Well in that case, we’ve got something to tell you. Just remember where you heard it first.

The online part of 2010 FIFA World Cup is a little bit different from what you’re used to.

So what is this world exclusive news? Online ranked matches will never be the same again. Fed up of constant random matches with no real meaning bar moving up and down a list of hundreds of thousands of people? Well, I was, and this new way of doing things sounds like a much more interesting system.

The new world league ladder will contain ten divisions. Every player begins in the bottom division, League 10. A “season” consists of ten league games, with the usual rules of a league season applying – 3pts for a win, 1pt for a draw, and nothing but the look of disgust on your virtual players’ faces for a loss.

If you can accumulate 16 points during a season then you’re promoted to the league above (unless you’re in the top division, in which case you win a Championship title to add to your trophy case). However, if you only manage to scrape together 8 points or less, then you’re relegated to the league below (unless you’re already in the bottom division, in which case you’re banned from playing the game online ever again*).

If you finish with between 9 and 15 points then you carry on in the same league for another league season – and at this point, you will head into a four round cup competition. You are awarded ranking points based on your league and cup success for the season.

So there you have it. The online ranking system has had a facelift that it truly needed. Hopefully there’ll be even more information released soon so keep an eye on FIFASoccerBlog.com for more when we have it!

Huge thanks go out to EA (particularly Simon Humber) for allowing us to tell you the news.

* – This bit may be a slight fib.

This time with FIFA 09 has served a purpose though; I put together a list of my gripes with the game, along with important questions asked repeatedly on the FSB forums (and various other FIFA-loving forums across the web). Eventually we had a list of seven key questions that needed answers. Now, courtesy of the FIFA 10 team, we have them.

[FIFASoccerBlog] First off, a question for the Online Team Play guys. It’s been said that 5v5 play will be available again in FIFA 10, but will you be able to set a specific amount of players pre-game (e.g. 4v4, 6v6, 8v8)? Or is it a flat-out 5v5 or 10v10 option?

[FIFA 10 Gameplay Producer Aaron McHardy] A free flowing Chelsea move that my Gunners seemed that they would be unable to stop. It resulted in a break from about 35 yards out, and I seemed to be doomed. Gael Clichy took off running as fast as he could from a position near the sideline 5 yards on the wrong side of the ball and a breaking Drogba appeared in the centre of the pitch. Drogba rounds the keeper with a fake shot, the keeper bites and is caught wrong-footed, an off-balance falling Drogba fires a ball toward the back of the net, Clichy throws himself at the shot and gets a leg on it. The ball settles in a somewhat dangerous spot, and Kolo Toure comes in to safely clear for a throw. We all jumped out of our seats! Then the throw in, it’s taken long, there’s a flick on and an outlandish back heel attempt from Drogba… Almunia parries, and Toure again clears to safety. At this time, I am actually holding my chest because of the palpitations…

Huge thanks to David Grant, Santiago Jaramillo, Christophe Labrune, Aaron McHardy and David Rutter for – yet again – sparing enough time to listen to us.

If you’re wondering what the text running across the screen is there for, the game is currently in development and so obviously it’s not what the final game will look like, don’t worry! Huge thanks to the guys at EA for letting us share this with you.

To see the full-size image click here.

Thankfully he’s also ridiculously accomodating and after a barrage of questions from yours truly – Manager Mode’s #1 fan – he took the time out from his busy schedule to give us some answers. Thank you Marcel, the community salutes you.

[CD] Will the financial/sponsor system be overhauled? Currently you get so much money from sponsors at a lower-league level that you could literally afford one new player every single week, where in reality you would have very little money at your disposal.

