Feature - A FIFA Life

This is the story of a goal. And not even a terribly good goal at that. But to tell this story properly, we need to step back into the mists of time.

I've never been a terribly big football fan, although it's been growing on me recently. Generally I prefer American sports, the NBA and NFL especially, and I've only watched about five full football matches in the past ten years. I've tried Football Manager several times, theorising that it's so far removed from actually having to watch football I might enjoy it, but the series has remained impenetrable despite my numerous attempts at decoding it. So when I started playing FIFA 11 with my brother all the way back in 2010, I had no idea what was going on.



Having grown up in the UK I of course knew all the rules and sort of knew who the good teams were and who the best players were. Not well enough to not immediately go for my once-supported team of Liverpool (rocking Fernando Torres, an old Steven Gerrard and... nobody else). Predictably I was annihilated by my brother, playing as the ludicrous AC Milan (with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Ronaldinho) in a game almost entirely weighted towards strength, speed and finesse.

I'm not sure I ever actually won a game of FIFA 11 back when we first started playing. Eventually I got good enough to not lose too badly, scraping out 1-0 or 2-0 defeats, and occasionally managing to force a draw. Playing was an exercise in frustration most of the time, and it was a fairly unique situation for me. Usually I take to games extremely quickly, and generally speaking I'm pretty good at most games. But something about FIFA stopped me from ever really getting a grasp on how to play. My main problem was certainly finishing, and I struggled to score goals at all (just like Liverpool really), and the ones I did were generally poor efforts that took a lucky bounce. None of this was aided of course by my brother's obstinate refusal to ever play down to my level, or to ever not play with a good team. In the end this approach paid off, but for a long time I did nothing but lose night after night...

Needless to say there were many evenings when I would simply refuse to play at all, or else request we play NHL (a game I still lost at but could at least enjoy), or NBA 2k (one of the greatest games of all time). But still we would eventually come back to FIFA, and the losing streak would continue.

Eventually FIFA 12 rolled around, and not a lot changed really. My brother switched from mainly playing AC Milan to Napoli, a team so overpowered it should probably have been banned. Of course we would still occasionally play the 'Halliday Classico' of Milan versus Liverpool, but more commonly it would be his Napolese team (with the insanely powerful Cavani and the also ridiculous Hamsik) destroying my poor Liverpudlians (now sporting the wonderfully terrible Andy Carroll up front). Despite the continued domination, FIFA 12 was where our rivalry was really born. I would still rage quit every now and then, still refuse to play some evenings, but it was certainly the game which created the majority of our sayings and tactics.

'The T pass' was born due to my propensity for accidentally passing out of bounds, along with 'The Joe Dribble' as he got a little too fancy and took it out himself. 'The T Goal' was also created, thanks in a large part to Andy Carroll, as the only way I could ever score would be some terrible, stumbling goal which somehow tricked the keeper and ended up in the net. Maybe the most memorable was one where Carroll so terribly misjudged a kick from just inside the box, that the ball moved so slowly that the keeper didn't even react until it was already across the line.  'Rampaging Zlat' became the new phrase to strike fear into my soul, as his combination of pace, strength, skill and scoring made him almost impossible to stop, including an infamous six goal outing from the Great Man. It was also the period where we began to figure out how the other would play, and 3-0 defeats became infrequent, 0-0, 1-0 or 1-1 the new norm.

We skipped FIFA 13 for many years (eventually I picked it up on PC during a sale), as broken as 12 was it was enormous fun, with players able to score at will from the so-called 'O'Brien Zone' (named after one of my brother's friends), and lofted through-balls being considered a dirty play because they were so hard to stop.

14 was perhaps the first time we achieved something even resembling a parity in terms of skill. I transferred from Liverpool to the now-slightly-less-amazing Napoli (with the poor Higuain up front and the still rather effective Hamsik at CAM), and my brother from the now-terrible AC Milan to the ludicrously overpowered Paris Saint-Germain (with Ibra and Cavani, as well as a host of other top-tier players). Joe still won at something resembling a 7:1 rate, but draws became even more frequent, to the point that they became the new norm, and extra time a normal part of play. Very rarely would he ever manage to beat me by more than two goals (unless I had a total meltdown), and even Ibra was relatively curtailed, scoring only once every game instead of multiple times.

We were playing such a ridiculous amount (about two or three hours every night), due to my being on holiday and Joe looking for a job, that it eventually wasn't enough to play with the default teams any more. And so was born the FIFA fantasy draft.

In a snake format (first player picks, then second gets two, then first gets two, etc.) we would draft a team of sixteen players, from all leagues and all teams. Joe got the first pick and, to nobody's surprise, took Ibra. I got Messi and Ronaldo. Pick after pick our strategies became apparent. Joe had a far more in depth knowledge of FIFA than I did at the time, and took a team based around pace and strength, where mine was built more around skill I had no idea how to use properly. Predictably Joe still won more than I did, but the ratio dropped to closer to 3:1, maybe even 2:1.

Finally, after three years of FIFA I'd learned how to score. Not consistently, and often not terribly convincingly, but now I could actually compete.

The fantasy teams essentially destroyed FIFA for us. There was no longer any joy in having to play with teams containing a couple of superstars and a bunch of idiots, not after you've tasted the delights of having eleven of the best players in the world on your team. There was also the added bonus of playing with teams you wouldn't do normally because they had cool stadiums, and so began the Boca Juniors/Team América rivalry.

