LEE PAYNE

Tag: fifa

  • FIFA 23 – it’s not really in the game, is it?

    This is going to be a tad niche, even going by the previous things I’ve written. What follows will only be of interest to you if you’ve played the computer game FIFA. A hugely successful game, yes, and one that tops the charts every year, but I doubt something my usual readers will have had much to do with.

    The next edition, FIFA 23, is coming out at the end of September and having owned every one since 2001 I’m seriously considering not buying it. It’s because it feels like it’s increasingly being made for a younger audience, an audience that speaks a different language to me. All the nonsense about “xG”, “top bins” and a new goal celebration called “The Griddy” – this isn’t the football I know and love. It is also obsessed with its Ultimate Team mode (which makes developer EA an absolute fortune), and I have no interest in it.

    I have always liked playing Career Mode, where I can put myself in the game as a manager and take over pretty much any club in the game. Invariably, this would start off with me taking charge of my beloved Norwich City. You can play out fifteen seasons, and as well as playing each match you could buy and sell players and bring youth players through.

    But there’s so much more this mode could do. In terms of youth scouting, you hire a scout who you can send on a trip. You determine where they go, how long for and what sort of players they are looking for. Each month the scout will send you a report listing the players they’ve found. The list will show roughly how good the player is now and roughly how good the scout thinks the player could become. How accurate these assessments are depends on how good the scout is, i.e. how much you’re paying them. You can then choose to sign the player, reject them or scout them for a bit longer.

    The trouble is, if you sign a player they are simply added to a youth squad that doesn’t do anything. There are no Under 18 or Under 23 teams in the game, so youth players just remain on this list until you either promote them to the first team or they get fed up and threaten to leave. The players do very gradually improve, but if you’re managing a Premier League or Championship club they are very rarely good enough to play in the first team straight away. You usually end up selling them for a nice little profit and then you might come across them playing against you a few years later, but there’s very little for you in developing a young player in the mode’s current state.

    What FIFA’s career mode really needs is a proper system of U18 and U23 leagues. The young players you’ve scouted could then play some games against other clubs’ academies, keeping them happy and providing them with tangible ways to improve. The manager of these sides could provide you with a report on each match, telling you the result and who played well and who didn’t. The U23s would also be an opportunity to give players who need game time in your main squad a run out. Perhaps FIFA could even go really deep and allow you to start your career managing an U18 or U23 side yourself, rising through the ranks to eventually take the reins of the first team. This would give career mode a whole new dynamic, giving you an incentive to stay at a club for a number of years to see these young players you’ve scouted break through and become mainstays in your first team.

    Now I’d like to move on to international management. At present, you have to start off managing a club and then when you start making a name for yourself you are offered a job managing a national team. If you accept, however, you don’t leave your club side – you continue to manage it alongside whichever country you’ve accepted the offer from. This is most unrealistic, unheard of really in actual football. FIFA should allow you to manage a national team and only a national team. You should be able to request scouting reports on players you can pick in your squad, organise friendlies and training camps, and take your side into a World Cup or contintental competition. This would make you feel more involved and therefore care more about the country you’re in charge of – at the moment the international breaks feel like a chore and an unwanted intteruption to managing your club.

    Those are my two biggest wishes for career mode. There’s more I could say, and more I could ask for from the rest of the game. Quick substitutes, for instance. But it’s clear that FIFA 23 will be another cash cow, unwilling to make the changes to truly put it amongst the elite. This year’s edition will be the final one to bear the FIFA name – can we hope for better from the new iteration, EAFC? I won’t hold my breath.

  • The really well intended football break

    Last summer, a few weeks after Norwich City’s entirely avoidable relegation from the Premier League, the World Cup got under way in Brazil. Of course, I watched it. To bridge the gap between Norwich losing 2-0 to Arsenal and that Brazil v Croatia match, I watched the two friendlies England played in the USA against Ecuador and Honduras – the second game was so uneventful that I remember it mostly for the referee taking the players off the field for a while because of lightning.

    England’s friendly with Honduras in Miami last summer was halted by lightning.

    The football thirst was not quenched after 64 games in 32 days. I went hunting for more, and found Newcastle playing in the ‘Schalke 04 Cup’ on a Freeview channel so obscure I can’t remember the name of it. At last, the second weekend in August saw the competitive action kick off once again and the waiting was over.

    By January, though, I think I was getting a little fatigued. The Premier League was as dull as it had been for a long time – it had been obvious since October that Chelsea were going to win the title, it was just a case of when, and no matter how hard Sky Sports tried to convince us that they were, Manchester City were never really in it. This was a problem, as I find Chelsea difficult to like, as they played less like a fluid example of the beautiful game at its best and more like a machine focussed on winning and winning alone. There was no entertainment. The ‘race for the top 4’ featured only Manchester United and Liverpool, and even that wasn’t a close race. I have so little interest in the Europa League that I did not give two hoots about who qualified for that. At the bottom, Burnley were obviously a hard working side without the quality required to stay up, QPR were the circus that they usually are, and Hull’s final day survival task looked a long shot from the start. The only real excitement was the remarkable recovery of Leicester City, who spent 140 days rock bottom of the league only to finish pretty comfortably safe.

    There’s no real reason for this picture to be here other than I never want to stop looking at it.

    I was still more than interested in Norwich, of course, especially as in January things changed with Alex Neil becoming manager. I’ve written plenty about the great season we’ve had, culminating in promotion through the play-offs. You can relive it with my season review, which is in two parts.

