Goals is a free FIFA alternative that is actually good

After every match you play, everyone on the team sheet will receive a set amount of experience. Once they earn enough (the higher rated they are, the more it takes), you can spend points on upgrading them. This isn’t infinite, though; each player has a set potential, much like you’d find in FIFA’s career mode, and only a certain number of possible upgrades. They may reach their potential, they may not, but you can only upgrade them as many times as their card indicates.

Image: Goals via Polygon

You’ll form attachments to your fictional players, helped by the knowledge that nobody else in the world has them. 33-year-old Ola Weigand is the star of my team, an 83-rated German center midfielder with 91 pace who has been with me since my randomly assigned squad at the start of the game. She’s won me numerous matches with her 93 attacking IQ and 99 lofted pass stats, and she’s my prime candidate to turn into a legend. Players retire in Goals, but if you’re so attached to them that you can’t bear to see them leave, you can also spend currency to convert them into legends, allowing them to play indefinitely.

On the pitch, FIFA players will feel right at home, both for better and for worse. The control scheme is practically identical, and mechanically, it’s only slightly stripped back. You can hold R1/RB to use another player to press an opponent, you can use the same button while in possession to perform a finesse shot, skill moves are executed with the right analog stick, and so on.

This similarity is clearly intentional, because Goals isn’t asking you to learn an entirely new game; it’s offering FIFA-style gameplay with less of the bullshit. In FIFA, hands-off defending is the most effective approach, letting your players naturally get in the way of attackers, but that won’t fly here. You need to be proactive and time your tackles. You can’t waste time here; if you pass it around the defense, a zone will slowly extend from behind your goal. Spend too much time in here and you’ll concede a free kick.

The same zone appears as the game approaches half-time, albeit from the center circle, so rather than adding on a certain amount of injury time that could be deemed unfair or inaccurate, the half only ends when the ball has spent a cumulative 10 seconds inside the zone. At full time, the zone appears behind the goal of whichever player is losing.

Goals isn’t short of drawbacks, however. In FIFA 12 and 13, pace was infamously overpowered. Players who were otherwise nothing spectacular — Theo Walcott, Aaron Lennon, and Seydou Doumbia to name three — were some of the most expensive in the game. Pace feels similarly powerful in Goals, although whether you can get your hands on a rapid player is much more luck-based thanks to the lack of a transfer market.

Image: Goals

Certain skill moves, such as ball rolls and pullbacks, are frustratingly strong here too, with a meta quickly emerging that favors players who can control the ball closely as opposed to using through balls and encouraging runs into the open. Losing in Goals doesn’t feel quite as rage-inducing as FIFA often has over the years though, even if there are moments where I’ve needed to put the controller down for a break.

EA Sports’ 30-year-old series is definitely the flashier package, and if authenticity is important to you, the fictional players in Goals aren’t going to cut the mustard. But with the ball at your feet, this up-and-coming indie competitor feels like it has a healthy future. It’s early days, but now’s your chance to get involved with potentially the next big sports game.