Virtual Women's FA Cup
By Lewis Worley.
It’s fair to say that Covid-19 has caused a fair bit of disruption to the football calendar over the course of 2020. Across the world leagues are deciding whether or not to restart their seasons when it’s safe to do so, or to cancel them completely. Many competitions have been cancelled already and the vast majority are at least suspended. One of the competitions that’s been suspended is the Women’s FA Cup. The Women’s FA Cup reached the quarter final stage before it was suspended with Arsenal, Tottenham, Brighton, Birmingham City, Everton, Chelsea, Leicester City and Manchester City still in contention for the trophy. The final was scheduled to be held this weekend and we thought it would be interesting to simulate the remaining fixtures on FIFA 20 to determine who would lift the Virtual Women’s FA Cup. (Unfortunately, FIFA 20 doesn’t have any settings that allow women’s teams to lift an actual trophy in the game, so we’ll have to use our imaginations slightly.)
Women aren’t represented particularly well in FIFA 20 so we had to play around in the settings to make the competition possible (Read my article on Representation of women in video games via the link below)
In short there are no domestic women’s football teams on FIFA, only international teams. As a result of this there aren’t many women players in the game at all, only those who play internationally. To overcome this obstacle, we created the players in the customisation section and designated each club to a national team. The national team designated to each club has no real relevance to the competition apart from where possible, we tried to match the clubs colours together to add authenticity and make it clearer as to which team is which.
Arsenal – (USA)
- Fixture 1
Tottenham – (Germany)
Brighton – (Scotland)
- Fixture 2
Birmingham City – (France)
Everton – (New Zealand)
- Fixture 3
Chelsea – (Japan)
Leicester City – (Australia)
- Fixture 4
Man City – (Netherlands)
Quarter Finals
The first fixture of the quarter finals, a North London derby. This promised to be an exciting match up however fell well short of expectations. Both teams struggled to break each other down with very few chances created. Just as the game approached the 90 minute mark and with penalties looming, Tottenham struck in the 86th minute through Angela Addison, giving them a dramatic win over their bitter rivals.
Next up a trip down to the South Coast as Brighton faced off against Birmingham. This game turned out to be even more underwhelming than the first ending in a stalemate at 0-0. The teams were sentenced to a penalty shoot-out. It seemed neither team really fancied scoring as somehow all of the first seven penalties were either saved or missed. The last three however were finally tucked away, settling the scoreline 2-1 in favour of Birmingham.
Everton took on Chelsea in the third fixture. Both teams had chances to win the game in normal time but through a mixture of poor finishing and excellent saves from Sandy MacIver and Ann-Katrin Berger, we found ourselves contemplating a 0-0 draw and facing another penalty shoot-out. Both teams started strongly, dispatching their opening penalties. Everton continued this trend. Chelsea did not. Everton progressed to the semi-final with a 4-1 win.
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The last game of the quarter final round saw the holders (Man City) take on Leicester. Unsurprisingly at this point, the game finished 0-0 resulting in another shoot out. Man City failed to get off the mark missing every single penalty they took. Outfoxed by Leicester, the reigning champions were dumped out of the competition on the wrong side of a 2 goal deficit.
Semi Finals
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The semi finals proved to be a lot more competitive. Fixture one saw Tottenham face off against Birmingham. Birmingham took the lead early on with a well timed finish from Lucy Whipp however Rianna Dean levelled the tie for Tottenham late on with a side footed finish. The game went to penalties and Tottenham progressed.
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The second semi final saw Everton and Leicester go head to head. Unfortunately for Everton, Leicester proved to be too strong and won the game 2-0 with goals by Gayle and MacIver.
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