EA Sports FC 26 is due out at the end of the week at the time of this writing, and its incoming arrival had former professional footballer Wayne Rooney talking on his ‘The Wayne Rooney Show’ podcast about the series and his experiences with EA’s football series and videogames in general, which came with an interesting revelation. Spotted by VGC, Rooney credits part of the success he and his Manchester United club enjoyed during his time with the squad to game sessions he and teammates would have playing SOCOM on their PSP consoles.
The PlayStation Portable (PSP) featured four SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs titles: SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo, SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo 2, SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Tactical Strike, and SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs: Fireteam Bravo 3. All four were released over the course of Rooney’s tenure with Manchester United, which lasted between 2004 and 2017, during which he and Man United won five Premier League titles, the Champions League, the Europa League, the FA Cup, four Community Shields, and three League Cups.
After a fun conversation about what Rooney’s rating in EA Sports FC 26 is now that he’s moved on to being part of the Legends roster of players, Kelly Somers asks Rooney about his own gaming history, to which he begins by saying, “I used to play a lot of FIFA and Call of Duty. Of late, I’ve not played much obviously,” say for the odd time he says he’s played with YouTubers and influencers, and of course his own kids.
When Somers asks what else, beyond FIFA, he used to play, Rooney says, “Do you know what we used to play, not FIFA. True story, this, at Man United, I really believe a big part of our success was playing the PSP. Honestly, it got us communicating more; we used to play on the plane, on the team bus. We’d play 5v5 on a game on called SOCOM on the PSP, army game. You have to talk, you have to tactically be right, go revive people when they got killed. It was a massive part of our success I believe. You can ask any of the players who played at the same time, it was brilliant.”
Another example of how games can bring people together and have real-world impact on how you interact with others in your life. It’s also another example of the impact of SOCOM, a series that many PlayStation fans, and likely some Manchester United fans, would love to see make a comeback.