Every now and then EA SPORTS faces criticism for treating Pro Clubs stepmotherly despite its supposed potential. But what actually makes the mode?
The range of playable modes in FIFA is once again large in the current installment: Ultimate Team, the classic career mode or the Volta mode based on FIFA Street. One game mode that always seems to be a little overlooked is Pro Clubs.
This is where Pro Clubs seems to come closest to the real football that FIFA aims to bring to the console: Up to 22 players each control one player on the pitch and compete against each other in teams. We discussed the possibilities and potential of this approach in the last eSport Talk – in which there was also a heated debate about what makes Pro Clubs so special.
Identification with new hero stories
For Patrick Baur, managing director of Doppelpass Digital GmbH, the fascination results, among other things, from the identification with one’s own player and club: “It’s definitely a blatant event when you see your avatar for the first time, as he runs out onto the pitch on a big TV in your jersey with your number and name on the back.” For him, this could “create new hero genres. “
A notch in which the pro-club coach of VfL Bochum, Alex Stange, also strikes: “It’s the aspect of playing for your own club.” This, he says, can already be seen in career mode: “You run on the outside with Holtmann at VfL, play to Losilla and then to Stange, who scores and runs into the Bochum corner. “
Pro Clubs teaches “values for real life “
The Bochum coach, however, finds another aspect of Pro Clubs crucial: “For me, the most important thing about this mode is the teaching of values: subordinating yourself to a team – especially as a one-on-one player.” In the process, the “I’m doing this” is eliminated and becomes “I’m doing this for the team and for the boys”. For Stange, “values that are also relevant in real life far away from the console.”
The coach also recognises another intersection between real life and the game in the pecking order within a team: “Leaders crystallise in pro clubs as well, who lead the word.” In the same way, there are “people who push, and some players who quickly become emotional and are pissed off”. That’s what matters: “That’s football. That’s football transferred one-to-one to the console. And that’s what makes the mode stand out for me. “
Emotions basically more positive
Jan ‘GamingAlm’ Bergmann, who is a FUT trader but also a football coach for many years, sees an advantage in the basic mood of the mode compared to other modes of the FIFA series: “When I play Pro Clubs, I usually experience positive emotions: I’m happy with my team about successful actions, if something doesn’t work, you build up the other person.”
Of course, it also happens in pro clubs that “the ball goes somewhere where you didn’t press it”, but the way it is dealt with is different: “If my teammate has a failure because he doesn’t do a huge thing, then he is built up and maybe there is a stupid comment among his mates. The situation is much more relaxed than when I sit alone cramped in front of my console and don’t make these things in the Weekend League in the last game for the next rank.” For Bergmann, “a huge factor”.
From a coach’s point of view, ‘GamingAlm’ inspires yet another facet. Because “give me the eleven best FIFA players and you’re good to go” is not a veritable approach: “It’s not about having eleven good players, it’s about having a good team that is well coordinated and harmonises.” He said it was a case of trying to “pool everyone’s ideas so that we all start thinking in the same way and develop a philosophy of how we play this mode and this game.”
Overall Social Opportunity
Last but not least, Pro Clubs also offers opportunities for clubs and society as a whole, according to Baur: “I think we have a very strong club landscape in Germany, which is a solid pillar for us as an overall society, where people come together, no matter what their background or status. The interest in football brings them together,” explains the managing director of Doppelpass Digital GmbH.
For him, this interest must now be taken up in a more modern form: “The next generation may no longer go to the football club, but sit at home in front of the console and gamble. Here I see the clubs’ task as creating a new offer to bring people back to the club and to create community experiences. And you can have those in pro clubs.”
That’s why, according to Baur, it would be “extremely valuable” if clubs took the chance to “create a gaming offer like FIFA Pro Clubs and develop it into an eSport to get people out of the living room and teach them values.” Because then, Baur concludes, “clubs can fulfil their social mission”.
