A professional FIFA player lost a crucial penalty shootout to a bizarre bug that caused the game to fail to detect a perfectly valid goal.
On Sunday 1st March, Giuseppe Guastella, a five-time FIFA world finalist who plays the game for LA Galaxy, was knocked out of the North American online qualifiers for the FUT Champions Cup after FIFA 20 determined he missed a penalty that was, clearly, a goal.
In a video posted to Twitter, we see Guastella hit the ball against the post and into the net, but for some reason FIFA 20 called it a miss. The commentary, which runs as if he’s missed (Lee Dixon says: “Oh no! I feel for him! All that rehearsal in training, he’s gone and fluffed his lines!”), just makes the whole thing worse.
A distraught Guastella said: “This is unbelievable from @EASPORTSFIFA.”
According to Guastella, the administrators of the tournament refused to order the players to replay the penalty shootout, deferring to the game itself – despite the clear error.
“EA needs to fix these serious issues with the game,” Guastella said. “To begin with, NA qualifiers are postponed due to a worldwide server hacking. On top of it all, it’s Sunday. I want to spend it with my family. But because I’m a serious professional I decided to proceed with the tournament.