Digging Up Old Footage First
Okay, so I got this itch. Remembered how insane Spain was back in 2010? That tiki-taka magic? Wanted to see it again, properly, with that exact squad. Figured loading it up in a footy game sim would be easiest, right? Wrong. Total nightmare.
First stop, the game everyone uses now. Fired it up, went straight to the classic teams section. Scrolled… scrolled some more… nothing. Zip. Nada. Just generic placeholder names. Xavi? Iniesta? Villa? Poof. Vanished. Like they never lifted the trophy!
Felt stupid. Obviously needed older game files. Dug out my ancient backup drive – the one rattling like a bag of nails. Spent a solid hour sifting through folders named things like “Misc” and “Old Downloads lol”. Found it! An installer for that 2011 footy game. Installed it, fingers crossed. Booted it up…
The Great Database Scramble
Progress bar crawls… game loads… feels like coming home. Went to manage Spain’s World Cup team. Opened the squad list. And then… heart sank. It was just… wrong.
- Torres was still listed, but his stats were whack.
- Pedrito? Nah, gone. Replaced by some random dude I swear never played a minute.
- The formation… they had Spain playing some aggressive attacking nonsense! Spain 2010 were patient surgeons!
So much for plug-and-play.
Manual Squad Surgery
Fine. If the game won’t give me the real thing, I’ll build it myself. Went into edit mode. Deep breath.
Started hunting players down. David Villa – found him in Valencia. Dragged him into the Spain striker slot. Easy. Xavi, Iniesta – still legends in the game, thank god. Added them to midfield. But then… gaps.
Sergio Busquets was rated like a bronze card player! What?! Had to manually boost his tackling, passing, positioning stats way up. Felt dirty, but necessary. Carles Puyol? His presence rating was criminally low. Fixed that. Pedro wasn’t even in the game under Spain! Found his base model in Barcelona B-team, moved him into the senior Spanish squad manually. Talk about a slog.
Then the subs bench. Who was actually there? Memory fuzzy. Pulled up old Wikipedia pages and match reports on my phone, squinting at tiny text. Jesús Navas – check. Added him. Fernando Llorente? Yep, big man needed. Found him. Santi Cazorla? Totally forgot he was on that bench! Added him too. The formation went back to the classic 4-2-3-1, slow build-up, short passing maxed out.
Finally… Kickoff!
Saved the edited squad profile. Named it SPAIN 2010 REAL. Loaded a friendly against, who else, the Netherlands 2010 – spent another 20 minutes fixing their squad too!
Clicked “Simulate Match”. Held my breath.
And… it kinda worked! Seeing those names moving together… Xavi spraying passes… Iniesta drifting… Villa making runs. It wasn’t perfect – the game engine still forced some frantic moments Spain never had. But Busquets actually intercepted stuff! The ball moved side-to-side patiently sometimes! Watched the “highlights,” sipping terrible coffee. Even got a dodgy penalty Spain won (simulated, of course).
Worth the hassle? Yeah, kinda. Felt good rebuilding that legendary team piece by piece. Did it play exactly like the magic 2010 run? Course not. Games can’t capture that. But seeing Casillas lifting a fake trophy with Puyol, Xavi, Villa beside him? Pure, janky nostalgia. Made me remember why that team was special. They never really replay the magic… not properly. But for an afternoon? It scratched the itch.
