Almost as popular as the game itself, football computer games are big business. Nearly every fan will have played, or watched someone play one at some point, and will know that they can be frustrating, hilarious, and ever so slightly addictive. We’re certainly big fans of them here at Umbro, so that’s why we decided to host two tournaments down at our Dale Street studio as part of our summer of football-related celebrations.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had two days of FIFA World Cup South Africa action. To make it even more tasty, we invited down some of the UK’s top FIFA players to compete against some of our friends and a couple of us Umbro staff. Needless to say, they were head and shoulders above the rest of us! I managed to get both teams I was playing as into the second round, but my excitement quickly faded as they were both knocked out instantly in the knock-out phase.

However, there was a competitive edge to the rest of the proceedings. We invited FIFA pro Michael Barrett along to the first tournament, but it was actually his younger brother (above left) playing as Argentina who won the competition! At the second event, Scotsman Lewis Orr (below right) won the tournament comfortably, and to make matters worse he played as Germany. And beat England in the final – talk about rubbing salt in the wounds!

If you fancy seeing more of the action, you can see plenty of pictures from both events over on our Flickr stream. And if you fancy yourself as a bit of a FIFA fan, let us know and we might get you down to our next event…