I have been playing GOALS for the past couple of days. A lot. Like, more than I probably should have.
For anyone who does not know, GOALS is a free multiplayer football game made by a Swedish company called GOALS AB. It went through alpha and beta testing and finally came out on June 4, 2026. Football fans have been excited about it for a while because honestly, EA FC and eFootball have had no real competition for years. People wanted something new.
I am a big football fan. I really wanted this game to be good. I was rooting for it. But after grinding it for two days I have to be honest it let me down. It feels like a player with loads of potential who just never figures it out.
My rating: 6.5 out of 10
What is actually good in GOALS
The download is only 6GB. You can grab it and be playing within minutes. The menus are clean and simple, nothing complicated, no lag when navigating around. The sound is decent too you can hear the crowd, the music, the general stadium noise. And it is completely free, which is always a good thing. The idea behind the progression system is also interesting you build your squad by developing generic players rather than collecting real stars. More on that later though.
The gameplay and why pace ruins everything
The developers say gameplay comes first. That sounds great on paper. But right now the gameplay has some real problems.
When you are attacking, your players barely move on their own. They just stand around waiting. Even if you have a striker rated over 90, he plays exactly the same as a 45-rated nobody. No runs, no movement, nothing. So what ends up happening is everyone just plays the same way fast players, through balls, repeat. That is it. That is the whole game right now.
Defending is even worse. When you are not directly controlling a player, he just stands there doing nothing. Completely frozen. You tackle someone from behind and your defender gets stuck in place while the attacker just runs straight through. The goalkeeper sometimes does not even try to save shots. It is genuinely frustrating.
Then there is the passing. You tap the pass button for a short ball and your player boots it across the entire pitch to someone you were not even aiming at. This happens constantly, even with high-rated midfielders. The game claims to use some advanced passing system but it does not feel like it at all.
Visuals and menus
The graphics are fine. Nothing special, definitely not close to EA FC, but they do the job. The screen does not get too messy during games which helps. Given the game is only 6GB you are not going to get stunning visuals and that is fair enough.
The menus though are actually really good. Clean, quick, easy to find what you need. No endless clicking through screens. That part they got right.
No single player. No tactics. Nothing.
If you like career mode or playing offline you are going to be disappointed. There is basically nothing here for you. The only offline option is a tournament mode. Everything else is online quick matches, ranked, friendlies, knockouts.
There are also barely any tactical options. I cannot tell my fullbacks to push forward or tell my wingers to track back. Most positions only give you a basic balanced or defending option. That is it. So every match ends up playing out the same way because nobody can set their team up differently.
Matchmaking and the pace problem
Finding a balanced match is really hard right now. The player base is still small so queues take a while. And when you do get into a game, most people are just abusing the same thing fast strikers, through balls, score, repeat.
If you like sitting back and hitting teams on the counter, forget it. That does not work here. If the opponent has a striker with pace over 90 and your defenders cannot keep up, you basically have no way to stop him. Ranked matches feel less like football and more like a race to see who can exploit the game faster.
The money side of things
Free to play is great. Aggressive microtransactions are not.
There is no transfer market in this game. If you need a fullback you cannot just go and buy one. You have to open packs, spend coins, and hope you get lucky. The odds of getting a good card are very low. Earning coins through just playing takes forever, which pushes you toward spending real money.
Within the first half hour of the game launching I was already coming up against people with stacked squads full of high-rated players. If someone starts playing a couple of months from now they are going to get absolutely destroyed by people who have already spent money. There is no way around it right now.
I actually caught myself thinking I could have built a solid team in EA FC with way less effort than this.
So should you play it
Honestly, if you are desperate for something new and football-related, you can give it a go. It is free, it downloads fast, and there are brief moments where it is fun. But it has a long way to go before it can compete with anything properly.
No offline modes, no tactics, a pay-to-win system from day one, and gameplay that just rewards whoever has the fastest players. That is not a game most football fans are going to stick with for long.
Hopefully the developers keep working on it because the foundation is there. Right now though it is just not ready.
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