Dele Alli had the best xG and xG/S per min out of all the young English midfielders in the league last year, while Jack Grealish led the way in xA, BPR, and TiOB. Grealish was also top for carry C, but only fourth for both carry A and carry G, suggesting his move to City – and better teammates – will see him trend upwards. If you understood all that, you’re exactly the sort of person Konami’s upcoming eFootball was made for.
It took the unusual route of appearing ‘at Gamescom’ by just dropping a trailer with the Gamescom hashtag in the hours between the conferences, but still, eFootball is now out in the wild. It’s a free-to-play iteration of Pro Evo, and considering the full price version struggled to keep up with FIFA, it’s foolish to think this one will too. In football sim circles, eFootball is already being memed to death. The game contains only 9 teams, but we knew that already – newer details to dunk on the game for include the grass looking terrible and the fact not all kicks will be available at launch.
Related: Pro Evo Going Free-To-Play Could Change Everything
On the grass point, go touch some of the real thing. I have never played a game of FIFA ever and marvelled at the realism of the grass. On the kicking… yeah, okay. Konami is clearly asking for trouble there. It’s a football sim, kicking is the name of the game. Unlike American football, proper football consists entirely of moving a ball with your foot. I get that ‘Sharp Kicks’ are specific animations to be used in specialised ways, but when you’re launching a new football game, it’s incredibly naive to think you’ll get away with saying “We’ll add kicking in later.”
Of course, eFootball will not be a yearly release as Pro Evo was and as FIFA will continue to be. It will remain free and will receive seasonal updates, so not having everything at launch is by design – still, it’s kicking. Howay.
It’s fair to say eFootball has gotten off to a bit of a bumpy start. Its roadmap details events in ‘Autumn’ and ‘Late Autumn’, but the game still has no launch date beyond 2021, and the trailer, while crammed with interesting details, offered an inauspicious debut. Much like Grealish’s first game against Spurs, eFootball’s first appearance will be remembered more for its flaws than its successes, but of course he did score in his second showing, so there’s hope for eFootball yet.
For now, let’s put aside the grass and the post-launch kicks, and instead look at where eFootball could one up FIFA. Pro Evo has always been FIFA's more tactical cousin, and the eFootball trailer leans hard into that reputation. On the face of it, I'm not sure how well that translates into success – you'd expect that it was the faster, arcade version of football that would be free, and the niche tactical simulator would be the one bought up by hardcore fans. Many FIFA fans are fairly casual when it comes to both gaming and minute football knowledge, and if eFootball is trying to attract them with a free-to-play version of the sport, stripping out the simplicity to double down on the razor fine margins of the elite game is a bold move, Cotton.
FIFA is a game all about flair, so its first touch system is about getting the better of your man and leaving them eating your Nike flavoured dust. eFootball seeks to replicate actual football, where the first touch is one of the most difficult controls in the sport – just ask Lukaku. The first touch, even every touch after, is stressed in eFootball. FIFA cares more about speed, directionality, and dribbling skills, but eFootball seems to place a greater emphasis on your physical touches of the ball as you move, giving you more control, but at the sacrifice of FIFA's approachability. Because of this, it emphasises one-on-one duels and out-thinking your opponent, not just breezing past them. Defensively, you have greater control over body movement too.
This tactical focus is holistic as well as individual. In FIFA, you choose your formation, but thanks to the game's focus on speed, breaks, and flair, three up top is basically the only way to play. You also get to choose between Balanced play, Park The Bus, or All Out Attack, but beyond that, tactics barely feature. eFootball seems to have been built around the idea of tactics, with different footballing philosophies and team behaviour demonstrated in the trailer. In reality, it may be that one is so dominant that eFootball has its own version of three up top, but seeing a football sim stress the value of systems after a decade of FIFA improving Trent Alexander-Arnold's forehead sweat and incessant focus on individual dribbling is refreshing. Like Jamie Carragher on a Monday night, eFootball was awash with arrows, circles, indicated runs, and poorly drawn lines to highlight team positioning, in case your own eyes are too stupid to understand that McFred are too close to each other.
The most interesting – though I suspect, in the long run, not the most useful – addition is an entirely new camera: Duel. Much like in real football, this camera zooms out when a player has lots of space or when a long ball is played in order to give you a full overview of the pitch. Once you get close to your man – the trailer uses Saka and Chiellini, which just feels rude – it zooms in to stress the importance of specific touches and the tete a tete battles that win and lose football matches. It then goes full Carragher again, highlighting specific movement engines, but since there is no way movement will be as sharp or as energetic as FIFA, that feels like the wrong aspect for Konami to highlight. It will beat FIFA with tactics, not with pace.
Visually, it doesn't look great. Gameplay wise, eFootball seems worth paying attention to, and if it can pull this heavily tactics based gameplay off while ensnaring a few disillusioned FIFA fans, it could grow into something special.
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