All your preppy clothes – FIFA Football 2003

For one week in 2002, the underdog won. FIFA Football 2003 lost a straight fight in the charts to Pro Evolution Soccer 2. For one week. On 1 November 2002, however, the PlayStation 2 version of FIFA 2003 was joined in shops by the PC version, the Xbox version, the GameCube version and the PlayStation version. The accompanying full advertising blitz not only made FIFA 2003 the best selling game overall that week, but the best selling on PlayStation 2 as well. The following week it would be swept away by one of the few games to be bigger still, but FIFA’s multi-format power would prove a lot more crucial a few years further into its contest with Pro Evo.

The first week chart battle was also in many ways a referendum on the previous games in the two series; for EA it wasn’t so much about FIFA 2003 winning as setting up an improved possibility of FIFA winning in future. Abundant coverage setting the two games against each other and noting that FIFA 2003 was a big improvement on FIFA 2002 was a big positive, even if most articles also said that Pro Evo 2 was better.

What’s new in FIFA Football 2003?

A year on from the last big FIFA gameplay overhaul, here is another one, junking most of what was changed for FIFA 2002 to switch to a completely new engine. FIFA 2003 provides a lot more assistance in getting the ball zipping between players without needing to charge power bars. And that’s even playing on simulation mode, another new aspect being the immediate choice between simulation or arcade. Though it feels more like it’s there to emphasise the game’s credentials in the simulation default than as an important choice. It’s not that football games don’t generally have gameplay options for people who really want to get into detail, but there’s a reason that they’re usually deep in the menus.

In terms of new gameplay things, the back of the box promises ‘total ball control’ which turns out to be some overly fiddly right-stick based tricks which aren’t worth the effort, and ‘total dead ball control’ which is taking free kicks and corners in the manner of a golf game and it would be polite to call change for change’s sake.

There’s also an odd new focus on a Club Championship, a kind of made up European Super League which gets its invented logo all over the TV-coverage-style replays and highlight. And on the increasingly impressive match commentary, Ally McCoist takes over seamlessly from Andy Gray, to the extent it took me a couple of matches to notice it was a different gruff Scottish guy this time.

What’s gone?

All of the team and player customisation has been removed, leaving the menus rather bare if a bit slicker. It’s likely this is related to the increase in detail for both players and teams, meaning that trying to replicate the same thing in a customisation engine would have required a ridiculous number of options. It could be interpreted as a shot across the bows of its rival, too, though, as option files for Pro Evo to change Oranges001 to Dennis Bergkamp and so on were about to proliferate. The message perhaps was that customisation is for games which don’t have the real deal to begin with.

Who is on the cover?

Roberto Carlos (Brazil, D), Ryan Giggs (Manchester United, M) and Edgar Davids (Juventus, M) crudely collaged together against a white background and all glowering at the camera. It’s a first for multiple players which saves on having different versions for different European markets. With the three players also appearing in its intro video and highlighted on the box as the ‘EA Sports football council,’ supposed authenticity advisers, it’s the biggest play made of stars since David Ginola on FIFA 97.

What’s on the soundtrack?

There’s no big anthem for the intro, in a first since FIFA 97, with a Fatboy Slim remix of a Timo Maas song that barely gets to the vocals. The ‘EA Trax’ soundtrack, however, is highlighted more than ever, with pop-up notifications to say what you’re listening to. It tries to include big names while reaching for eclectism in an odd way which says that they hadn’t really decided what they were aiming for yet. Whatever it was, it included Idlewild’s “You Held The World in Your Arms” in the brief moment when it seemed like they might turn into R.E.M. in stature too, and a dance remix of Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” that keeps the whole vocal intact.

Who is the best player in the game?

None of the football council. Not 2002 Ballon d’Or winner Ronaldo (the Brazilian one). Rated 97 and perfect at everything but heading and shooting, it’s Matteo Brighi. He was a then 21-year-old Italian midfielder named Serie A’s 2002 young player of the year. Searching his name now brings up first three articles from small-scale football sites about his having been FIFA 2003’s best player in the world, all published in 2020, but no one cared that much back at the time. Around then he came back to Juventus after a successful loan from Bologna and moved on to Parma (who he plays for in FIFA 2003), the first of many moves in a moderately successful career that saw him play for Italy four times with a seven-year gap between the first and second occasions.

Who is the worst player in the game?

The lowest-rated player I could find was striker Oh-Kyun of Taejon Citizen in Korea, rated 34. Assuming this is the same Gong Oh-kyun as I found on wikipedia (and note the casual racism in not bothering to get his family name in the game), it seems a bit harsh on a guy who scored nine goals the previous season.

What do the players look like?

This is where the graphical advancements really come through, with the way goals are followed by the massive zoom-ins to the scorer emphasising EA’s confidence in detail. It’s an improvement even from the World Cup game. Not every player gets a great likeness, but enough genuinely look just like them for impressive moments to come up a lot. I wonder if part of the motivation of putting Edgar Davids on the cover was to show off how well they included his glasses. The increased detail extends to their kit, with names, numbers and sponsors picked out in more detail than ever.

How does it play?

It plays a quick, intuitive game of football, and sites covering it as the best FIFA yet weren’t wrong, exactly. It’s just one that feels a bit low stakes at this point. Even as it never had me feeling like I was controlling players in lead Nikes like FIFA 2002, it had none of the high points of constructing a perfect move either.

The question feels less relevant than ever, though. The selection of sides before a match includes picking between detailed pictures of each of the possible shirts a team can wear, and it highlights how the whole game has more in common with replica shirts than ever. You can buy something which looks just like your favourite player in action, and seeing it and being close to it will give you something of the same emotion to carry around with you. It doesn’t mean you can play football like them, though.

How does it score on the sepp-blatter-rain-of-banknotes.gif greed index?

It was years overdue, but it was a proper overhaul. In an alternate universe where it was a follow-up to FIFA 2000, rather than a yearly update trying to backtrack from an identity crisis, it might have been received as a logical but impressive update. 0.2 sepp-blatter-rain-of-banknotes.gifs just for being the second FIFA game of the year.

If FIFA Football 2003 was a football team at the time, who would it be?

Playing decent if not spectacular football but some way off being the best, and cursed with excessive tinkering – Claudio Ranieri-era Chelsea. Meanwhile, well ahead in the league, Pro Evolution Soccer 2 was an even better fit for Arsenal, with all the associated implications for the near future…

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Top of the charts for week ending 2 November 2002:

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