What Is the Agentic Football Cup? Train an AI Football Team With Plain-English Prompts

The Cup makes agent roles and decisions visible through play, using a football match as the setting rather than redefining Minds as a game. You choose players, write the instructions that guide their decisions and refine those instructions as the competition progresses.

How the competition works

You build a five-player squad from AI agents with football roles such as goalkeeper, defender, midfielder and forward. Rather than controlling every pass or movement, you write a playbook for how each player should approach the game. The match engine uses the agents' decisions to play matches automatically.

The official competition site presents the experience in four parts:

1. Register and receive competition updates.
2. Choose five AI players for your squad.
3. Write a plain-English playbook for each role.
4. Train the team, enter weekly matches and refine your tactics.

The format makes one team legible through distinct roles: each player has a job, each playbook sets priorities, and every role contributes to the same visible result.

What an AI-agent playbook does

A playbook is a set of instructions that guides how an agent should act in different situations. In the Agentic Football Cup, each playbook tells a player what to prioritise on the pitch. A defender might focus on protecting space and choosing a safe pass; a forward might focus on finding space near goal and deciding when to shoot.

A useful playbook makes five things clear:

• the role;
• the main objective;
• the priorities;
• how the role should react when conditions change; and
• how it works with the rest of the team.

Outside the Cup, the lesson is not that Minds is a game: a research, project or communications Mind becomes easier to direct when its role, priorities and limits are explicit. For a reusable framework, see How to Brief Your Mind.

Turn five playbooks into one team plan

Start with the shared objective before writing the individual instructions. Decide what the team should prioritise, then give every player a role that contributes to that plan. A goalkeeper's priorities should make sense alongside the defender's, midfielder's and forward's—not compete with them.

For a first draft, keep each playbook focused. Name the player's role, state the team objective it supports, list the situations that matter most and describe the decision the player should favour. After a match, revise the instruction that is least clear or least aligned with the team plan rather than rewriting every playbook at once.

Where Minds appears

The organisers describe the five football players as AI agents. The Assistant Coach is the part explicitly identified as a Mind. The competition site describes the Assistant Coach Mind as a personal AI agent from Minds by Animoca Brands, intended to help participants understand the event, work through tactical ideas and interpret information about their team and season.

This is a different job from the players on the pitch. The players act within a match; the Assistant Coach helps the human participant think through the wider competition and prepare the instructions that shape the team.

What the Cup shows about agents with distinct roles

Different roles can contribute to one outcome. A goalkeeper, defender and forward have distinct responsibilities, but the squad shares a goal.

Instructions shape decisions. A playbook gives each agent a practical frame for choosing what to do next. Clear priorities matter more than decorative language.

Coordination matters. The players' roles are connected, so the team needs a shared plan as well as individual instructions.

Feedback informs the next brief. Weekly matches give participants information about how their instructions played out. The next version can respond to what they observed rather than start from a blank page.

Before you register

The competition's schedule, eligibility and prizes are governed by the official Agentic Football Cup rules. Check the current rules before registering, then decide what kind of football your five-player team should play and give each role a clear job within that plan.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to code?

The public competition experience is presented around choosing players and writing playbooks in plain English. You shape how the team approaches a match through instructions rather than writing a traditional football game.

What should I do first?

Confirm that you are eligible, choose a team approach, and write a clear first playbook for each role.

Register for the Agentic Football Cup