The best soccer games of 2025 weren't just FC 25 and Football Manager

I never understood soccer until I watched it with my father. It happened when I was visiting my parents once during the height of World Cup season. Italy was in the running, and that was a big deal to my dad, an immigrant who came over from Abruzzo. Despite the fact that I always found the game boring, his energy was infectious enough to keep me glued to the television. I saw the matrix that day, suddenly understanding all the thrilling nuances the sport had to offer and buying into the cultural importance of it all. It was imperative to me that Italy win.

It’s hard to describe the appeal of sports to people who don’t get them. You need to experience the perfect moment where it all makes sense for yourself — or, at the very least, you need the right guide present to demystify all the confusing rules and show you the heart of the thing. As evidenced by 2025, that’s something that a video game can accomplish. This year gave us three great soccer games that dissected the sport in very different, approachable ways.

The most important piece of that trifecta is Despelote. The indie game is a slice-of-life story set in Ecuador. At a glance, it’s your average coming-of-age story about a kid growing up in the 2000s and finding his voice. But all of that is happening against an all-consuming cultural event: Ecuador has qualified for the World Cup, and it is the most important thing happening for the game’s characters. Soccer games are on every display TV in storefront windows. They’re on during weddings. It’s all anyone can think about. Ball is life.

It’s against that backdrop that we get to see the game’s protagonist grow up. He’s not just learning where he fits into a house party, but where he fits into his community and culture too. Soccer is inseparable from his identity, and it’s through the sport that he discovers himself as a proud Ecuadorian. It’s the closest a video game has ever come to helping me understand my father and why he was so glued to the World Cup that one week I visited.

While Despelote focuses on the cultural significance of soccer, two other games released this year capture the nuances of the sport itself in more approachable ways than Fifa-style simulators. Rematch, the latest game by Sifu developer Sloclap, digs into the physicality of soccer. The multiplayer game deconstructs the sport by turning it into a fast-paced battle played between small teams. It takes some cues from Rocket League to create an arcade-style battle that’s focused on tight teamwork and ball control.

I was obsessed with Rematch for a few weeks this summer. It seemed simple the first few days I played it, but every time I picked it up, I discovered more depth in it. Rather than kicking and passing, I learned how to juke around the other team to avoid a sliding tackle. I figured out how to release the ball from my control to prevent someone from knocking it away from me. I practiced my rainbow flicks until I could turn a fun-looking move into a proper evasive maneuver. All of these little tricks helped me understand soccer in ways that I could never quite catch as a casual viewer. I walked away from it with a better understanding of the role body control plays in the game, appreciating what a physically impressive sport it is.

If Rematch showed me the physical side of soccer, Pup Champs playfully showed me the mental side. The latest game from the team behind Golf Peaks, Pup Champs is a card-based tactics soccer game starring dogs. Each puzzle requires me to navigate a few pups on a grid and kick the ball into a goal. Easy enough, but the twist comes from the fact that each pup has a specific kick pattern, they can only move so many spaces, and there are obstacles to work around. Completing a puzzle requires clever thinking and a tight grip on the field. It feels like you’re coaching a high school soccer team, drawing up the perfect team strategies to lead your dogs to victory. It’s not a serious adaptation of the sports by any means, but it’s a sweet compliment to Rematch.

There were more games about soccer, of course. EA Sports FC 26 came right on schedule and the Football Manager series made its hugely anticipated return this fall. But thanks to three games in particular, I spent 2025 thinking more about soccer than I have since that one week with my father. Games helped me visualize the athleticism that goes into a sport I’ll simply never be very good at (too much running!) and understand why soccer matters to so many people. It’s a small gaming trend I hope to see continue, with more creative approaches to sports games that try to communicate the feel of a game rather than simulating it 1:1. And a few other games did exactly that for different sports this year, whether it was the freeing bicycle races of Wheel World or the surreal trip of Skate Story. Even if you don’t love sports, there are more and more games out there that are more than happy to bring you into the club.