Are you ready for some football?

I am an American.  As such, football for me means twenty two big guys in pads and helmets fighting for position on the gridiron with plenty of potential for serious bodily injury at all times.  It also means that, should my team win a championship, I have the God-given right to run amok in my city along with all the other fans, starting fires, throwing plasma screen TVs through windows and overturning automobiles.  It's how we celebrate that sort of thing.  Then I learned that in Europe, South America, and most of the rest of the world "football" is the much less violent game that we call soccer, but the fans have been known to actually kill each other in the stands during a regular season game.  Now that's a sport!

In videogameland we don't get that kind of fan violence, however, but we silly Americans do get a chance to see just what it is that the rest of the world is so excited about.  The latest soccer entry to grace the Xbox 360 is EA's UEFA Champions League 2006-2007.  Before I saw this game I had no idea what the UEFA was and I still really don't, but I did have a spot of fun playing this game.

The real treat under UEFA's hood is the new Ultimate Team mode which has players collecting sports cards featuring players, coaches, staff and actions in an attempt to create the greatest team ever.  During gameplay in pretty much every mode of the game, including online matches, players earn points that can be spent on packs of cards.  The cards themselves can be traded or sold online for more points or other cards as the player works toward the goal of building that elusive ultimate team.  It's a fun twist on the concept EA introduced in the Madden games with Madden Cards and it's a surprisingly addictive way to play.