Season 6 comes to a climax, it took a little longer than I’d hoped but with the warm weather before this week I spent most days enjoying the sunshine in the garden, a spot of fishing, and of course working from home in between.
With the inevitable delay of 2020’s soccer games due to this Corona virus thingy, there is no reason or need to rush through the seasons, if this years games are put back, then I could happily be playing the PC modded version of FIFA 20 well into 2021.
With that being said, I did finish season 6 and here’s how it played out:
Man Utd crowned champions again, for the second successive season, they are the English Real Madrid, a team of Galacticos, with the likes of Ter Stegen, Neymar, Kane, et-al all playing for them, we finished a respectable fourth, sealing UEFA Champions League qualification for next season.
Of course, after the domestic season ends, there are two more matches, the European cup finals, of which we were participating in one of them, the Europa League final.
We are up against Benfica, who won their semi-final 6-0 on aggregate, and this showcase was due to take place in Dortmund, the home of iconic 1950’s style architecture, football and of course beer, so its off to the Westfalenstadion, or Signal Iduna Park as its better known for full unedited highlights of the Europa League final, with added live commentary from myself.
Finally, a decent win, and after the misery of missing out two seasons ago, we can add the often elusive Mickey Mouse European cup to the trophy cabinet.
Season 6, 4th in the league, carabao Cup finalists, and Europa League winners, think that can be marked down as a success.
I was greeted with an end of season message from the board literally begging me to sign a contract extension, which I did, so season 7 awaits, just the job of designing new kits to do before starting, and there’s been one of the numerous EA updates which broke all the mods, so need to install updated GFXMod, FIFER CM Mod, and re-export all my custom adboards and minikits and balls before I can start the new season.
I was toying with the idea of moving up to Legendary difficulty, but after seeing the boards objectives for the upcoming season I’m not so sure:
Win the League, Reach the final of the FA Cup and UEFA Champions league, which basically means win those too, no team just wants to get to the final to lose, well here goes ….
FIFAFX.com 
Paul – have you updated your installation of the game lately, what does it break? I’m considering ‘freezing’ my installation in place and just leaving it there for the rest of my time on FIFA20. As you know this would be entirely feasible. EA’s regular updates are an anti-piracy measure for the most part, and the changes they sometimes make to gameplay tend to be for the worst.
Great vid with thoughtful commentary too. Never seen a better-looking football game for one thing. Congrats on the trophy, and did I hear you say at the end that your 3rd kit was a lucky brown kit!
Totally agree with your musings about corners and long-shots. When I started playing FIFA20 in January this year, I would get at least 1, usually 2 goals from corners in any typical 5-match session, and of course you remember the long-rangers I was getting back then (at least 1 per session, which is the golden mean for me as a single-player). Progressively patched out ever since, sadly, and for the usual atrocious reasons that footy game devs patch such things out. Online balance etc. Corner goals and long-rangers are no longer at least 1 apiece per session for me, as they should be, but maybe 1 per real-time week of sessions.
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NG – Yes my game is bang up to date, I left it offline for over a week whilst i finished my season as i dont like to be fiddling away with stuff halfway through.
if you updated now, none of the mods would work, the FIFER realism Mod, GFXMod camera, your kits mod I made you would work but not the minikits shown on preview screen, or balls.
its because every time FIFA updates it generates a new SDK code, so the game doenst match the one embedded in the mods, thats why you get the yellow triangle on mods in frosty od manager, you have to update the game, open the project in frosty and re-export out to a mod that matches the current version of the game.
When you do update, let me know and i’ll redo the kits mod for you, or new kits, whatever you prefer.
I said at the end of the video that maybe that Black/Lime Green was my version of your lucky brown kit.
I just always find my long range shots hit players between me and the box, can never get a clean shot away.
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enjoyed that Paul, watched the entire thing during an afternoon lull in my ‘working’ from home routine. Benfica looked surprisingly tame for such a big match, all was very comfortable for you. Not sure I could do a live blog commentary in a crucial match without swearing continually. Particularly impressed by your tricky wingers, even if some of the skill moves were a little vulgar!
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Abbeyhill – Thanks, and yeah, Benfica were surprisingly tame, I was expecting a much tougher challenge.
haha, what was vulgar about the skill moves?
I rarely use skills such as roulette turns etc, I just use a few of the feints and stepovers on the wings as if timed right, its a great tool to buy some space as you saw for the first goal and the cross in for the header.
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e.g. those keepy uppies right at the end, they were just begging for a scything two feet studs up challenge!
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Paul – and it seemed insensitive to say yesterday, but somehow feels slightly better today, to mention that the Confederate flags of Benfica looked a little untimely!
