Classic ladder guide: two clubs, one shared player

Guide · Classic ladder

Classic ladder is one of Goal Bonito's solo modes: each step shows two clubs, and you have to name a player who wore both shirts before the clock runs out. This guide covers the rules, how your score is worked out, and how to pull the right name out of your memory when the steps get hard.

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How a step works

On the home screen tap Single player, then Classic ladder. You choose a club pool and an era first, then tap Start and the first step opens. Two clubs sit in the middle of the screen. Start typing a player who played for both; suggestions appear after two letters, and tapping the right person sends your answer. Get it right and you bank the points and climb to the next step.

Unlike an online match there is no opponent here: your only rival is the clock. The first time you open the mode a short "How to play" walkthrough appears, and "Don't show again" hides it from then on.

Time, lives and wrong answers

• You have 3 lives. If time runs out on a step you lose a life, that step is gone and you move on to the next one. When your lives are gone, the run is over.
• A wrong guess costs no life. A wrong name is simply ruled out for that step: it turns grey in the suggestion list, marked "ruled out". There is no lockout and no penalty, so guess as often as you like. The only cost is time: the clock keeps running and your speed bonus shrinks.
• The clock gets shorter. The first five steps give you 20 seconds; every five steps you lose 2 seconds, down to a floor of 10 seconds.
• The ladder has a top. A run has at most 27 steps. Clear them all and the run ends, even with lives to spare.

How points work

Every correct answer is worth two things added together: the step's base points and a speed bonus. Base points rise as you climb. The speed bonus is 5 points for every full second left on the clock when you answer. Answer step 3 with 12 seconds left and you get 100 + 60 = 160; answer step 14 with 5 seconds left and you get 160 + 25 = 185.

The shared-player numbers are targets: if no pair fits the range, the game relaxes it a little, but every pair always has at least one correct answer. When time runs out you score nothing for that step, yet you still climb, so a lost life doesn't lower the base points of the steps that follow.

How the steps get harder

Difficulty rises in three ways. First, the clubs: the ladder opens with the best-known clubs and drops a notch with each step. The two clubs are always at a similar level, so early giants give way to clubs you hear about far less often, and now and then a step from the previous level slips back in. Second, the shared players: generous pairs first, then pairs you could count on one hand. Third, the clock. A club appears only once per run, so if Real Madrid turned up on step one, you won't see them again that run. Clubs that no longer exist are marked with a small clock icon by their name.

Choosing a scope and an era

Before each run you make two choices. The scope decides which clubs can appear on the steps:

• All clubs: clubs from every country and every level. The widest and most surprising pool.
• Top flights: only clubs from each country's top division.
• Big 5 leagues: England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France.
• One league: pick the top league of one of 20 countries (Premier League, LaLiga, Serie A, Süper Lig and more). The pool is every club with at least three seasons in that league, wherever it plays today. The ladder starts with the league's biggest names and works down to its lesser-known clubs.

The scope only chooses the clubs. If the player you type played for both clubs, the answer is right, whatever other leagues he played in.

The era filters the players. Pick one or more of the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s; only players with at least one appearance in those decades count, and only they show up in the suggestions. Pairs are built the same way. Say Real Madrid and Juventus come up: with only the 2020s selected, Cristiano Ronaldo is a correct answer but Zinédine Zidane is not; with only the 90s selected, it's the other way round.

Your best score is kept per mode and shown on the setup screen; switching scope or era doesn't start a separate record.

The end-of-run card

When the run ends, a result card opens. At the top are your score and how many steps you climbed, with "New record" if you beat your best, or your best score if you didn't. Below that are two boxes:

• The one that got you: the two clubs on the step that cost your last life. If you clear the whole ladder, this box doesn't appear.
• Did you know?: how many players wore both shirts, with the five best known. Tap "See all" for the longer list. It's the best way to learn the answer you missed and keep it for next time.

Share sends your result to WhatsApp or X, copies a link, or shares the card as an image. The message includes the question that got you, without the answer, so your friends start racking their brains too. Play again builds a fresh ladder; the clubs are different every run.

