Video game data collectors have their eyes on FIFA U-17 World Cup

Angel Gomes wondered why his FIFA avatar looked like Swansea City striker Wilfried Bony. (Source: Express Photo by Partha Kaul)

Whether at work or on the commute back home, a 20-something in Hamburg made sure to catch the entirety of 90 minutes every time the German U-17s took the field in India. And the highlight packages afterwards. But national loyalty was secondary, and results largely of academic interest. He was tasked with keeping a close eye on one player. The man is neither a scout nor die-hard fan. The job, however, is a heady mix of business and pleasure.

“I am a data reviewer for EA Sports,” says the IT professional, who has signed a non-disclosure agreement with the developer of the FIFA video game series. ‘Data reviewer’ is fancy-speak for a person who can follow a team closely to give feedback on certain players. Striker Jann-Fiete Arp in this case.

“I had to observe everything he was doing on the pitch. He was the only Hamburger player, and that’s the team I send information about,” says the season ticket-holder of his hometown club. “I watched the European championships earlier this year and gave my feedback. But after his performance in the World Cup, I think some of his stats could be higher. Like strength and vision. He shakes off his markers and forces errors. His touch is good under pressure and he creates chances.”

The evaluation, along with videos for reference, will be keyed in and an editor (usually supporter of a non-rival team) will either disagree or bump Arp’s strength and vision from 64 and 57, to a whopping 65 and 58.

“He’s young, so his stats will inevitably grow higher in the game. But it’s fun to be ‘scouting’ young talents from average teams at such age-group events. Hundreds do it for Premier League and La Liga teams,” he says, adding, “Sometimes you have to watch 4-5 games in a week. Sometimes you just log in and check the notifications. It’s voluntary and there’s no compensation.”

Why do it then?

“I was tired of moaning about the ratings. I wanted to be on the other side.”

*****

“I’m going to refuse to play with myself until I’m a little bit more realistic!”

The uninitiated could have taken Dele Alli’s declaration last month for juvenile euphemism or a confused vow of celibacy. But those in the know comprehended, and outraged, alongside the Tottenham midfielder.

Alli — the PFA Young Player of the Year for the last two seasons with 31 goals in 79 appearances for Spurs — was disappointed with his FIFA 18 rating. “To be honest, I don’t think I’ll use myself in the game because I don’t think my rating is very good,” he clarified, adding that he was expecting an overall rating of 85, at least. EA Sports gave him 84, putting the 21-year-old among the top 100 players in the game.

Alli isn’t alone. Around 18,000 professional footballers wait anxiously every year to see how their on-field exploits have translated into the latest installments of their video game of choice — the record-breaking FIFA series, Japanese rival Pro Evolution Soccer and the management simulator Football Manager. For their part, the developers go all out in their quest for authenticity, with an obsessive focus on data analytics.

For the FIFA series, around 300 data editors sift through in-depth feedback from 9,000 data reviewers to generate 300 fields and 35 distinct attributes such as positioning, ball control, sprint speed and acceleration. A weightage system then yields a player’s overall rating.

German statistician Michael-Mueller Moehring, who oversees the entire process, however admits there is ample guesswork and subjectivity involved. In an interview with ESPN, Moehring said: “The stats are, in most cases, not taking into account very specific circumstances. When you look at passing completion, if you play for Bayern Munich or if you play for Manchester City or if you play for Pep Guardiola, if your system is based on possession, you will have more successful passes than other players, but this doesn’t necessarily make you a better passer.”

The team and the league of a footballer also play a role. An average Manchester United player will invariably have better passing stats than a Notts County star. Then there are the intangibles. Gauging an unheralded player’s aggression and composure through season-ticket holders could lead to inconsistencies.

Football Manager — a game which has helped real-life managers to find talents and real-life clubs to find managers — fares better. Its intimidating, detailed database, comprising 2,300 clubs, is a product of a network of scouts around the world. Six main researchers oversee 100 head researchers who focus on a nation or a league. Below them, are 1,000 assistants who look at one or two clubs.

