Featuring Fifa International Soccer, the life of Darren Young, the boys of soccer and the basketball fan who became a manager
Thanks for all your comments and suggestions on our last blog. Here are a few highlights from this week.
The article of the week
Rejection, tragedy and billions of dollars: the story of Fifa
Fifa 14 will be released next month to the usual fanfare. Lifelong fans will queue up to trade in last year's game and buy another edition of the most successful games console series in history. The Fifa games have been popular since the first version was released back in 1993, but as Christopher Dring explains in MCV, the first Fifa game almost failed to make it to retail.
When the UK and Canada branches of EA pushed the idea of making a football game 20 years ago, their American bosses weren't interested: "EA didn't give a shit about Fifa," says Neil Thewarapperuma, the European marketing boss for EA Sports in the early 1990s.
The US bosses thought they had the football market covered with their Madden titles. They didn't expect to sell a single copy of Fifa International Soccer and only kept the project alive as they had given it a meagre budget of around $50,000. To put that in context, Fifa 2013 sold 4.5 million copies in the first five days it was released.
The project succeeded as it became a labour of love for a few devoted and enthusiastic developers. They worked 16-hour days and were undaunted by setbacks. When they failed to secure naming rights for players, the developers made the best of the situation and put themselves into the game.
Matt Webster made himself an England striker, Joey Della-Savia slipped into the Italian squad and Marc Aubanel was recast as a French striker. Their team leader, Bruce McMillan, put his own child in the game: "I had a new-born son at the time that I wasn't seeing much, and so I put him in the game and I gave him really good stats. Now my son is 20 but even today fans of Fifa – real hardcore fans – remember him."
EA expected to sell no more than 300,000 copies of their first game, but it shifted almost half a million copies in its first month. Twenty years later and it's still in the game.
If you want to play your part in setting up a computer game franchise, these guys are looking for some backers on Kickstarter.
Other stories we like
2) Robbie Savage reveals footballers' tricks to engineer a transfer
Robbie Savage's inability to feel embarrassed by himself is rarely a good thing, but his candour is welcome in this BBC article. Savage has compiled an 11-point guide to agitating for a transfer. With Savage being Savage, he mainly discusses himself.
His honesty is refreshing. Savage admits that in his playing days he sulked to his boss and chairman, stopped communicating (sounds unlikely) with team-mates and moaned to backroom staff and his mates at the papers all in the hope of earning a move.
3) Selling out
Coming out as a gay man is intimidating for any athlete, but the staged nature of WWE wrestling makes the decision more daunting. As this piece by Gregg Gethard in The Classical explains, the life of Darren Young, the first openly gay wrestler in WWE, is about to take an unpredictable turn.
Young is not a huge wrestling star. He is more famous to the wider public for being gay than being a wrestler. His newfound fame will change the trajectory of his career, but unlike the other athletes who have opened up about their sexuality, Young will not be in control of how his story plays out.
As a wrestler, and a middling one at that, his scripts are written by someone else. His employers could build him into a hero – a poster boy for progression in the sport – but the industry has not always been so generous. His future is in the hands of his sport.
4) Red, White and Blue Steel
An article about some old pictures of American footballers does not sound promising, but Brian Phillips' piece in Grantland about a New York Times Magazine photoshoot from 12 years ago is sheer gold. The publicity shoot was conducted by Matthias Vriens, an ex-Armani creative director who used all of his style to capture Kasey Keller, Brian McBride, Landon Donovan, DaMarcus Beasley, Clint Mathis, Pablo Mastroeni and Cobi Jones.
It's difficult to know which of the "The Boys of Soccer" looks more ridiculous. Keller is shooting the camera a sexually aggressive look, McBride is grappling with a fence, Donovan looks like he is vomiting into a water fountain and Mathis seems to be doing press-ups on a crossbar. Time has not been kind to these images, but Phillips has redeemed them.
5) Not a good sign
Rarely do you read about underpaid sports stars, but this piece by Rick Reilly for ESPN asks an intriguing question: should college footballers be allowed to profit from their names?
