In the old days, Europe was mostly playing on home computers such as the Atari and the Amiga.

There Dino Dini's Kick off 1 and 2 and Sensible soccer where the leading games. They did not however license directly from FIFA.

Football Manager is a strategy game that is still running, and still very succesfull in its niche.

Before the Atari and Amiga, too, there were games like Match Day on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 (quite a decent, playable game) and Kevin Toms's "Football Manager" (written in BASIC and goals shown in isometric 3D) from 1982, which precedes the current football manager games. Here's an interview with Toms from 2010: http://theballisround.co.uk/2010/07/29/the-original-gamefath...

There is a really good long two part interview with Dino Dini on the Retry Asylum podcast.

retroasylum.com/ep-37-dino-dini-interview-part-1/

retroasylum.com/ep-39-dino-dini-interview-part-2/

Of particular interest is why Dini did not go on to make a successful soccer game after Goal. That might have dented the success of FIFA or PES and created a European alternative.

Yes, early footy games sold really well. My next project at Codemasters in 1987 was going to be a soccer game, but then stuff happened and I moved over to the business side. Pete Williamson wrote a series of four mini games instead, called Four Soccer Simulators, which sold very well. It was quite hard to do a convincing 11-a-side game at the time, with the hardware constraints on 8-bit machines. A young Ted Carron managed to get that side of things working really well, but in a rugby game. He then moved on to a super-secret project which became the Game Genie, so didn't get a crack at footy either. There were many about though, and they were regarded as money in the bank if you published one. Fact was, though, it was really hard to find devs that understood or were passionate about the game. Most self-taught programmers back then learned their craft at the expense of time spent outside kicking a ball, I suspect.

I still find it hard to accept that FIFA is now better than Pro Evo. Not that I was a die hard fan of the latter, but I honestly never thought EA would make so much efforts to polish their game and topple Konami by the same occasion.

Neither did I, although Pro Evo was gradually declining in quality, after having 2 bad years in a row (they had huge issues with getting online play to work without lag) I think the scene was set for FIFA and suddenly it felt like the tables had turned.

Since then they've been playing catch-up, plus not having the full licenses doesn't help them.

Pro Evo had a lot of character and it felt like you could see their passion for football in the way they made the game. Little details throughout the gameplay were awesome.

I thought EA was a souless corp that didn't have a clue about football, but now they lead the way.

Not only EA changed the game mechanics, but Konami completely broke PES too.

Fortunately, the game is back on track. PES 2013 is great.