Goals

Just in time for the World Cup, we have something as unusual as a Swedish-developed football game. The game is called Goals, the studio is called Goals, and the game focuses on... goals! The holy trinity of football, in other words. Behind it all is Andreas Thorstensson, a former professional Counter-Strike player. In April 2022, they secured funding from the Swedish venture capital firm Northzone before a demo was made available in September of the same year. This seems to have sparked interest among others, as a further investment came in from Seven Seven Six, another venture capital firm with footballers Riqui Puig and Clément Lenglet as two of its business angels. In addition, Ebba Ljungerud and Oskar Gabrielson, former CEOs of Paradox Interactive and Dice respectively, were brought on board.

Almost five years after the game was first announced, it is now here and is set to challenge the games that currently dominate the world of esports. That is the stated focus of Goals: esports, with its free-to-play model. The question, however, is how they will manage to attract players away from games such as EA Sports FC or even Rematch. The latter is now a year old and still has a decent player base of around 4,500 concurrent players on Steam at its peak each day. At launch, however, it had nearly 93,000 concurrent players.

So what is it that will make Goals stand out from the crowd? Well, here the focus is entirely on online play, with no career mode or anything else to worry about. The only thing you can do offline is play against a computer-controlled team in one-off matches across three different difficulty levels. Everything else involves playing against others online. The various game modes consist of Knockout, which can be compared to EA Sports FC's Rivals with weekly rewards, tournaments with different entry requirements, ranked mode where you try to climb as high as possible in the leaderboards, quickplay which consists of friendly matches against players of the same skill level, and friendly matches against friends.

The matches are 11-a-side, with players you get from the game's microtransaction shop. Yes, there are card packs to buy here too. So far, I've been able to build my team with players from packs using only earned currency, but it looks like you'll also be able to buy currency, even though this shop hasn't been available during the testing phase. The players you get are then completely fictional and unique. No one else will therefore have the same players as you, and you won't have to see 99 out of 100 teams with Claudia Pina as their striker. For example, I have a 190 cm tall Scottish woman in goal and a 24-year-old bearded Italian as a defensive midfielder. Player ratings also play a major role. I could have replaced this Italian with another defensive midfielder who is generally better, but who only has a defensive IQ of 67 (out of 99), 54 in tackles, and 50 in sliding tackles. This means he's a major safety risk, even though he has incredible passing skills. It's also noticeable when a player lacks key attributes. A striker with poor finishing misses the target more often, and a slow player is... slow. Despite this, you can't just hold down the sprint button all the time, as you can sometimes do in EA FC. Here, it requires more intelligence than just running and dribbling. One of the more interesting ideas here is that every player has a potential level. So even if you have a rubbish player right now, you can turn them into a fantastic club legend if you have enough XP. For example, I have a centre-back in the reserves with an overall rating of 51. Useless. However, his potential is 76-88, so in the future, if I choose to train this 18-year-old Chilean, he could become a monster. This is something other football games don't have at this level. In eFootball, you can develop players, but that only makes the good players better. In EA Sports FC, there are now evolutions, but you never know when they'll be available.

If you're a regular player of EA Sports FC, you'll quickly get used to the controls here. Most of the buttons are exactly the same. A for a pass (on Xbox), X for a cross, B for a shot, and Y for a through ball. Hold down Y to make the goalkeeper rush out, and hold down various combinations of LB and RB to adjust shots and passes into lobs and curlers. The game is also closer to EA FC than eFootball when it comes to pace. It's a fast, arcade-style game, which still requires you to understand where to pass and when. Fortunately, it's a more hands-on experience in defence than what we currently get in EA's games, where you can let the AI do practically everything. In Goals, you need to defend manually, and if you tackle at the wrong moment, there's a high risk that the opponent will have a clear run on goal. Alternatively, you'll be shown a card for a brutal tackle. So far, I haven't felt that the game has been unfair in any way or has any script where it's easier to score in the dying minutes because the defenders are daydreaming. The developers also state that "matches are decided by skill alone, no scripts or interference". This is despite the fact that I barely won my last match 2-1 with 9-1 shots on goal and a decisive goal in the 85th minute. That's just how it works. A poor pass from me in defence, a counter-attack, and suddenly it was 1-1 after I'd missed far too many chances. It also feels refreshing to have a game that, so far, has no set meta that you have to play to stand a chance, is lag-free, and essentially has no delay whatsoever.

Goals is a type of football game that won't be to everyone's taste, and the choice of graphic style is likely to divide opinion. Personally, I have no problem with it in a game that's more arcade-oriented and features fictional players. For me, the most important thing when it comes to a football game is that it's fun to play. Goals is fun to play. I definitely think you should give it a go, especially as it's free, if you've grown tired of the alternatives.