Copa City is a football game in which you do everything but play football. The playing of football is the empty centre of this strategy gaming doughnut – the calm in the eye of a storm of city-building and tycoon management mechanics. You’ve been hired by some famous real-world clubs to organise their matches, a job that extends from outfitting the stadium itself to plonking down fanzones, drink stalls and mascots in the streets beyond.
Over the course of 14 days, you price tickets for the stands, and divide them up between the three main spectator groups – ultras, core supporters, and families. You plot routes through the city to the stadium, place camera crews, hire security, and oversee your volunteers. Then match day comes, and you sit back and sob with pride as hundreds of boisterous, cherubic soccer enthusiasts process towards the pitch, in a spectral onslaught of party smoke and streamers.
It’s a joyful thing, made with evident love for the subject matter (and a lot of licensed tie-ins). Unfortunately, I am a miserable, condescending bastard who lives near Wembley Stadium and has developed a terrible, terrible hatred of football fandom. These people! They act like the whole damn city is their property. Why must they bellow about Arsenal at such bizarre volume. Who even is Declan Rice, and of what occult significance is his hat? Can’t they see that I am trying to play Into the Breach on my mobile telephone?
All that considering, my initial takeaway from Copa City was: I wonder if there’s a way to keep the football fans out. Perhaps this is secretly a tower defence game, in which generals build a labyrinth of overpriced drink stands to keep the serpents of fandom away from the hallowed green.
Sadly, I don’t think that’s a practical reality. Probably a better reason to play Copa City is that you enjoy football and like the idea of a management sim dedicated to facilitating the enjoyment of football. If that’s you, the game is out today on Steam. Alternatively, why not read Daniel Curtis’s Football Manager 2020 diary about how saying no to one grumpy team captain almost destroyed his career.