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Abbeyhill – only did that because i saw there was literallly seconds left, wasn’t worth playing it forward or oing anything.
And you’re right, anytime anyone has tried doing keepy uppies with their GK in an online match, I’ve immediately rushed towards them and launched into a Greg Rutherford style long jump tackle.
Not Greg – I’m misisng the reference, whats Benfica’s flag mean?
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Paul – it’s got to have been FIFER or one of his contributors who’s added it – on the halfway line and farther down the stadium in your Europa League final, there are two Confederate flags! You must know their meaning and history so I won’t bang on here. Turns out there’s an association with Benfica that I never knew about until I Googled it. But there’s no way EA would have included them I think. Unless they did include, in which case, potential major scandal, especially with EA’s BLM notice this week.
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Well done on the win Paul and I’m loving that kit, looks superb. I’m most looking forward to your next set of kits if I’m honest. I’ve been playing around with kit editing and decided it’s now just easier for me to amend an existing design exported from Frosty rather than messing around starting from scratch.
Regarding difficulty, I found the difference between World Class and Legendary to be small, I think there’s more AI shenanigans but difficult to say. As Abbeyhill mentioned, your camera setting would be another difficulty setting to me, it does look much better but I can’t play with those angles.
I doing alright in my first season in the Premier League thanks to a couple of last minute loans on deadline day. I took the not-Greg approach and blindly went in to negotiations but it paid off. I’m into the Europa quarter finals and 10th in the league.
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Cheers Cook – offers still there if you want some bespoke kits.
I’m playing my pre-season invitational tourny on Legendary to get a feel for it, and drew my first game against Benfica, of all teams, 0-0 so definitely legs in the Legendary level, be interesting t see how premier league teams play.
NG – I do of course know the history, but just hadn’t noticed the confederate flags in the match, and long my they stand I say, fed up with all this BLM crap now, lets get rid of lots of iconic things justg because someone sho is black might be offended, even though 99% of them have no idea why they are offended, just that its a trending fad to be offended, what about all the people who are not offended??
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Paul – the Confederate flag debate precedes the current era by a long, long time – a couple of hundred years in fact, when the Americans had a civil war to decide whether it could be a real flag of a real country or not. Ever since, it’s been brandished as an overt symbol of defiance against state power (its defenders say), but mostly as a potent racially-charged symbol. I remember watching the Dukes of Hazzard as a kid and seeing the flag on top of their car (the ‘General Lee’!) so things have ebbed and flowed, but certainly for the past 10 years or so it has been one of the counters in the roiling debate over flags and statues and books and everything else. Whether you like this or not does not affect the fact that it is happening, and this flag means what it means to a whole lot of people. NASCAR just banned the flag last week after years of humming and hahing about it.
Whatever you think about the legitimacy of the view, the fact remains that it is a view, and a widely-held one, a sincerely-held one, a passionately-held one, that the Confederate flag is an overt symbol of racial supremacy – and it’s in FIFA20! Granted it’s probably only in our FIFA20, added by a modder (FIFER or one of his team).
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NG – its definitely been added by the mod, if you load up benfica’s banners teture file in frosty, they are all generic, no confederate flags.
And I get all the history around it but still, very fed up of everyone being offende dby everything in todays society, its a society full of instant-gratification seeking, snowflake morons who would rather scream racism and mental health than actually grow a pair of balls, behave like an adult and get on with life.
and if anyone is offended by my views, they can go f888 themselves, because we live in a democracy, with freedom of speech and im entitled to my beliefs as much as the Abu Hamza preaching, race screaming, gender fluid non binary snowflakes out there.
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Paul – I’ve taken a decision to halt all discussion of this topic on my blog and I would not blame you one little bit for doing the same here. I came to play football games and memorialise my efforts and share the joy of the hobby with other enthusiasts – not resolve a horrific issue as old as the human race.
The whole topic is a bad fit for a footy gaming blog, in the first place, and in the second place, I haven’t got time for all the typing. All the nuance involved is a bad fit for the Internet in general, it’s too big and unwieldy. I would rather read a book, or a prignt newspaper article, about race and related issues, than any ‘discussion thread’ on any website on the Internet. The Internet is intrinsically incapable of handling big issues. cf. any YouTube comment thread. I won’t be saying any more about it.
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NG – fully agree, lots of annoying ridiculous things going on in the world right now, these blogs should be about esapism, sharing a passion and hobby with othe rlikeminded people, there is never a happy ending to debates about race and politics on any internet platform, because peiple are not able to have a debate without taking it personally and defensively.
I wont be mentioning it again on here, or on your blog.
