The voices Fifa coins calling for an EA football title

The voices Fifa coins calling for an EA football title were numerous.

In the US, EA Sports Network was a sales juggernaut thanks to the likes of NHL and Madden. Over in Europe, however, these games were non-entities.

“We did some research and found that 90 per cent of C&VG magazine readers loved football,” says David Gardner, the sales and marketing boss for EA Europe at the time.

“So we realised that if we wanted to bring the EA Sports brand to Europe we needed a football game.”

Members of the UK team lobbied the US to let them build one. And even EA Canada’s Bruce McMillan, a Chelsea supporter who would go on to lead the FIFA development team, tried to persuade the EA hierarchy to build a football game.

“I said that we should be in the worldwide football business. But when I first said that, EA was like: ‘well we are already in the football business with Madden.’ I said: ‘No, I mean proper football’.”

EA eventually said yes, driven in part by EA Europe's lofty sales predictions. Yet the UK team didn’t have a development studio at the time, and Mega Drive dev kits were hard to come by. So the team set out to find some local devs to help build them a prototype.

“Myself and my colleague Jon Law were developing something and we were hoping that EA would sign it,” www.eafut14coins.co.uk explains Jules Burt, a UK indie developer at the time, working in Widnes, Cheshire.