Johnny Manziel, an upcoming star of the college game, could be banned from his sport for selling autographs. Reilly makes that point that most kids can work part-time jobs to make some money, but Manziel is being prevented from doing what he wants with his own name: "Everybody and their gastroenterologists can make money off Johnny Manziel, except Manziel himself. The pursuit of wealth is available to every person enrolled at Texas A&M, except student-athletes."
6) So why aren't you managing the Spurs, then?
Most of us know more about football than is healthy, but none of us will ever be given the chance to put that knowledge to good use and manage our team. Why not asks Keith Duggan in The Irish Times?
When Sir Alex Ferguson retired, Manchester United appointed David Moyes without giving the rest of us a chance to apply. Many United fans have watched the club more than Moyes, and now that the Football Manager video game is more complex than ever we are better prepared to take over the club. So why not give one of us an opportunity?
Duggan tries to work out how a common fan would fare if asked to step into professional sports management. History is not on our side. When the Philadelphia 76ers were stuck for a new coach in 1972, they appointed Roy Rubin, a basketball obsessive who had looked after high school and college teams but had never taken charge of a professional outfit.
Rubin was paid $100,000 a year to try and turn the club around. It didn't work out. When Rubin was fired in the first weeks of 1973, he had won only four of his 51 matches in charge.
7) Roy Rubin, who led record-losing 76ers, dies at 87
Roy Rubin is famous in basketball for his poor run of form with the 76ers in 1972, but his story has more depth than that one season, as explained in this obituary by Richard Goldstein in the New York Times.
Rubin coached high school and college teams with great success for 20 years, but is remembered as the man who came from nowhere to coach the 76ers in a spectacularly unsuccessful season. His legend is extremely harsh, as the team he took over were no-hopers anyway. But more than that, Rubin's status as a laughing stock is cruel as he cared so much about basketball. He never married, but instead devoted his life to the game – until 1973, the season that would be his last in the sport.
8) Joost van der Westhuizen: still fighting on his deathbed
This BBC interview with Joost van der Westhuizen, the former South Africa scrum-half who won the Rugby World Cup on home soil in 1995, is tough reading. James Peacock explains how he had to strain to make out Van der Westhuizen's slurred speech as he interviewed him down the phoneline.
They talked about his career and subsequent struggle with motor neurone disease. Van der Westhuizen was diagnosed in 2011 and has since set up the J9 Foundation to raise awareness about the disease. He remains inspirational: "I realise that every day could be my last. I know I'm on a deathbed from now on. I've had my highs and I have had my lows, but no more. I'm a firm believer that there's a bigger purpose in my life and I am very positive, very happy."
9) They think it's all over
On the first day of the 1992-93 season, Danny Baker asked Radio 5 Live listeners to phone his 606 programme if they felt their team's season was over already. Football fans being football fans, the calls rolled in and the supporters lined up to batter the hopeless players and managers they had been reacquainted with earlier that afternoon.
John Brewin, writing in ESPN, reckons that if Baker had asked the same question last weekend, Arsenal fans would have taken to the BBC switchboards in their droves: "Chickens came home to roost before the eggs had even had the chance to hatch." He has a point.
10) What makes a nightmare sports parent
Offering people advice on how to raise their kids is a dangerous business, but Steve Henson makes a lot of sense in this article for The Post Game. Henson notes that, when college athletes are asked to remember their worst memory from playing sports as youngsters, they tend to bring up the ride home with their parents. It's sad but true, and, according to this piece, something that can be changed.
This week on the Guardian Sport Network
1) Do we really want football referees to give post-match interviews?
2) Five must-see fights in the UK this year
3) County cricket: the week's final over
4) Do Australian selectors now favour technique over Test runs?
5) Ashes 2013: fourth Test report cards
Debate the articles and share your own suggestions below
Game culture
US sports
USA
Transfer window
College football
College sports
Wrestling
Rugby union
Basketball
Paul Campbell
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