Get football fever with Fifa

Gamers control a singular player on the field, based on who has possession of the ball, while the AI controls the other players. — Photos: EA Sports

Given how popular football is as a spectator sport, its digital version too has become a heavily watched eSport.

Played on Electronic Arts’s football simulator game Fifa, the videogame has been revamped over the years to include new consoles, improvements to the software and up-to-date player rosters in line with current football teams.

Gamers have snapped up the many iterations of the game, with the Fifa franchise having sold more than 325 million units since first released in 1993. The latest version, Fifa 21, was released last October.

While available on a wide variety of consoles as well as PCs, the pro league is played mostly on the latest generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles.

Going for the goal

Being based on an existing sport, EA’s Fifa plays by the same rules – two teams of 11 players try to kick the football into the opponent’s goal, while defending their own. The team with the higher number of goals after the allotted time, usually 90 minutes, wins.

While offline football is very much a team sport, EA’s Fifa puts the gamer in charge of the whole team, directly controlling the player who has possession of the ball. The defending gamer can switch controls between players to have the best chance of wresting back possession of the ball. The game AI fills in to control the remaining 10 players for each team.

Being based on an existing sport, EA’s Fifa plays by the same rules – two teams of 11 players try to kick the football into the opponent’s goal, while defending their own. The team with the higher number of goals after the allotted time, usually 90 minutes, wins.

The game has various modes like Career Mode, where the gamer leads their team through a season as the general manager, or Kick-Off, where they can play a quick match against a friend or the computer. However, the professional leagues stick with the Fifa Ultimate Team (FUT) format.

In FUT, gamers start with a random roster of players and play against others to earn in-game currency, which can be used to get packs that unlock new, possibly better players or to trade and buy players from others.

There is also the option of buying in-game currency with real cash to more rapidly unlock content.

Road to glory

Beyond unlocking game content, playing well also helps push gamers up the leaderboards. High ranking players get to participate in the special Weekend League, and if they win at least 27 of the 30 games there, they will be eligible to play in Online Regional Cups.

The Regional Cups earn players Global Series Points based on their wins, with top ranked players moving on to the Regional Playoffs at the end of the season.

In the virtual world, people can still safely fill up stadiums without worrying about the pandemic. — EA Sports

Those who triumph there will get to go on the world stage and take part in the digital equivalent of the World Cup, called the FIFAe Club World Cup, which is generally available for free online through platforms like YouTube, Twitch and Facebook as well as its website Fifa.gg.

The 2021 Zone finals ran from Feb 24 to 28, featuring 42 teams from six different zones including Oceania, Asia, Africa and Middle East, Europe, South America, and North America.

Local heroes

Two Malaysian teams made it to the four-team finals for the Asia zone: Wicked Esports (made up of Faiq Iskandar ‘halowake’ Saiful Bahri and Muhammad Naim ‘DatoRentap’ Muhammad Hisham) and GBX Esports Team (consisting of Ahmad Shahrin ‘GBX_Ayen’ Shaharudin and Muhammad Luqman ‘LuqmanHzq’ Haziq Hajiman).

Team Wicked Esports's dynamic duo Muhammad Naim (left) and Faiq Iskandar made it to the Asia zone finals of FIFAe Club World Cup, where they emerged as runners up. — Team Wicked

After a round-robin stage, the two top teams – Wicked Esports and Blue United eFC from Japan – then competed in a knockout round.

Unfortunately, the Japanese team edged out the Malaysians as the Asia zone winner, but Wicked Esports still walked away with US$8,000 (RM32,932) as runners up.

Though GBX Esports Team’s run ended earlier, this wasn’t Muhammad Luqman’s first taste of elite level football eSports. He made history as the first South-East Asian player to advance to the FIFAe World Cup qualifying round in Barcelona, ​​Spain in 2018.

Two Malaysian sports commentators, Muhammad Hafiz Sudin and Matthews Izzac, were also chosen as representatives for the Asia zone to provide commentary during the 2021 FIFAe Club World Cup finals.

To encourage local talent, the Malaysia Football League (MFL) had partnered with EA Sports last year to launch the eMFL, an officially recognised league. This year’s edition, which ran from April 20 to May 9, was sponsored by Telekom Malaysia and had a cash pool of RM50,000.