That wasn't the only thing which changed as a result of the draft. 'Bloody Suarez' became my new catchphrase, as I regretted over and over that I'd taken Suarez up front, who generally lost the ball as soon as he looked at it and couldn't pass. Over the course of 14 I tried about six different strikers, eventually settling on Lewandoski because at least he was fast. Celebrations also became more ridiculous and outrageous, as every goal meant a lot more. You hadn't simply scored, you'd proven that the team you drafted was better than your opponent's. Crazy formations started appearing, with three at the back or four up front (both of which became the norm for myself and my brother respectively). It got to such a point where other people who came round simply couldn't play with our fantasy teams. They'd essentially become an extension of the way we played the game, and the bizarre formations and strange player choices made sense only to us.

And through it all, the reign of King Zlat the Destoyer continued. Goal after goal, game after game, he humiliated one of the greatest defences ever seen in the history of football. I'm not convinced any other player on Joe's team scored more than a tenth of the goals that Zlatan did.

Eventually the PS4 rolled around, as did FIFA 15. My brother moved to Birmingham, so our play time drastically reduced. The Halliday Classico was now essentially defunct, as neither Liverpool nor AC Milan had anything going for them, and the New Classico (Napoli/PSG) became the go-to game.

But it was never enough for either of us. We had the bug of fantasy teams now, and we couldn't get our fix from playing with default teams. Before long I visited his flat and we drafted again, with him as Ajax and me as Shakhtar Donetsk. This time I had a proper strategy planned out. When I arrived my brother revealed he'd been putting different teams together to 'see how they looked'. This would truly be the big draft. I got first pick, but took Messi (unbelievable in FIFA 15) over Ibra (who'd struggled (relatively speaking) for Joe at PSG to that point). Joe took his boy and Ronaldo, forming a formidable strike force. By the end of the draft I'd realised something.

"Hang on a minute, we've just drafted each other's teams from last year!"

Sure enough, my team consisted of Neymar, Touré and Lahm, my brother had Xavi, Iniesta and Ronaldo. Maybe this is the best evidence for how totally geared we were to playing against one another, that after all that time we'd essentially concluded that the other team had exactly what we needed to win.

This time we recorded our results on a spreadsheet, to definitively prove who the superior player was, as well as who the top scorer was. Whilst we never played as much 15 as we did the previous version due to circumstances, we still racked up a fair few games. And after four years of one-sided drubbings, we'd finally reached a parity in skill level.

Of course, all that meant was we needed to raise the bar again, and so Pink Slip matches began.

He and I would each offer up a player of equal skill level, and whoever won in a two-leg series would take the opposition's player. Our first Pink Slip was over Yaya Touré from my team and Xavi from Joe's. I lost, but it wasn't a huge deal, Touré hadn't been too fantastic on my team and was essentially just taking up space, but the precedent had been set.

Unfortunately for Joe, in his victory his defeat had been assured. With no more Touré I was forced to change formation, starting an aggressive centre attacking-mid along with two more standardised midfielders. In order to facilitate the change though I had to employ someone from my bench, a little known player by the name of Bastian Schweinsteiger. To this point in the game my formation hadn't really fit him, so he'd seen very little use, but suddenly he became a dominant force on the pitch. In a few short games he became my leading scorer, and second leading overall behind Zlatan. His combination of being really tall and really strong made him a fantastic threat in the air. Combined with Neymar's pace on the left wing, Di Maria at midfield and Rooney up front, Schweinsteiger blossomed into the most dominant player in the game.

Not long after my brother was looking for a new player, hoping to find someone who could tip the balance back in his favour. During these searches he happened across Marco Reus. Now Reus has a FIFA rating of 86, but the ratings are slightly strange on most players. Certain stats, pace and strength especially, are given greater weighting than others, hence why Aubameyang is an 80+ rated player when all he can do is run really fast. Reus is a true 86 though, every stat that counted in the 80+ range, a rare occurence in FIFA, and a true great player in the game.

After much squabbling we decided that the only fair way to decide who got him would be a two leg series, a Pink Slip match for a player neither of us owned. I lost, again, meaning that Joe got this potential God-player, and of course didn't have anywhere to start him because our left-mid/wings were totally stacked. Another waste of everyone's time basically.

So this sets the stage for the most cataclysmic matchup in FIFA history. Despite his fears, Joe finally challenges me, "Ibra for Messi". Make or break time for both teams, the two best players in the game on the line. If either of us won we'd have a perfect player to slot in at our weakest positions, striker for me and right wing for Joe.

Our first leg was a fairly well contested 2-2 draw, with Ibra chalking up at least one more goal, and Schweiny getting one for me as well. Going into the second leg then, at home for Joe in Amsterdam, the slate was completely clean; whoever won here would take it all.

The opening 90 minutes saw a fair amount of action, but no goals. The tension in Joe's flat was reaching ridiculous heights. After another 15 minutes of no scoring, the tension had hit its peak, and we were both looking forward to a closely-fought draw, and a rematch sometime in the future.

118 minutes into the game, everything changed

Neymar suddenly gets past Zabaleta, and is away down the right wing. I can feel it happening, he can feel it happening, and as he cuts towards goal and puts the cross in, we both know how it ends.

Over the back of a defender leaps Schweinsteiger, gets his head on the ball and, with only two minutes left in the matchup, after five years of real life play, after constant, unending humilitation from Zlatan, Schweinsteiger, the great saviour of Shakhtar, puts the ball past Courtois and into the back of the net.

Predictably, I went ballistic.

Joe immediately gets up, walks the few feet to his bed and flops face-down onto it, not to move for the next ten minutes. I, on the other hand, am up on my feet, doing laps of his apartment, tears streaming down my face in a near hysterical mixture of laughter at Joe's reaction and sheer joy at this insane triumph.

Finally, after five years and several hundred goals, Ibra, Zlat, Zlatsies, Zlatan - The Great Man - was on my team.