How Barcelona Vs. Chelsea Could Help Pro Evo End FIFA's Dominance

FIFA has ruled over the football computer gaming world like a despot for years now, leaving many to assume that its old sparring partner Pro Evolution Soccer had been exiled in Mexico and left to die there in the desert with a pickaxe in its head.

However, the trailer for the latest game in the series dropped yesterday (yep, video games have trailers now) and it seems better, or at least not quite as shit as it's been since 2010. But are the promises of "off the ball control" and "redeveloped keepers" too little too late? Have Konami opted to apply the magic sponge when really what's needed here is a six-month course of anabolic steroids?

It's clear to me that, if Pro Evo is to relive its glory days of being fondled by greasy-handed student drunks the world over, it's going to need to aim higher, and incorporate the features that have really turned the naive version of the sport that existed in the noughties inside out. And what better match to learn those things from than Chelsea's Champion's League semi-final win over Barcelona? That wasn't just 180 minutes of anti-football, it was like football played the wrong side of a black hole.

The Invisible Card

Sometimes, it just feels like there are too many players on the pitch. Not on your side, of course; you could actually use a couple extra out there, because stubborn old Chelsea are refusing to play properly and have parked the bus yet again. Zzzzzz.

If this is frustrating enough in real life, when there are real prizes and careers at stake, imagine how galling it must be to have someone try to defend against you in a completely meaningless simulation. However, if Konami have watched Barcelona at all in the last three years, they'll know that nothing's better at finding that extra bit of space a killer ball needs than an invisible card.

The next time you bravely decide to play Pro Evo as Barca, why should you have to rely solely on your seven forwards to break the deadlock? Wouldn't it be great if instead you could just press a button to send your boys bombing up to the virtual off-duty copper who's in charge, and make them start waving their arms in his face like a gang of Las Ramblas hugger muggers? Try stopping totaalvoetbal with nine men, sucker. MES QUE UN CLUB!

The Phantom Handshake

Footballers aren't exactly the most loyal of friends, with a culture of cuckolding and girlfriend swapping that would put some religious sects to shame. They're also fond of the kind of hilarious "cultural misunderstandings" that can warrant a nine-match ban and a brief removal from captaincy duties. The authorities won't do anything about it, so on-pitch vigilantism is the only way to restore justice. What's the best way to get petty revenge against the man who wronged you? It's that schoolboy classic, the phantom handshake.

Sadly, this under hyped and hugely significant feature of football in 2012 failed to make an appearance over the course of the Chelsea-Barcelona semi-final. But that doesn't mean Pro Evo shouldn't include a feature that allows you to leave a brother hanging. As a franchise, it needs to get with the times and stop blindly swallowing all this UEFA-sanctioned "sportsmanship" bullshit. Because no one wants to shake the hand of a man who's been pawing shit into his mouth all day, do they?

The Twelfth Man

You know when managers excuse their team's latest bottle-job by saying things like, "Well, the Britannia is never an easy place to come to"? They aren't talking about Glenn Whelan's dogged man marking skills or the traffic on the A500. They're saying it's a fucking terrifying place to play at. A gladiatorial arena full of people who hate you, your club and everything it stands for.

Just imagine being able to bring those much-vaunted "wet Wednesday nights in Stoke" to life on your Xbox the next time some dullard rocks up to your sofa and picks Barca. Imagine being able to boo every time virtual Dani Alves latched onto one of virtual Xavi's perfectly-weighted virtual through balls, or to alert Lionel Messi to the confusing emergence of his wattle. With no FA inquiries or Dirty Harry stewards, it would be a perfect way of making the Barcelonas of this world feel like Christians thrown to the lions.

The Goalkeeper's Amble

You know one player who would improve the Barcelona squad? Boaz Myhill. Seriously, he's football's time wasting God; he's wasted more time than Atlas and Sting combined. He's the missing piece of the Catalan puzzle, the dark mind that should be at the head of their on-pitch spine.

Anyway, let's jack this into Pro Evo mode. You're one-nil up against a superior team controlled by a superior gamer. Let's face it, the goal you got was a fluke, so from now on, every second counts. As anyone who's ever seen Boaz "play" for Hull knows, the best way to waste time is by taking forever to take a goal kick. You press a button and your keeper strolls around the area like a man smugly admiring his own gardening work until the ref loses his patience. You could even do that thing where they bang their studs against the goal post, which is a behaviour not even they can explain. Is it to ward off evil spirits, or are they trying to get the mud off their boots? If so, why? There are still 12 minutes plus injury time left to play, Boaz. Still, if you can forget that the sound of his studs against post is the sound you'll be hearing forever when you both end up in hell (first circle, natch), it's a great way to piss people off.

The Toerag With the Laser Pen

Ah yes, the laser pen, beloved of people who live beneath the Heathrow flight path, those who read gun magazines but are too afraid of guns to buy guns and continental exchange students. A number of these men (have you ever seen a woman with a laser pen?) also happen to be football fans, and so many of them have decided to combine circumstance and passion in one evening's entertainment and mildly irritate people who earn more money than them and will never know who they are. Lionel "The Second Coming" Messi is perhaps the one footballer on Earth who suffers most from this snot-green plague, and why should Earth be any different from a computer game? The laser pen could be a great tool for when your double-man pressing's left your defensive shape akin to that of a collapsed circus tent or your flanks are being marshalled by an out-of-position Ronald Zubar.

So there you go, unimaginative programmers. Go forth and add some of these features, before people pretend to like your precious series only out of irony and nostalgia. Before you turn into the Paul Weller of computer games, endlessly churning out new titles that are exactly the same as the last one, and that only weird completists are interested in. Before the current generation grows up telling their kids about the times when you had to play as "David Packham" and "Alan Shears" because you didn't have the licenses. Before any of that happens, embrace the new football.

Follow Clive on Twitter: @thugclive