To those living outside of the UK, our obsession with football can seem a bit perverse. It’s the same with anything you get a bit too interested in though. Getting protective, defensive – positively neurotic at times – about it are all par for the course.

The arrival of FIFA 10’s enough to fill any football fan with a shaky sense of trepidation. Are they going to let us down? Are they going to make our beautiful game ugly? Thankfully, EA’s dodged past these issues to come up with one of the best sport games we’ve seen on mobile.

As you fire the game up, you get to choose your league and team. There are ten leagues, obviously including the Premiership and Championship league, and more teams than we care to count. This mobile version snips off the lower-end of European professional football, but the amount of teams squeezed-in is still impressive.

How FIFA 10 performs on the pitch is even more important though. Thankfully, it has the skills to keep us hooked. The numerical keypad is used as an eight-way controller, to move your player around the pitch.

Once you’ve got them running, there’s no need to keep your thumb glued to the key. This leaves you free to perform all the mid-stride actions that FIFA 10 offers – passing, shooting, one-twos, sprinting and various types of tackling.

Considering all these are a executed with just a few remaining keys, the fidelity and sheer smoothness FIFA 10 manages to fit them all in with is extremely impressive. Your player’s movements feel natural, and the only particularly conspicuous concession made for the mobile format is that when you attempt shots or tackles, a red-green gradient gauge pops up.

Land it in the green and your shots or tackles will be on target, but head to the red and you’ll likely commit a foul or miss entirely – either the goal or your opponent’s legs. This helps to keep FIFA 10 straddled between the casual and more hardcore football experience, and the results do justice to its console big brother perfectly well. In particular, the fully player-controller replays after goals and the post-match highlights are great additions that we’d never normally expect from a mobile game.

Similarly, the modes on offer let you play everything from a quick game of penalties to a full season, and there’s even a mode that lets you make your own professional player and follow his career from club to club.

The latter mode demands some different strategies, as you have to try and make your player the star of the show, even though you’re still effectively controlling the whole team, but it should please FIFA fanatics.

FIFA 10 also offers Bluetooth multiplayer so you can play against your equally footie-obsessed friends.

FIFA 10’s AI may not be quite as on the ball as that of its console sibling, but it’s still one of the best football games you can get on mobile, and comes heartily recommended if you need something to patch the gaps in your time between playing FIFA 10 on your Xbox 360 or PS3.

FIFA 10 info

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Platform: Java

Category: Sport

Price: £5

Publisher: I-play

Website/Demo: EA Mobile's website

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