And so 2021 is coming to an end. I hope you’ve enjoyed the Christmas holidays as much as possible, and that you’ve been keeping safe with your loved ones during what has been another difficult winter period.
You may’ve noticed that there hasn’t been much Football Manager content on here lately. Yes, despite my cautiously positive review of FM22 back in November, I still haven’t bought the new game yet. I’m still concerned about some significant bugs that apparently weren’t fixed in the December update, so I’ve instead been “considering my options” and looking at alternatives.
Today, I’m reviewing a game which emerged earlier this year as the latest challenger to FM’s throne – a game which is often called WAF for short. To quote Cardi B, it’s time to bring a bucket and a mop for some Wet-A** Footy!
Oh, sorry, I mean… We Are Football.
BACKGROUND
Ascaron Entertainment was a strategy and simulation video game developer founded in Gütersloh, Germany in 1991. Two years later, they launched their new football management series. Anstoss stood out from its more serious British rivals by possessing some charming if surreal humour – and even some dubious features, such as the ability to dope your players.
Anstoss was a big success in Germany before getting an international release (as On The Ball), and several sequels were produced over the next decade. The original game from 1993 was recently re-released on GOG.com, along with Anstoss 2 and Anstoss 3 (though those two are only playable in German). The series has even been revived by Kalypso Media, who hope to release Anstoss 2022 / Club Manager 2022 next year.
Anstoss’ success drew interest from a little company across the pond called Electronic Arts, who poached its lead developer Gerald Köhler in 2001. Köhler and his team incorporated many features from their previous series into EA’s new annual Total Club Manager franchise, which launched in 2002 and was later rebranded as FIFA Manager.
Despite releasing several titles of varying quality over the coming years, FIFA Manager couldn’t consistently compete with Football Manager. EA eventually pulled the plug in 2013, with FIFA Manager 14 being the final game of this polarising series.
Back in May, I reviewed three of EA’s football management games on this blog: Total Club Manager 2005, and its predecessors FA Premier League Football Manager 2000 and FIFA Soccer Manager. I hoped to finish off by getting a copy of FIFA Manager 14, but the cheapest code I could buy legally cost around £300. If I wanted to spend stupid money on a football game, I’d just play Ultimate Team.
After leaving EA, Köhler founded Winning Streak Games in Cologne in 2018. They soon began work on WAF, which was picked up by Austrian publishers THQ Nordic and released in June this year. It’s currently available on Steam and the Epic Games Store, with a retail price of £29.99.
STARTING OUT
When starting a new save on WAF, you have the choice of playing with either one or two players. The two-player mode is offline, so unless you have a spouse, child or cat who’s willing to play with you, I’d suggest the single-player mode.
You’ll then be given the choice of managing in men’s OR women’s football. Yes, even before Sports Interactive’s big announcement in July, WAF was the first major football management game to include realistic women’s leagues. (Women’s Soccer Manager doesn’t really count.)
The game comes with a pretty beefy database, featuring over 30 men’s and over 20 women’s leagues, though none of these have official names or logos. Players at German clubs are loosely based on their real-life counterparts (e.g. Bavaria Munich’s elite Polish striker is clearly Robert Lewandowski under a different name), but players in other countries are completely fictional.
If you want to play with realistic data, the FM-Zocker fansite have made a HUGE database which includes over 100,000 real men’s players – and over 100 playable leagues. Sadly, its women’s database isn’t as extensive, with only the Frauen-Bundesliga getting real teams and players.
After creating your manager and selecting your team, you could be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed with information and data. Luckily, WAF includes a playable tutorial, guiding you through all the important features as you take Liverpool through a title run-in. I would recommend playing the tutorial before diving straight into a career.
WHAT I LIKED
Anyone who’s already played FIFA Manager will be familiar with some of WAF’s more ‘novel’ features. These include developing youth players aged 12 and up, negotiating sponsorship deals, improving your facilities, and tweaking your tactics to microscopic detail. These tasks can be delegated to other staff members if you just want to manage the basics.
The user interface is generally clean and clear. You shouldn’t have too many problems looking for what you want, though there are a few areas where the UI is a little unintuitive. For example, you go to one screen to set up a formation, and another to change your tactical settings.
I also quite like the player pictures. Yes, they’re basically cartoons, but there’s still far more diversity in terms of skin tones and hair styles than you’ll find on FM22’s newgens.
