The best online games for football fans to try this year

Football is one of the great English exports. Although the domestic Premier League has been heavily commodified, diluted and sold to the world as an expensive corporate package, there’s no denying the sport’s immense popularity worldwide. The appeal of the beautiful game is sustained and wide-reaching and has resulted in a range of games sprouting up from the embers of this burning popularity.

If you enjoy football and gaming, you won’t have to look far to know what games to try. Over the last decade, the internet has been crucial in developing sports gaming titles for football fans.

There are numerous examples in the gambling market, which has turned into a multibillion-pound market and incorporated many different angles, including sportsbooks that have embedded online casinos into their service and football-themed slot games. That’s just the tip of the iceberg when we look at some of the crossover games involving football and digital platforms.

The best online casinos for UK players do look to expand into other gambling areas too. However, there are more specific football games that cater directly to keen football fans rather than encompassing sports betting and online casino gaming.

Console games – FC 25

For me, this is a predictable and controversial choice. I won’t say FC 25 is the best football game ever made; it’s far from it. They’ve also recently gone through a name change. Instead of FIFA, it’s now called FC due to a dispute with the governing body rather than any artistic vision.

One thing FIFA does have is a vast online community and essentially all the most sought-after gaming rights, such as stadiums, players and commentators. If you want to reconstruct the fiery last Merseyside derby at Goodison or take Liverpool to Champions League glory, it has more realistic feel due to the copyright issues other games face. Other football games, such as Pro Evolution, have not been afforded the same luxury.

Comparison vs Pro Evo

This is a bit of a blessing and a curse for EA Sports. It’s helped them completely dominate the online football gaming market, despite Konami’s best attempts to thrust Pro Evo back into contention as its greatest rival. As it stands, it’s also allowed complacency to kick in. You could present the last three games to somebody who never played them, and they’d have trouble separating them.

There doesn’t seem to be any drive or inspiration to create a truly next-level football gaming experience. The career mode is full of glitches, some of the player ratings are lazy, and despite multiple players raising issues with the game, EA Sports doesn’t seem in any real rush to fix them.

FC 25 is one of the best games because of the size of the gaming community. You can play against anyone online at many different skill levels. The copyright for stadiums and players makes it one of the best online games to try, but from a technical gaming perspective, there have been much better football games.

Best online gaming option between the two

There was a time during the latter stages of the 2000s when Pro Evo was a level above FIFA. They had signed exclusive deals with some of the top European clubs, and although they were lacking some of the top teams, such as Trad Brick for Man Utd and Merseyside Red for Liverpool, you could amend the teams manually, giving them an extra sense of realism.

The gaming experience was much better than FIFA. Throughout the 2010s, FC, then known as FIFA, had the market reach and investment that allowed it to claw back some of the ground it had lost, which is how it has now arrived at the point where it dominates the market. If you’re looking to play online, FC is the best choice.

Best free games to checkout

There are cheaper options if you don’t fancy forking out on a new FC game. So long as you are happy to sacrifice a bit of graphic quality, plenty of retro free-to-play football games can be accessed with a few swipes on your phone screen. Here are some of the top picks:

• Ragdoll Soccer
• io
• Rocket League
• Dream League Soccer

These games leverage the growing demand for mobile gaming, but you’ll have no problem accessing them on your PC either. Ragdoll Soccer is a football game that has emerged from the iconic Adobe Flash-game Ragdoll Laser Dodge.

Maybe Ragdoll Soccer stirs up some old nostalgia in me, but it is probably the most fun of the four games above. Dream League Soccer delves into the game’s realism and has obtained some licensing. Carball.io and Rocket League are very similar titles, taking the gaming elements of football, throwing in the idea of car games, and coming up with a recipe that has managed to attract an audience in the vastness of the online gaming community.

Conclusion

Dream League Soccer, as well as strategy games like Football Manager, lean more toward the realistic element of the game, which will appeal to a certain type of gamer.

If you want a game that deals with the gritty tactical warfare that can play out on the football pitch, then Football Manager is the game for you. If you want something that feels like you are playing in the heat of a proper game, with all the kits, stadiums and players in the most realistic gaming setting, then FC 25, or Pro Evolution Soccer to a lesser degree, will be the games for you.

However, with such a monumental range of options out there and the growing library of free football games expanding by the day, there’s no shortage of games for football fans to explore.