FIFA STREET BUILT A GENERATION OF STREET FOOTBALLERS

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Launched in 2005, EA Sports FIFA Street is the most influential video game in my life, and the game I can thank for the path I decided to follow from a very young age. For the very few that aren’t aware; FIFA Street is an urban arcade version of the traditional EA Sports FIFA video game series, but with the matches being 5-a-side, set in a variety of urban locations, while also containing unique gameplay features such as gamebreakers and over the top flair.

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Being born in the later 90s, I grew up playing the Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo and Playstation 1, and like most kids my age I was heavily addicted. But nothing could match the impact that the Playstation 2 had on my life. If I could have played this console all day every day I would, luckily my parents only allowed me to play on weekends, and only then for a very short period if I hadn’t got into any trouble and if I had played well on my weekend football match. I played a huge amount of Jak and Daxter, Crash Bandicoot, and most of all Mortal Kombat. That all changed one day when a friend of my dad brought over FIFA Street to play against my dad and his friends. I remember watching in awe at what was happening on the screen, the moment they all got up to eat I took my chance and played the game on my own. To this day I’m not sure why, but my dads friend gave me the game to keep, maybe he saw how much I loved it, but regardless I now owned this game, and I played the hell out of it over the next few years.

It was the street aesthetic that got me. FIFA Street 1 turned to FIFA Street 2, to 3, to the Nintendo DS version, to then the reboot in 2012. It is this reboot that is the literal roadmap to Sydney Street Crew, and the game you can thank for what SSC has become today. I’ll lay it out for you so you can understand what I mean; The game is built on the preface that you build a Street Football team, make their logo, build their kits, and it all starts very basic. You enter local level tournaments and events until you have enough points to level up to the state or regional area, where you now have slightly better gear and get to play in cooler places. Very much the same as the level below, you play these events until you unlock your national level, and then finally the international level, where you get to play against the best of the best, with the best gear, the best logo, and in the best stadiums and locations. I understand that when everyone builds a football club from scratch that they have to go through levels to become great, but that’s traditional football, and that process can take 20 years while looking nothing like this journey. 

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For the past 7 years building SSC I have played in 3v3 tournaments in a shed in a Sydney Industrial district while having an absolutely awful logo and no actual team gear, we all just wore whatever black jersey we had, I still remember the black psg kit I wore. We played at that level for a while, entering local Futsal leagues and doing our best to grow. Once I reached the next stage we were playing Futsal against the best teams in the state and at the start we were losing terribly, this stage took the longest, at least 4 years. But we slowly ground our way to the top, improving our gear and logo on the way until finally we were invited to our first national tournament and then national league. We did ok in both of those, with room for improvement when we play in those again this year, but it’s at this point that the opportunities in Australia don’t get any better, which means we had to go international, and that is what we did. Mid 2022 we took our first steps on the international stage by competing in a professional international Futsal tournament in Colombia, and as usual we lost terribly, but that’s just step one, as you can see from our past stages of leveling up, it’s always terrible at the start until we catch on and start to climb, which is where we are at now. Time to climb the international stage to get as high as we possibly can. Every single step up on this journey we are on I have compared where we are to the FIFA Street roadmap, and it has been a great source of guidance, but also pride, as it showed me that I can make something that most deem either impossible or even just outright dumb possible.

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What caps this whole love affair with FIFA Street off for me is the 2021 reboot of FIFA Street to Volta Football, where I personally was the focal point of the EA Sports Australian National ad campaign of the re-launch.

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