So, I decided to make a team of country music stars. Waylon and Merle up front, Willie in goal, etc. It doesn’t take very long at all to set the kit and name the players, but why the game uses a slightly-unresponsive custom keyboard and not the iPhone’s built-in keyboard I don’t know.

Nice kit, huh?

The boys and girls of the team.

Here we are in action. I made the short name of the team CTY rather than CNT. I'm mature, me.

We’re not that great, according to the stats, but I’ve winning games against bad teams, which is good enough for me. I’ve just started an eight-team tournament, so we’ll see how that goes.

Buggeration.

Yeah, see I knew that would happen.

Still, only 1-0. Could have been worse.

I’m gonna go and listen to country music.

Not, you know, physically. I can still type. I haven’t stood up for a while, so I guess my legs might have stopped working, but I can still feel them, so they’re probably okay.

No, I’m paralysed in top iPhone footie game World Soccer Champs.

(And not because of the low memory issues. Running the System Activity Monitor app before starting the game sorts all that out.)

It's a bit like chess. Only instead of playing chess, you're playing football.

I’m paralysed, you see, because I can’t quite bring myself to play the game. I got England through to the second round of World Cup. (Or the World Tournament or whatever they call it to avoid giving FIFA a million, billion dollar-pounds.) We’re going to face Germany in the second round.

And, I suspect, we’re going to lose. But if we win I’ll have got further than ever before. So I don’t want to play, because I’m going to blow my chance for glory.

I have no belief in myself. Hardly surprising, really, when we only won the group because of some lucky penalties against Algeria and the USA.

I need to work up the courage to play the game at some point, then dust myself off and start again if I lose. But it’s Germany, man. Germany. My arch nemesis. The Master to my Doctor. The Palpatine to my Mace Windu. The mega shark to my giant octopus. The meddling kids to my pissed-off, costumes-obsessed janitor. The Jason Voorhees to my sex-crazed, reefer-smoking twenty-something teen. The snakes to my plane.

You get the idea.

Still, at least I don’t have malaria.

It may not look like much in that screen shot, but it's a fantastically rewarding footie game.

It’s a tough game – though I seem to find it tougher than a lot of other people – but it’s very satisfyng. It always feels like the game rewards understanding and skillful play. It’s not an instant smash hit, but it’s definitely a grower.

It doesn’t seem to be selling very well, which is a crying shame, as it deserves an awful lot of love.

I just wish it didn’t keep locking up my phone and forcing a hard reset when it decides I haven’t got enough free memory. Bit of a bugger, that – especially as I seem to be the only person with the problem.

Lovely penalty there.

Tried out the Tournament (i.e. World Cup) mode last night. Despite winning a game, my England team failed to get past the group stages. Oh well.

So it was with some trepidation that I paid my £1.19 and started up the game.

I made the mistake of starting to play without reading the instructions. Don’t do that. You see, the game’s got a lovely passing mechanic that you simply won’t discover until you read the instructions telling you how to do it. (Or maybe you will, if you’re not as stupid as me. I don’t know. Maybe you’re some sort of robot-headed football game genius. I’m not making any assumptions.)

So, I thought I liked the game, but wasn’t sure.

It's better than Striker on the Super Nintendo, at least.

After reading the instructions, I knew I liked the game. Oh, it’s a bit of a mess when I’m defending, but that’s always the case with me and footie games. Attacking is absolutely lovely, though – and I’ve even managed to score some goals. Hooray!

I think I’ve nearly played as many matches of this game as I have of the official FIFA World Cup game already, which is quite impressive.

It may or may not be to your taste, I really don’t know, but I’m throughly enjoying and think it’s well worth trying.