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EA's FIFA 20 tournament pits real footballers against each other
EA Sports has launched a FIFA 20 esports soccer tournament to raise cash for coronavirus charities, featuring some of the biggest teams and players in Europe. The Stay and Play Cup will be streamed on EA’s Twitch channel and match up teams like Dortmund, Real Madrid, Paris St. Germaine and Manchester City.
Learn soccer tactics and strategies with The False 9
Soccer continues to grow in popularity in the United States especially amongst the younger generation. But I have found that very few Americans really know much about the tactics that big time teams use during their games. We all know about shotguns, pistol, and spread formations but very few can identify a 4-2-3-1 formation and its plusses and minuses. The False 9 app, a universal free app that runs on iOS 6.0 or later, provides a breakdown of a number of key strategies utilized by the major teams today. First a bit about the name. Traditionally soccer players who started the games were numbered from 1-11 starting with the goalkeeper at number 1. The number 9 player was traditionally the striker or chief goal scoring threat and when his team was attacking the opponents goal he was stationed closest to the scoring area in front of the net. When Pep Guardiola became the coach of Barcelona, he used Lionel Messi, the most prolific goal scorer in recent years, in a different role. Messi, Barcelona's 9 went deeper, away from the goal and picked up the ball further down the field and then attacked. So he was no longer the "true" number 9 and became known at the "false" 9 and soccer has not been the same since. Now lets look at what's available inside The False 9. You will find a focus on the top European club teams such as Arsenal, Manchester United and City, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, etc. Under each club the app goes into detail, some written and some by using videos to explore certain tactics and strategies used by that club along with stories about what is happening with that club right now. For example, with Real Madrid users will see a discussion with team manager Manual Pelligrini about his tactics along with a description of the rivalry between Real and Barcelona that dates back to the Spanish Civil War in the 30's. One of the sections is labeled Football Tactics for Beginners and is full of articles and videos that breakdown a variety of formations, how some teams started using three primary defenders instead of the traditional four, and three segments on How to Watch Football and what spectators should be looking at during the game in addition to following the ball up and down the pitch. I started following soccer much more closely when I worked in the UK in the late 90's and have followed the English Premier League and European competitions closely ever since. So my understanding of the game was fair to good compared to other Americans but I learned a great deal more from reading the articles and watching the videos on The False 9 app. I highly recommend it as a download if you want to learn more about the game your kids and grandkids are playing.
Updated FIFA 14 cover keeps it Real with new shirt for Bale
We wondered what the ramifications might be for the FIFA 14 Euro-cover, given it pictured Premier League superstar Gareth Bale in a Tottenham shirt amid rumors of his impending transfer to Real Madrid. Sure enough, one record-breaking €100 million deal later - that's around $133 million - and the cover for the unreleased game is out of date - or, it was. Despite the game only being two weeks away, EA Sports was able to whip a new cover that correctly reflects Bale's status as the latest Galactico; check it out in full after the break. This isn't the first time EA Sports has pulled a switcheroo like this; fans of the other type of football no doubt remember the Madden NFL 09 cover of Brett Favre in a Jets shirt. The former Green Bay quarterback signed for the New York team just five days before the game was due. That's not enough time to do a Bale-like swap, so EA Sports concocted a printable PDF cover, which seems kind of ludicrous some five years on. Anyway, all's well that ends well as far as FIFA 14 is concerned, as long as Lionel Messi doesn't suddenly decide to quit football and become a ballet dancer (he'd be a very good ballet dancer, we're sure). The game has a demo out ahead of its September 24 arrival on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC, and it'll be out on both next-gen consoles too. Don't forget, Xbox One Day One pre-orders in Europe will nab it or Forza 5 for free.
Becks loses two Bimmers to laptop-toting thieves
For every hundred or so stupid criminals that we feature on these pages, there are a few just as brilliant as their contemporaries are dim: look at the international group of hardware pirates who managed to build their own version of Japan's NEC Corp, or the laptop-toting thieves who succesfully stole not one, but two, of soccer football star David Beckham's BMW X5 SUVs by hacking the keyless-entry systems. In the last six months, the Real Madrid star and Mr. Posh Spice has seen two of his $60,000 vehicles lost to geeky criminals, with the most recent GTA occurring while Becks dined at a mall in Spain. Apparently thieves armed with a particular model's security schematics can jack into the car's PC and run software that dumps out the necessary codes for breaking the encryption, allowing them to unlock the doors, start the engine, and in some cases, even disable built-in tracking devices. Yeah, we're kind of impressed, but let's see these fancy criminals use their high-tech lockpicks to "hack" the cold, hard steel of our "Club LX."[Via Left Lane News]
