Expert Needed: Fix Fifa 17 Ultimate Team Private Server Match Kick-off & Reporting

We run a private FIFA 17 Ultimate Team server ("Reborn") - a from-scratch reimplementation of EA's Blaze protocol (Gamemanager, tdf) plus the fut http api. We need online 1v1 matches to actually kick off and finish.

Where we are: matchmaking already pairs two real clients. Both get NotifyGameSetup, join, and the game reaches GameState 130 (PRE_GAME) then 131 (IN_GAME). Every client reports exip=0 (it only knows its lan address), so we route game traffic through a udp relay on our server - that works: both peers are learned, mesh telemetry (cmd 171) shows 30-43ms, zero loss.

Where it stops: both clients hang on the kit-select screen and never kick off. POST /match/ready is never called, every match ends matchId:0 / endReason "DNF", and no GameReporting (component 28) traffic ever appears. Working theory: an incomplete notification set - we never send NotifyPlayerJoining (4/21), NotifyJoiningPlayerInitiateConnections (4/22), NotifyPlatformHostInitialized (4/71) or NotifyGameReportingIdChange (4/113), so no GRID is issued and the client may never treat its mesh as announced.

Goal: two real clients on our servers matchmake, kick off, play a full 1v1 match, and both get a result reported back with rewards - repeatable, and safe for concurrent users, not just one pair.

Skills and experience needed:
- Hands-on EA Blaze experience (Blaze 3, GameManager, TDF encoding, notification sequencing). Prior work on fifa / nhl / battlefield private servers is what we're really after.
- Python (our stack), plus comfort reading C# reference implementations.
- udp, nat traversal and relay networking; peer-hosted (ntop=130) topologies.
- Packet analysis and binary re (ida/ghidra/x64dbg) to confirm what the retail client expects.
- Able to work on a live Linux server over SSH and prove the fix end-to-end with two real clients.

If you have taken a Blaze-era EA title to kickoff and a recorded result on a custom server, lead with that - it matters more than anything else.