A Football Fantasy & Soccer Done Sensibly

My friend was adamant that Sensible Soccer was better than FIFA. One day after school, he invited me over to prove it.

It would've been around 1995, and I think we played it on either his Mega Drive or Amiga. I grew up in England, so everything was played on a Sega or a personal computer. None of us were cool enough to have a PlayStation that early - they were for ravers and older boys - but we were all cool enough to not have a SNES.  

To be honest, Sensible Soccer didn't make much of an impression. I can't even say for sure whether I'd tried a FIFA game up to that point, so I wouldn't have been able to make any meaningful comparisons between the two. Besides, I was 11 years old and did not yet have the tools to formulate nuanced, critical takes.

I remember far more about my friend's enthusiasm for Sensible Soccer than I do the game itself. He'd committed to defending it and would not allow its good name to be besmirched by the FIFA crowd. We were of that age where interests become more personal, more crucial to your development, and I suspect I wasn't the only one who was invited over after school to hear the Sensible Soccer sermon.

Anyway, I've had football on the brain the last couple of weeks, in a way that I haven't for almost thirty years. I've even been reminiscing about Sensible Soccer round a mate's house! Fantasy Premier League is to blame.

I followed the Premier League in the mid-1990s, back when Blackburn won the league, immediately followed by another run of Manchester United dominance. More so than watching the actual games, I was into collecting Merlin Premier League stickers, just like every other kid I knew. We'd bring stacks of them to school, attend swap-meets at local leisure centres, and hide our stashes from teachers and their zero-tolerance for Ian Rush in the classroom. I can remember begging my mum to drive us down to the local newsagent so I could buy a couple more packs. Nothing had ever felt more important.

Anyway, that was fucking ages ago. While I'll always watch the big international tournaments, I haven't followed club football since. 

As I get older, I find that I increasingly enjoy watching sports on TV. Or even attending something live, if I'm feeling adventurous. I'm gradually becoming my dad, shouting encouragement, admonishments, and advice at men and women who have forgotten more about sport than I'll ever know. I point at the TV and blurt out things like "Yes, mate!" or sometimes, "No, mate!". I was in heaven during the Olympics, having almost around-the-clock sports to gawk at for a solid fortnight. It even started to cut into my gaming time. Can you imagine?! A couple of weeks before that, I was watching as much of Euro 2024 as possible, even getting up at the break of dawn to watch England lose to Spain in the final. 

With the Olympics over, the NBA season still a couple of months away, and international rugby matches being fairly infrequent and often inaccessible, I was keen to find another sport to enjoy from the sofa. A friend's invitation to their Fantasy Football league couldn't have come at a better time.

Fantasy Premier League has provided the focus, structure and motivation that'll get me into a new sport. I've even signed up for the U-Next streaming service, as they have exclusive rights for the Premier League and FA Cup here in Japan. Fantasy League appeals to my love of stats and a perpetual desire to organise shit, and I'm already taking it far too seriously.

Having players to cheer for has kept me glued to the TV, invested in their performances and the points they'll accrue for my Fantasy team, Katamari FC. And my surface-level understanding of football has not lessened my enjoyment of it. I'm years away from attaining a decent level of football literacy, and at least 6 months short of being the best player on my local 5-a-side team of 40-something dads with bad knees, but I'm still having a blast.

You can learn about sports through video games, at least at a very basic level, and they can help to nurture an interest that may lead to enjoying them in real life. My limited knowledge of American Football mostly stems from a very good time I had with Madden '99 on PS1. If you asked me to run a basic football play in real life, I could probably do it, thanks to Madden. However, I would be imagining myself as John Elway or someone else who is now sixty years old or dead.

My first football game was Pele's World Tournament Soccer on the Mega Drive, which probably wasn't the best introduction to the genre. This would have undoubtedly upset my Sensible Soccer friend. I got Olympic Soccer as part of my original Sega Saturn bundle, but it wasn't until I picked up FIFA '96 for that same Saturn that I put any significant time into virtual football. It was a thousand times better than any other football game I'd played - apologies to Sensible Soccer. Real-life players and teams, as well as "Virtual Stadium" technology - this was the promise of football games fulfilled. FIFA '96 was my sports game of choice, that is until NBA Live '97 came along. After that, with the exception of Pro-Evo multiplayer sessions at university, it was pretty much over for me and footy games.

I doubt this new found interest in football will result in me playing the latest EA Sports FC. Fantasy League is more than enough to scratch that "gaming" itch, and I'm happy to give it my full attention over the coming season. That being said, I am aware that Football Manager is on Game Pass, but given how much I enjoy stat crunching and team management, I worry that it would consume me.

Best give Football Manager a wide berth, I think. Anyway, my Week 3 lineup: