none of it with them onto this board. A great many wrong calls are made by backing a career total that was accumulated somewhere the board is not looking.

Where rounds get lost

Backing the better player — The question is which number is larger, not which player you would pick. These come apart constantly once the pairs tighten, and the instinct to reward quality is the single most reliable way to lose a streak.
Importing the wrong competition — European nights and international caps do not count toward a league total. A player who is famous for what they did in one competition is easy to over-rate in another.
Tilt — The run rarely ends on the first mistake — it ends a couple of calls later, made in a hurry by someone who has stopped thinking. The pairs are at their hardest precisely when your streak is at its longest, so slow down as the round gets deeper, not up.

Common questions

How does a run end?: Wrong answers cost a life, and the run is over when the lives are gone. Correct answers build your streak — so the game is a survival run rather than a fixed number of questions.
Why does it feel easy at the start?: Because it is. The opening pairs are deliberately lopsided as a warm-up, and the margins tighten as your streak grows. By the time you're deep into a run you're splitting two players separated by a handful of goals, often from an era you half remember.
Any way to improve beyond just knowing more?: Favour the player with the longer career when the pair look close. Most of these stats are cumulative, so availability quietly beats peak quality — the flashier name is the classic trap once the margins narrow.
What changes when a second player joins?: It becomes Tug of War. You alternate calls on a shared rope and every correct answer drags it toward your end, so it's first to pull it home rather than a race on separate streaks.

It’s you if "he never scored more than Shearer" is a sentence you've said with total confidence.

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