The trouble for the poor put-upon writer, then, is to find a way of making the whole predictable parade in some way interesting and/or entertaining for the poor put-upon reader. Or simply to waffle on until the page is full, at least. Are we there yet?

To win anything in football, you need a rock on which the rest of the team is built. Usually a defender - someone like Tony Adams, who can inspire confidence from the back and provide the foundation for attack. Like old Tone, though, EA’s latest delivery of milk from the ever-gushing teat that is the FIFA engine is showing decided signs of age and frailty. Euro 2000 is appreciably worse than any of the last four FIFA titles, from the horribly jerky animation to the dreadfully unbalanced difficulty settings (a ludicrous 16-0 pushover at the easy setting, suddenly superhuman at medium), and, more crucially, the total lack of either Euro 2000 or football-match-in-general atmosphere. (And bizarrely, you can’t play the Euro 2000 finals without playing the whole qualifying campaign, unless you play as hosts Holland or Belgium.) Euro 2000, like England’s stiff-armed skipper, while still uncontested for the position may cause embarrassment in the final reckoning.

To inspire real love in your fans, only the true class of a dashing, high-scoring centre forward will do. And if you’re looking for the Christian Vieri of football videogames, you can’t ask for better than ISS Pro Evolution. With the possible exception of ISS Pro’s N64 brother (and what a shame it is that the latest in the N64 series, ISS Millennium, won’t be gracing this tournament with its presence), Konami’s Playstation games have represented easily the pinnacle of footy-game design over the last few years, and Evolution is the absolute zenith of that pinnacle. Whether among reviewers or punters, it’s all but impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say about ISS, which makes the rather unspectacular sales of Evolution so far even more of a mystery. Explaining such a situation without recourse to the misanthropic dismissal of the general public as a witless herd of idiotic sheep lining up to be fleeced by anything with the word "Official" attached to it is an even more baffling enigma, and certainly too hard a task for your humble correspondent to attempt here.

As the continued appearance of Paul Gascoigne when well past his prime showed, managers will always be tempted to save a place on the teamsheet for those players whose dazzling natural talent combines with human fallibility to produce something which serves up the sublime and ridiculous in equal measure. Think of Davor Suker and Gheorghe Hagi, turning defenders inside out and scoring breathtaking goals one minute, and missing crucial penalties, skying two-yard sitters miles over the bar or getting sent off for schoolboy tantrums the next. VS2 is certainly nobody’s idea of a hard-working team player – it’s all arcade flash and flair, completely unwilling to tackle back when it comes to the challenge of in-depth gameplay. Sega’s coin-op port was their big hope for the January granny-money market, though sales were disappointing as the punters rebelled against the simplistic and rudimentary delights it offered, but its shiny big-match atmosphere and TV-friendly drama may yet give it a boost during the heady days of an international tournament.

Highly skilled but arrogant and unloveable, football will always play host to characters like Nicolas Anelka, doomed to sulk away in a strop from an endless line of different clubs but turn on the skill just enough at the right time to get the next outfit to buy them and sustain the cycle. The new version of SWWS is a distinct improvement over the first one, speedier and slicker with many nice touches, but all too often a disappointment to play as the terrible sound, basic presentation and dopey computer opposition undermine the fast-moving and stylish game SWWS tries to play. Still, just as with players like Anelka, after you give them all your money you’ve only got a few months to wait before they tear up their contract and have another go in a different kit.

Once the significance of the "V" in the title finally dawned, this game made a lot more sense. Rather than suggesting that the squirrel-toothed Brazilian was in some way challenging the entire concept of soccer itself, Ronaldo V Football reflects the fact that the game takes the same approach as Infogrames’ earlier V-Rally, which is to say it attempts a much more realistic and serious portrayal of the sport it imitates. RVF plays a far less arcade-like and more accurate representation of a real football match, which means goodbye to the super-accurate one-touch passing and spectacular goals of other footy games, and hello to the ball bouncing away off players’ heels, aimless punts into nowhere, and, initially at least, a major shortage of goalmouth action. It’ll take you a long time to get proficient enough to beat even the worst computer opponents at the easiest level. As with V-Rally, it’s very rewarding when you start to get good, but a lot of people’s patience will have been exhausted well before then. Still, it’s a very different and worthy adversary to ISS Pro, and it could turn into something special with enough effort, though it doesn’t live up to some of the over-the-top press it’s been lumbered with. The Michael Owen of this year’s football games, then.

Every team has at least one player whose continued selection defies all logic except, for some reason, that of the manager. And just like a Chris Sutton, UEFA Striker is this year’s Actua Soccer, still mystifyingly clogging up both the shelves and the charts. Ugly, bereft of atmosphere and almost unplayable, let’s hope that Euro 2000 sees UEFA Striker finally buried and move quickly on to something a bit less depressing.

Every now and again, of course, a new star emerges completely unheralded from the unlikeliest of sources. The romance of football is personified by the likes of Calais, the non-league French side who this season somehow made it all the way to the French equivalent of the FA Cup Final (and only lost to their Premiership opponents through some shocking refereeing decisions in the big game). And this year, videogame footy has its own Calais, in the shape of Hasbro’s little-known email game. Selling for just a fiver, Em@il Football is an ultra-simplistic but totally captivating little turn-based action game, where it takes just seconds to mount a thrilling breakaway attack from your own penalty area, sprint up the wing and deliver a teasing cross into the box before the game fires off the move as a tiny email to your opponent. Your correspondent has devoted more hours of playing time, against opponents from 200 yards to 20,000 miles away (who, in a stroke of genius from Hasbro, don’t even have to buy their own copy), to this game than to any other football game this year. Indeed, no other game makes a truer simulation of Euro 2000 possible – just make some e-friends in Germany, Portugal and Romania, and you can play out every game in the tournament as a proper international. Easy, cheap, quick, exciting and simple – you could easily do it next year on a WAP phone - this, viewers, is the REAL future of online gaming.