Strategy: how to think when two clubs appear

Start from the smaller club

If one club is less famous, start your search there. A big club has had hundreds of players; at the smaller one you probably remember only a handful. Take those names one by one and ask, "Did he also play for the big club?" And never give up because a pair looks impossible: every Classic ladder pair has at least one answer.

Go decade by decade

Run a timeline in your head: who moved between these two clubs in the 90s, who in the 2000s, who in the 2010s? Asking the same question era by era gets you there much faster than firing off random names.

Use country and league links

Some clubs have well-worn paths between them. Dutch players go from Ajax to Barcelona: Frank and Ronald de Boer, Frenkie de Jong. Look at the clubs' countries and think of who moved between those two countries. City rivals can surprise you too: Hakan Çalhanoğlu played for Milan, then for Inter.

Loans, returns and late-career moves

Loan spells count. Michy Batshuayi joined Beşiktaş on loan from Chelsea, yet he is a correct answer for Beşiktaş and Fenerbahçe. Players who went back to an old club near the end of their careers are easy to forget as well.

Don't forget goalkeepers and defenders

Your memory reaches for strikers first, but goalkeepers and centre-backs move clubs too. For Barcelona and Ajax, goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen is correct; for Arsenal and Barcelona, so are Wojciech Szczęsny and Thomas Vermaelen.

Use the suggestions without wasting time

You don't need the full name; three or four letters of the surname usually do. Accents don't matter: typing "belozoglu" finds Emre Belözoğlu. From three letters on, players linked to either club on screen move up the list, whether they played for one of them or both, so the list never gives the answer away; use it to confirm a name you already have in mind. When several players share a name, check the birth year and nationality on the row (there is more than one footballer called Burak Yılmaz). Tap the wrong one and only that player is ruled out.

When to take a quick guess

Because a wrong answer costs no life, trying a name you're half sure of straight away is usually the right call: if it's right the speed bonus is big, if not you lose a few seconds. If you're into the last seconds and still have nothing certain, type your most likely name anyway; when the clock hits zero the life is gone regardless.

Worked examples

Real Madrid × Juventus

Transfers between these two giants have flowed both ways, and they share around fifteen players. Start with the big moves and their direction. From Juventus to Real Madrid: Zinédine Zidane, and centre-back Fabio Cannavaro in the summer of 2006. From Real Madrid to Juventus: Cristiano Ronaldo in 2018. Gonzalo Higuaín made the same trip with a stop at Napoli in between. Routes with a stopover are easy to miss, so keep them in the back of your mind.

Arsenal × Barcelona

Think of a two-way corridor. From Arsenal to Barcelona: Thierry Henry, Cesc Fàbregas, Thomas Vermaelen. From Barcelona to Arsenal: Alexis Sánchez. Goalkeeper Wojciech Szczęsny didn't go directly: he left Arsenal for Juventus and signed for Barcelona years later. Another club in between doesn't spoil the answer; what matters is that he wore both shirts.

Beşiktaş × Porto

Only a single-digit number of shared players, so every name counts. The clue is the country: Portugal. Pepe left Porto for Real Madrid, played for Beşiktaş and went back to Porto at the end of his career. Ricardo Quaresma went back and forth between the two, with other stops along the way: Porto, Beşiktaş, Porto again, Beşiktaş again. There is a non-Portuguese example too: Vincent Aboubakar was loaned from Porto to Beşiktaş and later returned to Beşiktaş twice more.

Galatasaray × Fenerbahçe

The great Istanbul rivals share far more players than you might think; the game's database has dozens. Work through the eras: Tanju Çolak joined Galatasaray in the late 80s and moved to Fenerbahçe in the early 90s; Emre Belözoğlu came through at Galatasaray and reached Fenerbahçe after spells at Inter and Newcastle; more recently Michy Batshuayi crossed from Fenerbahçe to Galatasaray, and Kerem Aktürkoğlu went from Galatasaray to Fenerbahçe by way of Benfica.

More guides

In an online match you and your opponent pick the clubs; for that side of the game see the 3-2-1 online match strategy guide. More hand-picked examples of players who wore both shirts are on the Played for both clubs page. For the other solo modes read the Career path and This or that guides, and for everything else there is the FAQ. If you spot a missing player, write to destek@goalbonito.com.