I was pleasantly surprised when I started up Real Soccer 2007 to find national teams featured including the actual players who are on it. Clubs are substituted but still contain the player names. It'll be disappointing for Premiership and European league fans but at least the team is there. This is compared to what Gameloft did for baseball where team names are there but players aren't and I find that much more infuriating. Most mobile titles don't have the full license much less professional and national teams mixed together. So go ahead and take Ronaldo or Thierry Henry out for a spin. Gameloft claims that they have realistic uniform designs down to the shoe level. You actually can't really tell what shoe people are wearing and some of the jersey designs are not really all that detailed being a 2D game. I liked the semi-interactive fans who unroll flags of countries during national matches.

In terms of gameplay, Real Soccer 2007 offers some good fundamentals. There are a full 11 players on each side. You can't directly control your footwork but you don't feel like the ball is too light or too much of a deadweight. I did feel that you can string together long passes on the pitch way too easily especially from midfield. And that's using regular players and not Beckham to do it. There are a number of special moves you can execute like a bicycle kick but they aren't a pre-requisite to winning games. Indeed, the tutorials will walk you through doing them but I only discovered them after winning a few matches on my own. The controls are undoubtedly deeper and more complex than rival FIFA's.

On the management side, there isn't a heck of a lot to the game other than substituting players and changing the various formations. There isn't a franchise mode or the ability to trade players and such. Otherwise, Real Soccer 2007 stays out of the manager's box and focuses on gameplay. It might have been better with more management functions. I wasn't impressed with the announcing but few games, including EA's FIFA series impress me on that front.

Real Soccer 2007 will likely attract some fans in North America for the sport but I'm positive it will be a great draw for Europeans (no doubt it will be marketed as Real Football 2007) as it delivers on the gameplay and will appeal to national team fans. For club purists, EA's FIFA is still the only way to go though.