OK, not really. It's nowhere near official, but trust me (or your own brain) on this one. Rumors are flying everywhere, and all signs are pointing towards it.
We all know Fat Ronaldinho loves to party. And we all know that Hollywood does nothing but party. LA seems like such a good fit for an aging former-World Footballer of the Year. Plus, it would be another chance to reconnect with David Beckham.
The only thing is, does LA even want Ronnie? For the money and power that he somehow still commands (you'd be surprised how many Wizards jerseys MJ sold), I'd like to think that MLS doesn't even need Ronaldinho. After a stellar last year building off of true American talent like Edson Buddle, Omar Gonzalez, and Landon Donovan, do they really need a foreigner, making three times the amount the rest of the team does, sitting out half the season, just as Beckham did?
One post in the entire month of September plus zero posts for October? Man I've really fallen off.
Going to get back on this thing...
In the meantime, you'd have thought the 2018 race would be closer to being decided, with USA pulling out and all, but seriously, what is it that they do at FIFA. I'm starting to think they just sit in a circle, play duck duck goose and jenga, and whoever loses has to choose who hosts the next Cup.
I've still very much jetlagged as it's the wee hours of the morning and I couldn't sleep. So it's about that time of year that I usually dig up the new videos and trailers of this season's renditions of soccer simulation. Oh the considerations.
Now I'm not here to hash out the war between FIFA and PES as that's a dead beaten horse that many have already been on about for quite some time.
But I would like to say that for the past decade+ I've been mindlessly shelling out money every year for EA's new FIFA version, usually about this time of year. It's almost scary how zombified I've become, to the point where I'm starting not to realize just how bland the new FIFA games have become.
I've been playing the FIFA games way back since it was just a wee little FIFA 96. Back then you had to play it on the computer to get virtual graphics, but back then there was also the legendary indoor mode. But anyways, in those days technology advanced so much that every year seemed to be a huge leap in improvement over the last, whether it was graphics, gameplay, or stadium and shirt packs.
These days, it feels like each new version of EA's FIFA is a more watered-down version of the last. This year's biggest improvement in FIFA? Something called "personality".
It seems like EA is trying to continue building on the same gameplay engine they've had for the past 200 years by adding smaller and smaller tweaks, in an attempt to perfect it. Maybe this will be the one tweak that finally makes the game playable. Probably not.
My only thing is that in my dabbling with demo's of PES in the past, it's just that PES is so much more playable. I know it's the same old FIFA-simulation, PES-arcade yadda yadda, but even with the way that FIFA is developed, a lot of times it just doesn't even properly simulate basic things like, well, playability. And Konami's downfall every year has been that it just has never been able to match up to FIFA's visual beauty.
The first thing I noticed straight away in the PES trailer was the detail of the players' boots. PES has finally matured into a good looking game.
It's like Konami gave birth to a daughter who was a late bloomer, one who was smart, quick, funny and agile, but just wasn't much of a looker. While FIFA on the other hand is a lot like the vacant and empty pretty face who always looks better and better every year, but just has something awkward about her internal gears that makes her look funny when she runs.
Either way, that's a horrible analogy. But I can't help but feel like I've been married to the wrong woman my whole life. And now that PES looks just as good and it plays, this might be the year that my (oh so hard earned) money courts a different maker. Even if I don't end up buying PES, at least this year I thought it about even more.
In the end, it's all just for one year anyways before we spend another $60 on next year's game. In the meantime, I'll be looking forward to the promising new Football Manager 2011
Random nonsense, but I believe at this moment I've come full circle. This is one year to when I created this blog to being documenting my thoughts of the world of football. I've since grown and learned a lot, my energy has been tempered by life's activities around me, but my passion for football hasn't changed a bit.
Tomorrow morning I leave on a 16 hour flight to Taiwan. I spent $9.50 on this month's FourFourTwo with the special on the Special One.
Is it too realistic when the coders can get Robert Green's trademark moves characterized in video game eternity? Yeah... Back to the drawing board guys.
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