Football B-side

This is Football B-side.

Five a side. Sixty seconds. Thumbs on.
Arcade football the way the cassette remembers it: a top-down pitch, a keeper who plays to his number, and a midfielder deciding what the next ten seconds are for. Pass where the stick points. Hold shoot and the world slows while you pick a corner. Tackles land on contact. Dashes leave a smear of colour behind you. One button opens a trick; a second, pressed in time, cancels it into something ruder.

Underneath the match there is a season. A nation, a squad, a world ranking that moves with every result. Qualifiers, a continental cup, a 48-team World Cup. Players age. Players get better at the football things you make them do, and no better at the ones you don’t. Call up the kid in form. Release the one who isn’t. Take the penalties yourself.

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