The Mobile Gamer's Guide to the World Cup

As anyone familiar with formulaic Hollywood comedies will know, the world is divided into two types of people: Jocks, who love sport and hate video games; and Nerds, who love video games and hate sports.

No prizes for guessing in which camp I belong.

Occasionally, this presents us nerds with a problem. When some colossal sporting event like the World Cup hoves into view, everyone is presumed to be filled with vim, vigour, and enthusiasm. You'll be expected to talk football at home, work, and the pub with people who wouldn't normally know the offside rule from their elbow. Failing to join in will immediately mark you out as a Nerd, leading to instant social death.

But I'll let you into a secret: you can learn everything you need to know to participate knowledgeably in discussions about inflated bladders without putting down your mobile. Indeed, so effective are video games at teaching you about football that I crossed the line. After one too many management simulations, I actually started developing an interest in real-life football. I know.

So, here are the games you need to be playing to swot up on sporting linguistics in advance of the big World Cup kick off on June 12th. Pick them up, and soon you'll be so ankle deep in 'target men' and 'tiki-taka' that people might actually start to believe you know what you're talking about.

Your starting point is Football Manager Handheld 2014. It might not be cheap and it might be out of date inside a year, but it'll be worth it.

First of all, you'll need to pick a starting team. Since your primary objective is to fool everyone into thinking you're a football expert, either pick a local team or one that your friends support. Failing that, pick Manchester United. Everyone else does.

You'll then be thrust into a seemingly suffocating pool of menus and statistics. Don't panic: all football management simulators are like this, and Football Manager is the best there is.

The thing to which you'll need to pay most attention for this first lesson is the club screen, particularly the First Team and Tactics sections underneath.

Tapping on 'Tactics' will bring up an amazing array of different formations, most of which are described simply by a set of numbers. Well, this is a statistical simulation, so what else did you expect other than numbers?

The initial one selected is the legendary 4-4-2, a formation so ubiquitous that there's a footballing magazine named after it. But there are lots of others. You won't have a clue what any of them are, or how they affect play, but that's okay (hardly anyone else does, either).

Pick a formation that looks pretty, like 'Diamond', and then go to the First Team screen and you'll see what formations are really all about.

Formations, you see, dictate the number of players you can assign to the various positions (Goalkeeper, Defender, or Striker). The astute at this point will notice that there are two kinds of attacking player: Strikers and Forwards. There's only a subtle difference between them in real life, but play along.

Anyway, there are lots more menus, and more numbers than you probably ever thought could fit inside a mobile device. Who knew! Have a play around and see what happens: it is a game, after all.

If you're anything like I am, you'll be completely addicted within ten minutes. You'll become so obsessed with it that you'll play it constantly instead of revising for your university finals, fail, and end up in a deadbeat career like games journalism.

History lesson

Now that you're all boned up on "tactical nous", as the pundits say, it's time to fill in the next gap in your knowledge. Football Manager Handheld will tell you a lot about the current state of the game, but it won't tell you very much about the past.

It's not considered good enough to just talk about the current tournament, you see. You've got to be able to convince everyone that you've been avidly following The Beautiful Game for years. Otherwise, you'll just look like a feeble hipster, trying to muscle his way into conversations among genuine fans. It'll be true, naturally, but there's no way you must ever let anyone find out.

Fortunately, there's a simple, fast-playing, fun yet free game you can grab to help you out. It's called Score! World Goals.

Best of all, you don't need to know anything about football to play it. You're presented with the movements preceding a classic goal from a past tournament. All you have to do is recreate them on the screen by drawing lines with your fingers. Yep, something a 3 year old could do. Except that somehow, inexplicably, Score! World Goals contrives to be rather more difficult and entertaining than it sounds.

But forget that and focus. The game tells you the date, the teams involved, and the score. Commit these to memory as you go, and watch the overall trajectory of the ball.

How does it get to the scorer: via a tricky backheel or a sublime pass that splits the defence? How does it get past the 'keeper: by sheer power or bending it improbably into the top corner?

Just watching the screen will give you a feel for the right language. You'll soon be sounding more educated than Robbie Savage. Not that that's particularly difficult.

The only thing it doesn't tell you is the names of the players involved. Luckily, though, most of them are foreign, so you can just pretend that you're unable to pronounce their names and refuse to even try.

You're almost there now. You've absorbed everything you need to bluff your way successfully through the sporting part of football. But, sadly, in the modern age that's not enough.

Footballers are celebrities now, so you've got to have some idea of what they do with their vast pay packets, aside from spending it all on cars, fuel to keep the cars running, and gold-plated shin pads.

One way you could do this is by convincing a bank to lend you the price of your house and then spending it all on a 24-hour Krystal and car binge.

But that's not really advised: it'd be one hell of a hangover, especially when you realised you no longer had a home in which to recuperate. Instead, you can glean what you need for absolutely nothing with New Star Soccer.

At first, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is an ordinary football game. Much of the play involves your kicking the ball in set piece actions. As a useful aside, you can pick up handy information like the fact that footballs curve in the direction opposite to which they're spinning. You could learn that in physics class, of course, but the game is a little bit more fun.

No, the lessons here sit under the 'lifestyle' button in the stats screen to which you get taken between matches. Here, you can find out what footballers really spend their money on, and how it affects their lives.

Accumulate enough dosh and you can pretend you're playing Grand Theft Auto by buying a mobster's suit, a skyscraper penthouse, and a fighter plane. Or just give up on the World Cup and go play Grand Theft Auto instead.

Best of all, you'll find out about the psychology of footballers and the sorts of people with which they surround themselves.

Because as you accumulate more and more cool stuff, people will like you more. The boss, the team, and the fans will all react with wild enthusiasm to your empty-headed accumulation of flash consumables.

Indeed, it's all entirely necessary if you want a girlfriend. As the game says, "you need to increase your lifestyle to impress the ladies." That's female representation, right there!

Of course we, as Nerds, can see this rash consumerism for the pathetic, hollow gasp for attention that it obviously is. But it's good to know how it rules and dictates the lives of so many others. I especially enjoyed finding this out on my latest edition iPad (with my Sennheiser headphones over my ears) while sipping on a 20-year-old Scotch.

Hey, maybe games writing isn't quite such a deadbeat career after all.