Goal mouth incident Photo: (Flickr user Playstation Europe CC BY-NC 2.0)
Video games are changing the way that professional football is being played and managed.
Big titles like FIFA, Pro Evolution Soccer and Football Manager have sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide.
Now these games have become so realistic that they have started influencing how players play the game, and even how the clubs assess transfer targets and recruit their staff.
Rory Smith writes about the blurring between sport and video games in The New York Times.
"Soccer video games have spent much of the last 20 years in an arms race for authenticity. FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer study the movements of players to make their simulations as lifelike as possible; Miles Jacobson, the creator of Football Manager, sends out early copies of his game to 1,500 players to beta-test, while “the access we are given to clubs” means he and his team can incorporate new developments rapidly." Rory Smith