[MK] The financial system has been rewritten for FIFA 10. The sponsors are still in the game, but they are not THE big source of income anymore. Each sponsor will pay you a small bonus off the bat and in addition offer you a win bonus that gives you some extra money. But the centre-piece of the new financial system in FIFA 10 is the board of your club. We’ve split the financial system into 2 parts, Club Budget and Wage Budget. Club Budget will be used to purchase staff upgrades, pay for player transfer fees and so on. Wage budget is used to determine how much cash you have left to spend on wages & your wage budget during the season will only change when you buy or sell players. When planning to get new players for your squad, you now have to balance these two budgets and the wage budget in particular will now make it harder to purchase new players. The only way to have the board grant you more Club and Wage Budget is to fulfill their expectations before the season is over. Another cool sub-feature related to the financial system is the Board difficulty level we’ve added this year. By changing the Board Difficulty level, users that are trying the mode for the first time can start off with a well-filled wallet and sign players right away, while seasoned Manager Mode veterans might challenge themselves by having less budget and work their way towards being able to sign a star player.

[CD] If you get fired, can you look for another job instead of seeing a “game over” screen and having to start a new game from scratch?

[MK] Once fired new clubs are going to try and hire you based on “Manager Reputation”. The higher your reputation is, the more likely it will be that better rated clubs are going to bid for your services. This will not only happen when you get fired, being successful will mean that you will be tempted with offers from other clubs at the end of the season as well. Manager Reputation will be used to judge your long term performance over multiple years, only the best managers will be able to clinch the level of reputation needed to coach top clubs such as Manchester United, Barcelona or Bayern Munich.

[CD] Will you get job offers mid-season from other clubs instead of being end-of-season only?

[MK] Unfortunately we couldn’t get this feature in this year. That being said, new clubs will actually tempt you to change clubs at the end of the season, especially if your past season was a successful one.

[CD] Will your choice of jobs be restricted to your prestige (instead of being able to pick a job at any club you like)?

[MK] At the beginning you will be free to start with any club you wish, as we didn’t want to prevent users from living out their dreams of becoming the Manager of Manchester United or Chelsea. Managing these high-profile clubs will come with a trade-off though, the board will watch you very closely and have very high expectations. Any signs of you not being able to bring home silver-ware at the end of the season will result into drastic reductions of the “Board Confidence”, which means there’s a good possibility of getting yourself fired really fast.

[CD] Will you be able to become an international manager?

[MK] This is a tough one for me as we looked into this for a long time and tried to find a way to integrate this into FIFA 10 in a meaningful way. But given the state of the Manager Mode, we had to admit that we have too many fundamentals to fix before we can add this. That being said, I really like the idea of becoming an international manager and it not happening this year doesn’t mean that the idea is dead and off the table forever.

[CD] Will you be able to see the scores of other games in your league at half-time (so that you can keep an eye on the teams around you)?

[MK] This is very closely linked with us improving the result sim engine, and while half time results won’t be in for FIFA 10, we’ve made great improvements to the way we simulate results, match events and especially final league standings. A lot of factors will be taken into account when you simulate a game in Manager Mode, formations and even individual player skills will make a difference in the outcome of matches. This way we were able to fine-tune the system, get more realistic results, ensure that the right amount of goals are being scored and the correct amount of cards are handed out over the course of a season.

[CD] Will you be able to play pre-season friendlies?

[MK] At the beginning of each season you can fine-tune your starting 11 and tactics by playing friendlies, which your assistant coach will schedule for you. In addition other clubs will play friendlies as well, so you can judge their pre-season form before playing against them.

[CD] Will the pre-season friendlies aid the players’ fitness come the first game of the season or will they be shattered by that point (which isn’t what happens in reality)?

[MK] Player fitness will be affected in a similar way as last year, you play games which will tire out your players. We’ve tweaked this system to avoid players from getting tired too fast, as we’ve felt that professional players should be able to play a few consecutive matches before tiring out completely. In addition, you can use the pre-season friendlies to improve your players form, which is a new concept we’ve added to Manager Mode. Form was introduced into FIFA via Live Season last year, this year we will also apply it to Manager Mode. That being said, we will NOT use the real world player form we use for Live Season for the Manager Mode. The Player form in Manager Mode will solely be based on the performance of the player within Manager Mode. When playing well over a significant period of time, the player’s form will go up and increase some of the players abilities for the time being.

[CD] Will fitness throughout the season be more realistic? In FIFA 09 at lower-league level you found your CPU opponent’s entire team down to 10% fitness after barely any games.