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I do apologise for starting the whole debate with my passing reference to the message that appeared on FIFA 20. It was never intended to be a race discussion and will steer clear of such in future. My whole point was that I play football games for escapism from real world events, so hope that hasn’t been lost.
In my Fifa Project Restart I am at the business end of season 1 with Sunderland. With 11 games left I have slipped to 7th and 4 points behind the play offs, with a game in hand. World Class offers a real challenge and finding it difficult to find consistency. Loving it again.
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It may have only been the something.com trophy but I have given the Sunderland supporters something to smile about:-
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Darryl – No need to apologise mate, I’m all for open debate and discussion, but probably best to steer clear of race views specifically, I’m in no way racist but do have strong views on how its all being PR hyped as a fashion trend so best i stay quiet, easiest way is to just ignore those subjects completely.
Congrats on your first Rumbelows cup win, a trophy is a trophy.
I’ve moved up to legendary dificulty for season 7 which has just got underway, loving it so far, every match you have to be totally switched on.
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Darryl – There’s a trophy not many will have won on FIFA, congratulations. I always struggle with that one, so many matches in the lower leagues means squad depth is vital so I always end up playing the reserves and losing early on.
Paul – thanks for the offer on kits but I’m enjoying the learning process of Photoshop as much as anything at the moment, there’s a certain satisfaction of Google/You Tube taught new skills for a casual hobby. I imagine, as a professional, you see all sorts of DIY design that makes you wince though.
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Cook – Best way to learn, thats how i did.
it’s just gettiung the normal maps and coeff files right in FIFA thats tricky, the actual main design itself is easy, but the coeff is what the inbuilt lighting engine uses to reflect light, and if your kit coeffs aren’t right, the kit will look way off.
Fun practicing and trialling though!
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You’re right about the sense of satisfaction when you learn something new in a graphics package. Back in the day when I first started making custom PES kits I was well chuffed, and the FIFA kits Paul is knocking out now sound way more complex.
Recently I learned how to draw wood in GIMP (two words you don’t want to Google together) for an app I’m working on, and was almost euphoric when it turned out alright. It’s the little things…
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Chris99 – Think theres a deep sense of satisfaction when you learn any new skills, and knowledge broadens the mind, I immensely enjoy anything creative, whether its graphics design, video production and FX, music production, Dj’ing etc, so love diving into stuff and learning, and the best way to learn is definitely through just playing around, trial and error.
Whilst working from home during lockdown I’ve revisited several old ‘hobbies’, I’m back into DJ’ing again, I used to DJ at big places like Ministry of sound, and Pacha, and have my own radio show, during my early twenties, the love of house music never left and recently I’ve got a new USB DJ Controller, and learnt how to configure aggregated audio devices on the mac, setup live internet streams and broadcast my mixes Live.
Alongside that I’m making the FIFA kits, better and more accurately than ever, and taken up fishing again, and leant a ton of new stuff that i’d never even have thought of during my earler years, the science behind it, rigs, elasticating poles with side pulla kits, etc, the learning process is all part of the fun and reward, and whilst some people like to watch Netflix, or read a book, I like to create, thats my oasis.
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Erm…hello all…confession to make – I’ve been trying to find this on pesfx…didn’t realise you’d created a new fifa blog….
Anyway now I’m here thanks Paul for sending what is ultimately the nail that bangs down the coffin lid on PES forever. The 2021 business confirms it really and almost everything I’ve ever grumbled about with fifa has gone. It doesn’t even feel like one of those water push button floaty environments.
Only two things niggle – the lack of third kits in the championship (I don’t want to start adding strips if it’s even possible and slightly fiddly) but take my stoke – red/white and black change. So many other clubs have that red, white, black combination. It’s awful.
The other is my game’s commentator obsession with Leeds. Every match Leeds get talked about. They are second in the table, I’m 7th. They are not a rival. I don’t get it. See also Wayne Rooney at Derby. I can only assume some names are tagged for mention?
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Turf – Glad you’re enjoying FIFA20, and whilst its far from perfect, its a dman good game, imagine what you’re playing now, on PC, wiht mods and EVEN BETTER gameplay!!
The commentary does have ‘tags’ in the code to mention teams that are performing either well or disappointingly in the league, and certain events such as Rooney at drby is hard coded.
The commentary in FIFA on the whole is superb, informative and addds so much realism and immersion, but it does have its off moments too, chatting about a team during my match that isnt involved on the match being played or has no baring on me, but its a minor infliction.
Do you know you can change between commentary teams? Martin Tyler and Alan Smith, or derek Rae and Lee Dixon, or randomise it, I have mine set to random, more varied.
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