FIFA Soccer 06

The tagline was "You play, they obey" — a promise about teammate control that the PS2 build only half kept, but the more interesting part of this edition wasn't on the pitch at all. It was the career mode. Fifteen seasons, a club chairman with expectations, scouting reports, staff to hire and a transfer market that would tell you no. For a series that had spent years shipping essentially the same match wrapped in a new licence, this was the first time the space between matches carried real weight.

Squad chemistry was the hook that tied the two halves together. Buy three superstars into a mid-table side and you would watch their form sag, because the system tracked how players settled and how the dressing room absorbed them. It is crude by later standards, a set of hidden numbers nudging attribute values, but it created the right kind of hesitation before a signing. Patience became a tactic.

The football itself is recognisably mid-generation FIFA: heavy players, a first touch that plants the ball rather than rolling it, and off-the-ball control that asks you to send a runner ahead while holding possession with your other thumb. It works better in theory than under pressure. Shooting rewards learning the sweet spots more than reading the goalkeeper, and the AI defence still parts too easily for a quick one-two down the channel. Compared with Pro Evolution Soccer 5, released the same season, the passing feels blunter and the animation less honest about momentum.

What has aged best is the presentation and the sheer breadth of licensed leagues, plus a soundtrack that still dates the thing more precisely than any calendar. What has aged worst is the arcade give in the tackling, which turns close games into end-to-end trades.

EA was already building a separate, flashier version for the new Xbox hardware, which makes this the PS2 line quietly getting on with the unglamorous work of becoming a management game.