Every day, Football IQ players try to name a footballer from their list of clubs (Career Path) or from a single transfer (Transfer Guess). Most days, most people get there. A few days, almost nobody does.

We went through every game finished in the Football IQ app in October 2026 to find the ones that beat almost everyone. The answers below are from games that are now in the archive, so nothing here spoils a game you can still play for free today.

How we counted. A game counts as solved if the player named the answer before running out of clues. We left out games with too few plays to give a fair figure. On average, players solved 43% of October's Career Path games and 71% of its Transfer Guess games, so anything far below those numbers was hard. One game (Career Path on 25 October) is left out because our answer check didn't accept a common version of the player's name, so its numbers say more about us than about our players. Website plays aren't stored per player, so these figures come from the app.

Career Path: the four hardest careers

Niko Kovač: solved by 3% of players, 27 October

The clues were all German or Austrian: Hertha Zehlendorf, Hertha BSC, Bayer Leverkusen, Hamburger SV, Bayern Munich, back to Hertha, then Red Bull Salzburg until 2009.

Players reached for the German stars of that era instead: Miroslav Klose was the most common wrong answer, followed by Michael Ballack, Thomas Müller, Lukas Podolski and Mario Götze.

The catch is that Kovač isn't German. He was born in West Berlin in 1971 and captained Croatia at the 2006 World Cup and Euro 2008. Most fans now know him as a manager: he won the DFB-Pokal with Eintracht Frankfurt in 2018 and a league and cup double with Bayern Munich in 2018–19. A career spent entirely in Germany and Austria hid a Croatia captain in plain sight.

Diego Tristán: solved by 5% of players, 6 October

Betis B, Mallorca, six seasons at Deportivo La Coruña, then a late tour of Mallorca again, Livorno, West Ham and Cádiz.

The wrong answers were the biggest Spanish names of the 2000s: Raúl, David Villa and Sergio Ramos were the most common, alongside Andrés Iniesta and Isco.

Tristán was one of the best strikers in Spain at his peak. He scored 77 league goals for Deportivo in 179 appearances, won the Pichichi as La Liga's top scorer in 2001–02 with 21 goals, and won the Copa del Rey that same season. He played 15 times for Spain and went to the 2002 World Cup. The West Ham spell, 14 league games in 2008–09, is the clue English fans should have spotted, but it came late in the list.

Ritsu Doan: solved by 8% of players, 12 October

Gamba Osaka, Groningen, PSV Eindhoven, a loan at Arminia Bielefeld, SC Freiburg, and Eintracht Frankfurt from 2025.

The wrong answers show that most players spotted a Japanese career. The trouble was choosing which player: Kaoru Mitoma was the most common wrong answer, then Takumi Minamino.

Doan, a right winger, has the World Cup moment that should have given him away. At the 2022 World Cup he came off the bench to score the equaliser against Germany and then the equaliser against Spain. Japan won both games 2–1.

Martin Petrov: solved by 8% of players, 9 October

Botev Vratsa, CSKA Sofia, Servette, VfL Wolfsburg, Atlético Madrid, Manchester City, Bolton Wanderers, Espanyol, and back to CSKA Sofia to finish in 2014.

The wrong answers show how people reasoned. Dimitar Berbatov was the Bulgaria answer. Edin Džeko and Aleksandar Kolarov were the Manchester City answers.

Petrov, a winger, was at City from 2007 to 2010 and at Bolton from 2010 to 2013, which is the stretch most English fans remember. The Servette and Wolfsburg years before that are what make his career so hard to place.

Transfer Guess: the three hardest transfers

Julian Draxler, Schalke to Wolfsburg, 2015: solved by nobody (0%), 25 October

The clue was a €36m move from Schalke 04 to VfL Wolfsburg in 2015. Not one player who finished this game named Draxler.

The most common wrong answers were Edin Džeko and Kevin De Bruyne, level with each other, and they explain the miss. They are the two players people remember from Wolfsburg: Džeko won the Bundesliga there in 2008–09, and De Bruyne played there from January 2014.

There's a neat twist in the timing. Manchester City announced De Bruyne's signing from Wolfsburg on 30 August 2015, and Draxler signed for Wolfsburg the next day. Draxler had been in Germany's 2014 World Cup-winning squad, and in 2017 he captained Germany to the Confederations Cup and won the Golden Ball as its best player. He left Wolfsburg for Paris Saint-Germain after a season and a half.

Nikola Vlašić, CSKA Moscow to West Ham, 2021: solved by 19% of players, 16 October

A third of players guessed Tomáš Souček, the most common wrong answer. Vladimír Coufal was next.

Both are Czech players West Ham signed from Slavia Prague in 2020. The nationality hint for this game, for anyone who used it, said Croatia.

Vlašić, an attacking midfielder, joined West Ham from CSKA Moscow on deadline day, 31 August 2021. He had started at Hajduk Split and had a spell at Everton. He moved to Torino on loan in 2022, and the move became permanent in 2023.

Sander Berge, Genk to Sheffield United, 2020: solved by 25% of players, 31 October

Berge became Sheffield United's record signing when he joined from Genk in January 2020. The wrong answers were spread widely. The most common was Martin Ødegaard, a fellow Norway midfielder, though that one wasn't close.

Berge, a defensive midfielder, has since played for Burnley (from 2023) and Fulham (from 2024).

And the easiest

For balance, the games almost everyone got:

  • Career Path, Raphinha (18 October): 91% solved. Vitória Guimarães, Sporting CP, Rennes, Leeds United, then Barcelona from 2022.
  • Transfer Guess, Dani Olmo (27 October): everyone solved it (100%). RB Leipzig to Barcelona in 2024, weeks after he was joint top scorer at Euro 2024, which Spain won.

What October tells us

Three patterns stood out.

  1. Players guess the famous name from the right place. For Wolfsburg people said Džeko and De Bruyne, for Spain Raúl and Villa, and for a Japanese winger Mitoma. The right answer was usually a player from the same place who is a little less famous.
  2. Nationality hides in plain sight. Kovač's career never leaves the German-speaking world, but he played for Croatia. When a career looks "too German" or "too Spanish", think about the players who moved there young.
  3. The familiar club can come late. Tristán's West Ham spell and Petrov's Bolton years were the parts of their careers English fans knew best, and both came near the end, after several clues that were harder to place.

Want to try the current games before they reach the archive? Play today's Career Path or today's Transfer Guess. We'll publish the hardest games of November at the start of December.

Sources