Rediscovering a popular football video game

Lockdown catapulted me from my holiday in Croatia back to my house share in Brussels. I found myself gardening, exercising, cooking and eating with a German and an Indian, neither of whom I knew that well. We moved awkwardly around each other at first and the traditional social lubricant, alcohol, seemed inappropriate for the dystopian scenario we were in. One evening a brainwave came – we could play FIFA, the popular football simulation game of our teenage years in Peterborough, Bangalore and Oldenburg. 

Suddenly we could express ourselves. With only two handsets, only two people could play at once, so the winner stayed on, and the spectator and losing player bonded in genuine outrage at perceived injustices. Within minutes of starting we were expressing our disgust at the clearly biased computerised referee, cheering on the underdog, and screaming in genuine joy when we finally scored.

Any true FIFA fans reading this will stop here, as they learn that the version was FIFA 16, on an old Xbox 360. This version is obviously four years old, the players are in the wrong teams, and Liverpool are not the world-beating side that they are today. It is, however, a significant edition – it was the first of the FIFA series to include women’s teams, although only the internationals. 

FIFA has been there at all the key times in many men’s lives. You play as a teenager, at university as a drinking game, and then in pretty much any possible social scenario. A British friend who moved abroad says that playing online is the only thing that keeps him in touch with his friends in London. Friends back in my hometown even organised an annual FIFA tournament at Christmas for many years. It makes sense that it saved the day during lockdown. 

Personality clashes, chalked up to cultural differences, abounded. The German would comment on how brilliant his goals were, forcing the losing player to watch the replay – something the Indian and I both found to be extremely poor etiquette. When an Italian housemate moved back in and joined, he defended well and scored typically fancy goals. He also turned the console off when he lost. Sometimes we would play with our international teams, but no one wanted to represent India – they have a one star rating and the video game’s manufacturers haven’t bothered to animate the real faces of most of the players. 

It’s been said that civilised societies have found ways to play at war, and these include sports and politics. This particular game provided a chance to alleviate the frustrations that came with Covid-induced restrictions. But if FIFA is war, then it’s friendly war, with all of the camaraderie and none of the trauma. The strange inability of so many men to connect emotionally is something to be addressed at some point, and it seems that beer acts as the social catalyst way too often for most of us. But this lockdown I was reminded that it’s not just alcohol that connects – FIFA 16 can as well.