    With all this in mind, I took the decision to have a proper break from football this summer. I wouldn’t watch any live action between the Champions League final and the start of the new league season in August. That means no internationals, no Women’s World Cup, no friendlies and no Nathan Redmond in the Euro Under 21s. I’m doing this so I can feel properly refreshed for next season, and I’ve made it to 4 days so far – surely the next 60 or so will be a breeze?

  • Beckham’s World Cup heartbreak means he must rethink his retirement plans

    David Beckham last night, going down in a heap after suffering Achilles damage that will force him out of the World Cup. The injury could mean the end of his 115-cap England career.

    Laying in bed this morning, semi-conscious minutes after being woken up by the BBC Radio Norfolk newsreader, I felt a sudden sadness when I learned that David Beckham would not be going to the World Cup. I felt sorry for him. He never strikes me as being the most intelligent of people – a friend of mine at school used to love telling me Beckham once answered an interview question with the phrase ‘I wasn’t teached that way’ – but then he doesn’t need to be. Not in the academic sense anyway. From what I have seen of him on the TV, Beckham is a genius with a football. He is unrivalled when it comes to crossing or passing the ball. Not to mention his mesmerising free kicks, works of art in accuracy and precision. Some say his legs had gone, but an England squad with David Beckham in it is better than one without.

    Hard work is something that Beckham doesn’t shy away from either. He was Sven’s England captain, but Steve McLaren had the guts to leave him out of the team (others might argue this was just another of McLaren’s misguided actions). ‘Becks’ earned his way back in, and was it not for his pin-point crosses England’s Wembley defeat to Croatia that made certain of their no-show at Euro 2008 would have been even more embarrassing.

    The much more masterful Fabio Capello omitted Beckham from some of his squads too, wary of the quality of football the ex-Manchester United midfielder was participating in at the Los Angeles Galaxy. Far from admitting defeat as he approached his mid-30s, Beckham was prepared to strain his club relations for the sake of his country, organising a spring loan move to AC Milan. Don’t let the cynics make you believe that this was purely because his Spice Girl wife Victoria wanted a taste of fashionable Italy. Beckham moved to Serie A to keep his World Cup dream alive.

    Now into his second spell at San Siro, it hasn’t been perfect for the 34-year-old. He has never been the leading star, often being forced to settle for substitute appearances, but when he came on Beckham still oozed an aura of class. This was a player not to be taken lightly. This was a player who commanded respect. In the last month he was put into the shade by the future of English football itself, Wayne Rooney, but on current form anyone would be. It wasn’t as much of a ‘that was the old, this is the new’ showing as some pundits are warbling on about. He had his own doubts about his chances of boarding the plane for South Africa this summer, but the general consensus was he would be there, and he had earned the right to be there.

    It turns out, unfortunately, that these talking points are ultimately trivial. Last night Beckham broke down playing for Milan against Chievo. His manager Leonardo said the Londoner ‘knew immediately’ that his Achilles tendon was torn. TV pictures confirmed this, showing Beckham signalling a tear to the bench. Today, the injury that means he won’t be fit for the World Cup is headline news here, and heartbreaking news for Beckham himself.

    Who will replace David Beckham?

    James Milner, of Aston Villa, is my ideal choice to fill David Beckham's boots.

    Not only does Beckham have to rethink his plans after last night’s events, so does England manager Fabio Capello ahead of the World Cup, and possibly for after the tournament as well. Thankfully, there are a number of options. The obvious choice, Aaron Lennon of Tottenham, is facing his own injury battle and should he be fit, he might not be match-ready for the immense pressure and intense pace World Cup finals matches bring. Another possibility, one utilised by Capello previously, is Manchester City’s Shaun Wright Phillips, though his stuttered contract talks with the club he loves have been playing on his mind of late. Personally, I would punt for Aston Villa’s versatile James Milner, who has had a season to remember as one of the outstanding players in Martin O’Neill’s strong outfit. Still quite young, Milner’s career has seen him face tough times at Leeds United and Newcastle United, so he is more mature than most. A talented and strong player, not afraid to try a long shot, Milner looks to me to be the ideal midfielder to fill the sizeable void left by Beckham’s absence.

    Questions have now moved on to whether or not this would signal the end of David Beckham’s career. As I type, he is undergoing surgery in Finland to correct the injury. This would have been Beckham’s fourth World Cup – no Englishman has played at that many tournaments. It seems he will have to settle for three after all, a record to be proud of – only Bobby Moore and Peter Shilton have also played in as many World Cups for England as that. The swiftness with which Beckham has headed under the knife suggests he has not given up on his glittering career yet.

    Not that I am at all qualified to tell him what to do, but if David Beckham asked me for his advice, I would tell him this (and this has come about after some considerable thought). Retire from international football and come home for a swansong. Surgeons appear to be confident that they can get him playing football again. That’s good. I had convinced myself, prior to this awful news, that Beckham would draw the curtains on his career as a whole after this summer’s World Cup. Now he won’t be going, that would be a bad idea. He wouldn’t want it to end like this. It is important that England move on after the summer, though, and their plans in order to progress simply cannot include a veteran. Draw a line under your international career, Becks, and do it before you disappoint yourself trying to make it work again when you are fit.

    It would then be up to Beckham to sign off in the best possible way. Come home, back to play in front of the people who love you (the same people who hated you in 1998). I highly doubt Manchester United would take such a step to bring him back. Certainly not with Ferguson in charge. That’s just not how they work. It is without doubt, though, that Beckham could still cut it in the Premier League. How about at one of the clubs currently jostling for the coveted fourth place? Tottenham Hotspur? Aston Villa? Everton? A couple of seasons, dazzling performances, glory achieved before taking a step back as one of this country’s greats. I don’t want to go too far forward, but just in time for a cushy media job at Euro 2012?

    Think about it, Becks. You know it makes sense.