We Are Football is a title I keep reading either aloud or in my head in a very working-class northern (English) accent, and I don’t know why. Maybe it is because my view of football, or as those that hate it call the sport “soccer,” is that of someone from Scotland who has seen one too many catfights pre, during, and post-game. Sectarian hatred and violence will do that to you. You’ll be told by people who like heavy drinking and a punch-up that you are, in fact, weird. Though that might also be as a result of me not liking their version of the sport.

More recently, I’ve grown a little more appreciative of the sport by watching what is by far, a higher quality of game. Who needs overpaid multimillionaire men falling down all the time when you can watch 22 women (11 of them from the US) play the game properly. We Are Football is a Football Manager-like that I’ve been playing a bit of over the last few weeks here and there. When I say Football Manager-like, it is attempting to hit that spreadsheet-style of gameplay with a slightly different kind of mindset.

In fact, I had to go and play one of the latest spreadsheet simulators to make sure I was being accurate enough, as it has been years since I played one of them. It turns out that yes, you do still argue with it regularly. We Are Football, I will say now, isn’t the pretender to the crown of complexity. While still trying to be a job simulator, it tones a lot of things down. It may not be as granular as the SEGA published series, however, there will always be comparisons to it, be it fair or not.

I think what is fair is to say that these games that attempt complexity on such a level don’t have the friendliest of user interface (UI). That is notable when you are a dyslexic trying to read the reams and reams of tutorials, tips, and information sometimes whizzing by, to find formatting or a lack of proper UI scaling work in your favor. Whether I was using the laptop while watching the US Women’s team beat Mexico (twice), or listening to music in my office, I’d find tiny things like a lack of proper spacing in the text an issue. Of course, We Are Football isn’t meant to be a fast-paced game so it isn’t as important, but self-frustration at having to re-read small bits of text can be annoying.

I’m not even talking of the mountains of graphs, charts, and otherwise, which makes for a confusing experience in the first place. In fact, I think it stands on the complete opposite end of the field from a game like Crusader Kings 3, which offers tooltips within tooltips. Rather it opts to let you figure it out for yourself most of the time, somewhat to its own detriment, as well as mine. Not that it is impossible to understand, just lacking in what may be desired by those looking to understand every little detail in how the game wants to be played.

The question that is important is: is it good? Kind of. For some the complexity might be toned down quite a bit, as We Are Football tries to differentiate itself from other similar games. Though, if you are like myself and don’t care one iota for whatever color of top Cristiano Ronaldo is wearing this year, you might find some enjoyment in it. That makes it sound like it is designed for the niche of people who want to play a Football Manager game but don’t care about football in general. Which I think kind of rings true.

From everything that I can understand through the mountain range of tutorials and general guesswork putting it together, your main job is to keep money flowing, keep players happy, and manage your schedule well enough you don’t have an aneurysm. Last I checked, that last one is the biggest change from Football Manager. While yes, the focus is on keeping the team afloat, your weekly schedule is something you are planning out ahead of time. You wind up trying to play a balancing act with your health. I have mixed feelings about this, as it turns each week into a turn-based strategy of sorts.

On the one hand, I am enjoying it somewhere in my boring dad sim-loving brain, but on the other, I just see it as a thing distracting from what is meant to be the goal: Football. Yes, it is planning weekly meetings, setting up friendlies, doing charity events, and otherwise, but I don’t think it really matters. It fills out an otherwise dull spreadsheet simulator with another bit of tediously filling out a weekly planner. Moreover, you can’t actually fill it out unless you want to have health issues. That seems to be, from my experience trying to wrestle with the UI and a lack of knowledge or much interest in football, the entire concept.

Aside from managing your team in games, few and far between they might be in the beginning, your entire focus is on balancing your weekly schedule. Make absolute certain that your health and well-being (both in the job and out) are maintained well enough to stay in the job overall. The trouble is, and I think many Football Manager fans would agree, that it feels a little dull to put that much time into. Yet, for all this talk of it being dull or uninteresting, I still found something in there I found enjoyable enough that I wanted to return sometimes. Now sure, I didn’t want to drop other, more exciting games, but I did think about how my team of German women were going to play next and how to improve them.

This brings me to another point: The depth of countries and continents to pick from might not be as deep as some might hope. Of course, the US finds football to be that thing you pick up your pre-teen daughter from before she’s ordered into seventeen other after-school activities in a vain attempt to fill your child’s time up with sports and music lessons to prove they are better. Sorry, that might just be flashbacks. The point I am trying to make, beyond a joke here or there, is the complete lack of non-European teams.

In Brazil, the sport is a second religion, and yet there is a complete lack of South American teams in the listings. I don’t mind Romania’s inclusion, but there isn’t even Argentina or Mexico? I’m not saying it is easy to drop in another team, or more importantly, another league full of depth. However, when one-half of the game features full women’s leagues, and you don’t have the country of the women’s world cup winners, I have questions. Despite lacking a substantial part of the world in the roster of teams throughout the game, there is some dad sim-ish fun to be had.

Lacking the backing of the bizarrely and hugely popular Football Manager series, We Are Football does show spirit in its footwork, but lacks precision as it moves up the field. It does not make a hattrick of goals: the first hits the crossbar, the second flys into the crowd, and the third hits the back of the net after sailing past the wrong side of the goal post and hitting a sponsor’s board in the process.

Ok, I’ll stop and be serious for a moment. We Are Football shows early promise, but lacks the execution to make the newcomer a contender for the spreadsheet title. It fails by having a dated UI, an overall feeling of age but no experience, and as recent updates show, a lack of final polish.

A PC review copy of We Are Football was provided by THQ Nordic for this review.

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We Are Football

$34.99

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Enjoyable dad-sim somewhere in there.

Cons

• Not filling the gap, looking to take part in what's already there.
• A lack of non-European leagues.
• A dated UI.
• Questionable performance at times.