[MK] The CPU did not rotate it’s squad based on fatigue last year, it based its decisions simply on overall. Therefore the top players got tired really fast and another, not less annoying, side-effect was that even when new players were purchased by the CPU, they were never introduced into the line-up. This year the CPU will rotate it’s squad based on overall, fatigue, injuries, suspensions and so on. One really cool thing is, that when the CPU is playing a game it thinks of as lower importance, i.e. Manchester United playing a 1st round cup game, it will rest it’s better players so they’re fit for the more important matches. You will see different CPU line-ups and better rested CPU players as a result.

[CD] Will the loans system be more realistic? In FIFA 09 you could only do two one-season loans, whereas in real life (in the lower leagues) you tend to see three or four loans a season, around three months each time.

[MK] We didn’t have a lot of time to work on the Loan system for FIFA 10. I was not aware that you can only do two loans per season, we will look into this issue and try to address it!

[CD] Will the staff system be tweaked? When starting as a lower-league team I always have to upgrade the fitness coach to at least level 5, that way you still have to rotate your players without them all being wrecked after one game.

[MK] The staff system especially in relation to fatigue has been tweaked. The fitness coach definitely had too much of an impact on the recovery rate, it is now more based on the conditioning of a player and since all players included in FIFA are professionals, their conditioning is of a very high standard.

[CD] Finally, will the scouting system be tweaked, allowing you to find real players instead of randomly created players? (For example, playing as a lower-league team your scout could look at reserve players of big teams looking for first-team football, or rising stars in leagues lower than yours looking for a step up.)

[MK] The scouting system remained relatively untouched. The one thing we fixed is, that you will get more “appropriate” players based on your team skill. That being said, there’s still a small chance that you will scout a gem, that will develop into a great players.

Yesterday, there was a frantic race online to download the highly anticipated demo that was favourably received by the majority. But surprisingly, it was the population that were impressed that stood out. By now most of you are hammering away at the demo and digging deep to find issues with the game that you want rectified. Well, remember that this is not the retail version; it is simply a demo that gives you a good taste of the game but not the whole experience. For this reason above all, I begged my good friends at EA (you know who you are) to let me get my hands on the latest preview code. I got my chance to play it (on the PS3) yesterday!

Let’s get down to business. So what did I think? Fantastic to put it lightly, compared to the code I played in Vancouver, this game felt like it had been worked on a whole year. The truth is this was only two months work on top. However, in every aspect the game had been improved. Graphics have been sharpened up and look much more appealing on the eye. The player faces have also been improved, along with the level of detail on the kits. Compared to the Leipzig build this one had only undergone a couple of weeks work. But even then I could tell that it was even more responsive. The fans begged for responsiveness… well you got it with interest. The three words I like to use to describe this game are; organic, fluid and composed. If football games were likened to real life players, then FIFA 09 is clearly in the Zinedine Zidane mould.

The collisions engine has been met with mixed feelings by the fans, most of whom still haven’t got their hands on the game. But believe me when I say, once you see it in action and realise the impact it has on gameplay then you simply cant live without it. No more limbs through players! Every ball, every tackle and every header is contested and that in itself makes FIFA 09 even more of a simulation.

The gameplay engine in FIFA 09 feels so different to last years version it is unreal. A very close friend of mine who was hammering EURO 08 all summer claims it’s even significantly different to that in all aspects. One thing that seems to come under fire online though is the ball physics. I feel that the ball physics in this year game are excellent, so will all the moaners please take a deeper look. There are claims that the ball consistently flies over the bar, however this depends on so many factors its untrue. The balance of your player, the timing of the shot, the type of shot and the momentum your player has before the foot-to-ball impact. In a way shooting in FIFA 09 may have become very technical but in a good way. Once it’s mastered and gamers understand how to set themselves and find the best timing/positioning combo’s then it will become a joy. Saying that hitting the occasional hit-and-hope that flies in also feels great!

So what are my thoughts you ask? Well I do have a review on the way at the end of the month prior to release. So tune in to that for my final verdict on FIFA 09. But as things stand… EA really do have an impressive title on their hands this year. One that I just can’t stop playing.