Installing Touchline

A Master League companion for Football Life 2026 · version 0.8.6

Touchline runs in its own window next to Football Life. It reads your Master League save and builds the world around it: players with opinions, a board with a memory, the press, your staff. You keep playing Football Life exactly as you always have.

This guide takes about ten minutes. You do not need to know anything technical.

1. Before you start

Check you have all of these:

Using a different version of Football Life? Touchline still works from your save: stories, inbox, records and so on. The live features, which read the game while it is running, only switch on for version 1.4. Nothing breaks; those panels just say they are waiting.

2. Install Touchline

1

Close Football Life

The installer adds files that Sider reads when the game starts, so make sure the game is not running.

2

Unzip the download

Find the file you downloaded, Touchline-0.8.6.zip. Right-click it and choose Extract All…, then Extract.

Open the folder that appears. Do not run anything from inside the zip itself; it will not work properly.

3

Run TouchlineSetup.exe

Double-click TouchlineSetup.exe.

Seeing “Windows protected your PC”? That appears for new programs that have not paid for a Microsoft signing certificate, which small community mods usually have not. Click More info, then Run anyway.

If your antivirus stops it, it is usually for the same reason. You can allow the file in your antivirus, or check it matches the fingerprint in SHA256SUMS.txt before you do.

4

Choose your Sider folder

Setup looks for it automatically, and it usually finds it. It is the folder that contains sider.exe, often called SiderAddons, next to your game.

If the box is empty or shows the wrong place, click Browse… and pick the folder that has sider.exe in it. Then click Review.

5

Read what it will do, then Install

Setup lists every change before it makes any. Click Install.

It will:

  • add a TouchlineCompanion folder with the Touchline program
  • add three small Sider scripts and switch them on in sider.ini
  • create Touchline's own data folder with some starter files

It never deletes anything, and never overwrites your own files. Before changing sider.ini it saves a copy called sider.ini.touchline-<date>.bak.

If Windows says setup is not allowed to write to the folder, close it, right-click TouchlineSetup.exe, choose Run as administrator, and try again.

3. Open it for the first time

1

Start Football Life and save your career

Start the game through Sider as usual, load your Master League career, and save it once. Touchline reads your saved game, so it needs a fresh save to begin.

2

Open Touchline

Go to your Sider folder, open TouchlineCompanion, and double-click Touchline.exe.

Tip: right-click Touchline.exe and choose Send to → Desktop (create shortcut) so it is one click away next time.

If Windows asks “Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device?”, that means your game is running as administrator, and Touchline needs the same level to read it. Click Yes to get live features. Clicking No is fine too; Touchline still works from your save.

3

Connect your career

Touchline shows a Career connection panel saying Connect this career. Click CAREER SETUP.

Choose one of these:

ChooseWhen
New careerThe first time you use Touchline with this save. Almost everyone picks this.
Continue this slot's existing Touchline careerYou have used Touchline with this save slot before.
Save As — linkYou saved your career into a different slot and want to keep its Touchline history.

Click CONNECT, then CONNECT again to confirm.

4

Let it take its starting snapshot

Touchline checks your club and date, then captures your squad as its starting point. Keep your career loaded in the game while it does. It takes a moment, and you do not need to click through any menus.

When the panel says Career connected, you are done.

4. Using it every day

  1. Start Football Life through Sider, as always.
  2. Open Touchline.
  3. Play your Master League. Save in the game after matches or when you move on in the calendar. Touchline updates from your saves.

Stories, messages from players, staff and the board, and press questions arrive as your career moves on. The Home page shows what happened while you were playing and what is waiting for you. Click any of its counters to jump straight there.

5. What it changes in your game

Almost everything Touchline does is reading. It never edits your save file. Football Life still writes that itself.

Two features make small changes to the running game, and both are switched on to start with. You are told about this inside Touchline the first time you open it.

FeatureWhat it doesTo switch off
Form arcsNudges a player's condition arrow one step for one match, when his story has earned it.Matchday → effects panel
CoachingRaises one attribute a player has worked on for months with a coach.Staff → the staff desk

Both only happen on Football Life 2026 version 1.4.

Your club budget

Touchline also has its own money: sponsors, staff and player bonuses. So that they are real, it adds or takes that money from your transfer and salary budgets in the running game. This is also on to start with.

WhenWhat happens to your budget
On its ownA sponsor or stadium partner pays when you complete its objective. Nothing is paid when you sign the deal.
On its ownA bonus a player earns under his Touchline contract comes off the salary budget.
On its own, only if you turn random events to enforced (they start off)A windfall adds money. A spending freeze holds your transfer budget and gives it back when the freeze ends.
When you press the buttonHiring staff takes the signing fee from the transfer budget and his wage from the salary budget, once.
When you press the buttonClaiming funds the board offers for a season target adds them.

Achievements never pay money; they only change how the board sees you. To stop all budget changes, press LIVE ECONOMY · ON on the Club screen so it reads OFF. Payments already earned wait until you turn it back on.

A few other things change the game only when you press the button yourself, such as putting a player on the transfer list or suspending him.

6. If something goes wrong

Setup cannot find my Sider folder

Click Browse… and choose the folder that contains sider.exe. If you are not sure where it is, look at the shortcut you use to start the game: right-click it, choose Open file location.

“Touchline could not find its content folder”

Run TouchlineSetup.exe again and point it at your Sider folder. It fixes this without touching your careers.

Connecting says it is waiting for the saved club and date

Save your career in Football Life, then click CHECK AGAIN. Touchline can only read a career that has been saved.

Live panels keep saying they are waiting
My antivirus removed Touchline.exe

Restore it from your antivirus quarantine and add it as an allowed program. Small unsigned programs are often flagged the first time they are seen.

Another Sider mod stopped working after installing

Setup switches off one mod, BudgetSetter.lua, because it changes the same part of the game as Touchline and the two together can crash it. Nothing else is switched off. To undo every sider.ini change, rename your backup sider.ini.touchline-<date>.bak back to sider.ini.

I want to back up my Touchline careers

Copy the folder content\ml-immersion\profiles inside your Sider folder. That holds everything Touchline knows about every career.

7. Updating

Download the new version, close Football Life and Touchline, and run the new TouchlineSetup.exe the same way. Your careers and settings are kept.

8. Removing Touchline

  1. Close Football Life and Touchline.
  2. In your Sider folder, delete the TouchlineCompanion folder.
  3. In the modules folder, delete MLRuntime.lua, MLImmersion.lua and MLRegenAliases.lua.
  4. Restore sider.ini from your backup, or open it in Notepad and delete the three lines that mention those files.
  5. Optionally, delete content\ml-immersion. That removes your Touchline careers too, so keep a copy if you might come back.