Players don’t have skill attributes per se, but they do have their own strengths and weaknesses (which can be trained) and an overall skill level from 1 to 15. They’re also rated on six personality traits, which affect their actions both on and off the pitch.
Just as importantly, players are divided into four categories, each represented by a different symbol: Leaders (red triangle), Artists (yellow circle), Analysts (blue square), and Team Players (green rectangle). You will need a healthy mixture of each player type in your line-up, or your team may struggle in certain situations. This adds a bit more strategy to your squad-building.
You can develop your manager’s skill level too, getting boosts to your abilities through winning matches and training players. With each level, you will get additional ‘action points’, which you can use for various things, such as delivering a motivational team talk or speeding up a player’s development.
And of course (this being a less serious game than FM), you also have the ability to employ underhand tactics for big matches. You can disrupt the opposition by turning off the floodlights, or getting a supporter to streak (no pun intended) onto the pitch! Just don’t get caught, otherwise the FA will penalise you!
WHAT I DIDN’T
The match experience seems to be where most football management games fall down… and in WAF, the experience is sadly not great. There is no 3D or even 2D match engine to speak of, and we instead get a highlights package that is extremely primitive by 2020s standards.
During a highlight, the player currently on the ball will appear on the pitch, with an arrow showing where their pass or shot is going. The next player on the ball then pops up, and the highlight continues like this. There is an alternative text option which neatly lists each player’s action in turn, but it’s still very basic.
I’m also not a fan of the random stock images that appear, depicting the overall mood or team spirit. For a team in hot form, it shows an erupting volcano. For a team in an angry mood, it’s a roaring tiger. At various points, you may also come across an anxious puppy, an amused monkey, and a rubbish tip. They’re a bit too cringey for my tastes.
Setting up training schedules takes some getting used to. Players recover their energy quite slowly, and resting them from training can actually make things worse, so you’ll need to put in a lot of physical training each week. It took me nearly half the season to figure out why my centre-back who’d picked up a cold in August was still struggling for fitness in November.
Once you’ve mastered training, it becomes very easy to keep your players fit and sharpen up their tactics. After the mid-season break, my team went on a nine-game winning streak (again, no pun intended), winning several matches by at least 6 goals, and we stormed to the title with time to spare. Who’da thought a 4-2-3-1 counter-pressing tactic would work wonders in a football manager game?
There are also some technical issues you should know about. I encountered a few crashes, and one case where a match highlight suddenly froze, completely stalling the match and forcing me to restart. Also, DO NOT play in Windowed mode; I couldn’t open the game up after switching from Fullscreen and had to reset my settings.
WE MUST TALK ABOUT…
‘Deserved goals’. That’s what WAF calls ‘expected goals’. No, really.
I might cut the German developers some slack and call this just a poor English translation. But then they double down, with every explanation suggesting that this figure is the number of goals your team “deserved to score”, and that any team who scores far fewer goals than they “deserved” was “unlucky”. Try explaining that to Wolves fans.
I also get the feeling that the game’s calculations of expected… no, sorry, deserved goals is very inconsistent. Some outside chances get a far higher ‘DG’ than you’d expect, while some clear opportunities barely register. I’ve had matches where we had 7 ‘deserved goals’ and only won 2-0, and another where we somehow scored THREE goals from 0.01 DG.
There are several other odd translations in the English language files. In terms of pressing and counter-pressing, your options range from “Instead, frown” (never) to “Night and day” (always). It also took me some time to figure out what the names of some other statistics and training routines meant. Thankfully, the language files are quite easy to find and edit yourself if you wish.
SUMMARY
We Are Football is probably the most perplexing game I’ve reviewed on Fuller FM. It’s basic in the best and worst possible ways, it’s often amusing yet baffling, and some of its features are so bad that they’re utterly brilliant. I first bought WAF back in September and binned it off after a couple of hours… but then I picked it up again just before Christmas and got hooked.
While I don’t think it’s quite worth £30 yet, there is quite a bit of enjoyment to be found here. If the developers can iron out the rough spots and release a more focussed sequel with a more robust match engine (and perhaps some official licences), a winning streak could be on the cards. Yes, that pun was intentional.
FULLER FM RATING: 3* – Football League.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this review and would like to share your thoughts on We Are Football, you can leave a comment below or tweet me @Fuller_FM.
I’m hoping to review more PC football management games like this one throughout 2022. If you have any suggestions about other games I could cover (whether they’re retro or modern), feel free to let me know.
Until next year, thanks for reading.
Fuller FM 
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