“Yes, I’m following the Brazil under-17 team,” says Paulo Freitas, Football Manager head researcher for Brazil, who looks after the data collated by his assistants. “We check several attributes, from more obvious ones like preferred foot to technical ones like dribbling, finishing, etc. And also mental and physical attributes.”

“I also watch 12 or so games every week and a couple of games at the stadium every month, so it’s many dozens of players. I also note down a lot of info, and pay attention to the opinion of experts, fans (as biased as they can be sometimes),” added Freitas.

Over the last 25 years, Sportz Interactive, developers of Football Manager, have amassed an eerie track record of picking out future stars. While playing gaffer with a Barcelona squad circa 2001, young Jon McLeish noticed an exciting 13-year-old running roughshod in the club’s age-group games. McLeish drafted him to play alongside Rivaldo and Patrick Kluivert and scampered to his father when the kid scored a couple of goals. Father Alex — an actual football manager in Scotland — listened with the attentiveness of a father humouring his pre-teen.

“He told me that this guy was going to be the best player in the world. I said ‘OK son’ and gave him a pat on the head,” Alex recalled in a 2014 documentary. “Yeah, the kid was called Lionel Messi.”

However, despite meticulous analysis and hard-earned instincts, the crystal ball can get cloudy.

Due to developers’ oversight or the unpredictable nature of the game, some future stars never come of age or late-bloomers aren’t caught in time. One such sleeper hit whom both FIFA and Football Manager missed is Dele Alli’s Tottenham teammate Harry Kane.

Three years ago, the striker was rated 67 on FIFA (on par with India’s Sunil Chhetri) with an expected growth up to 74. This year, the 24-year-old is 86, one of the top rated Premier League stars.

Football Manager’s director Miles Jacobson too admitted the slip-up.

“I have personally said sorry to him,” Jacobson said in an interview to the Mirror. “There was a long period where he was on loan at other clubs and we didn’t think he was going to reach the heights that he has done. I met him at the London Football Awards and he is known for playing a lot of computer games and I said ‘we get 0.5 per cent wrong, you were one that we got wrong.”

As it turns out, the shoddy stats spurred Kane to tear it up during the 2015-16 season, scoring 25 goals in the league.

“He said to me one of the reasons he was trying so hard was to make sure his stats were better in the game.”

*****

While the Ultimate Team razzmatazz, photo-realistic graphics and other gimmicks lure millions to spend Rs 4,000 every year, there’s a subset of FIFA fans who return only for the good ol’ career mode.

Be it for the cheap thrills of managing Real Madrid with a transfer budget to woo the who’s who, or an enterprising campaign of taking Yeovil Town from League Two to the upper echelons. Football Manager too offers the same experiences, with the added complexity of trying to balance relationships with the players, the board and the media while trying to increase ticket and t-shirt sales.

The strongest common thread running through the titles is the annual list of wonderkids. Dozens of websites and forums are dedicated to help a “manager” nab top prospects at throwaway prices — 16-17-year-old players who, after a few in-game seasons, inevitably turn into Ballon d’Or contenders.

England Under-17 midfielder Angel Gomes’ page on one such website is littered with hundreds of comments discussing his form in India.

Every move of the 64-rated midfielder is scrutinised closely by two factions; one which wants him to justify his stunning ‘potential’ rating of 89, the other which believes he received the said rating only because of his association with Manchester United. Thousands, left enamoured by Amine Gouiri, are slotting the Frenchman into their first teams while Jann-Fiete Arp’s potential of 87 suggests the German is set to become a better striker than Miroslav Klose ever was.

For the players themselves, the game may mean different things. USA’s Tim Weah plays a ton of FIFA 18 “because it gets my mind off the real world after training. It gets you loose.” For England’s Jadon Sancho, it’s a way to show where his loyalties lie — his all-Bundesliga team a nod to his new club Borussia Dortmund.

On release day, Angel Gomes tweeted a photo of his FIFA avatar to EA Sports, asking: “Why do I look like (Swansea striker) Wilfried Bony? Hahahahahaha.”

Gone are the days when the Ibrahimovics, Pirlos and Piques were merely content in FIFA or Football Manager saves. Today’s wonderkids are as concerned about their future as they are about their virtual counterparts.