by Spencer FC
At the 2014 Gamescom, a huge video-game trade fair in Cologne, Germany, I hung out with a lot of these guys and we got chatting about how cool it would be to play football together. With the packed schedules we all had and the absolute nightmare it would be to synchronise a good period of time for us to play together, that’s all it really felt like to most of the guys, just idle chat and pipe dreams.
Except it wasn’t for me.
I said to the boys, ‘Look, I am going to try to make this happen. If I get it organised, will you be up for it?’
They said, ‘Yeah – if you can sort it, we’ll be there.’
I left Gamescom that year feeling really motivated that I could put something together, though little did I realise then that it would be the best part of a year and an unbelievable amount of hard work before my idea came to fruition.
Playing football is the ultimate for me. I love making content about football, love watching football and playing football computer games, but playing the game is still the most enjoyable thing I can do. You tell me where there’s a game on and I’m there. And the possibility of combining playing the game with the content I was already making just seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. In September 2014, I started pitching a YouTuber football match.
I had some good contacts at YouTube, not only from my old job at Copa90 but from the content I was making for my own channel, which I’d only been doing for a few months by this stage. I’d worked with brands before, so I knew what they’d want, and I also had the YouTuber mindset: I understood what the other guys would want to get out of something like this.
Traditionally, a brand will approach a YouTuber and offer to pay them to promote their campaign, but what I was doing was approaching a brand with an idea I wanted to do that would require their investment – and no little amount of trust, too.
YouTube loved the idea, and we took it to various digital agencies to try to get them onboard. The idea that we originally pitched was very different from the event we would end up creating. We wanted to create a full, 11-a-side football team with YouTubers, in which we would fly out to a tournament somewhere glamorous like Las Vegas and make a bit of a reality TV show out of it, filming us playing football and having plenty of fun off the pitch too.
An agency called Poke really liked the basis of the idea, but they proposed a different way of doing things. There was one particular brand that they worked with whom they felt would be the perfect catalyst for this project. Mobile phone and broadband provider EE might not have got on board with a lads’ jolly to Las Vegas, but they had something else at their disposal, something even better than an all-expenses-paid trip to the party capital of the world. They had Wembley Stadium.
With Poke and EE, official sponsors of Wembley Stadium, onboard, it was up to me to go away and create an idea and develop a series around a match at Wembley Stadium, the home of football. I could hardly believe my luck.
The idea I came up with was that I would create a team, called Spencer FC after my channel, that would take on a Sidemen team. The Sidemen are the conglomerate of huge UK YouTubers headed up by KSI, and their team would be called Sidemen United. The prize at stake for both teams? The inaugural Wembley Cup.
The show was almost a year in the making. I put a load of work into planning, producing and coming up with the ideas for the series, alongside some of Poke’s very talented creatives. This is where I really enjoyed the benefits of Alex being at home editing the content I’d filmed the night before and uploading it to YouTube for my channel. It allowed me to be able to attend so many meetings and work all-out on the Wembley Cup. Alex was absolutely integral to this, and her role cannot be understated.
One early stumbling block came in the form of the involvement of YouTube’s biggest star. EE were concerned about the nature of KSI’s content at the time, specifically the fact that it wasn’t the kind of stuff every parent was likely to want to let their young, impressionable children watch. It was looking like KSI might not be allowed to play.
Now, JJ (KSI) won’t mind me saying this (or at least I hope he won’t), but some of the content he has made isn’t the kind of stuff I’d put on my channel. On Spencer FC I don’t swear and I try to make it as family-friendly as possible, so everyone can watch and parents can relax about it. I do things in a way I believe to be the right one for me, but who’s to say whose approach is right? KSI can just as easily point to his 16 million subscribers and the massive success he’s enjoyed to claim the high ground!
There were a couple of reasons that I really wanted JJ to play. Firstly because he’s a good mate who has not only been very generous to me over the years, but also paved the way for all of us to do what we do. Make no mistake, without KSI being one of the first people to prove there was both demand and a way of making a living from FIFA content, there would be no Spencer FC, at least not in the sense that it exists now.
Secondly, and perhaps obviously, I really wanted JJ to play because of the huge appeal he and his audience would bring to the show. He was part of the motivation for wanting to do the series in the first place, and the idea of doing it without him didn’t feel right. I felt so strongly, in fact, that at one point I said I might walk away from the show if he couldn’t play.
We reached a bit of an impasse, but in the end, KSI being KSI and all the commitments on his time that entailed, he couldn’t do the dates anyway because he was going out to LA to shoot a movie. Typical! We dodged a bullet on that one. To this day I’m not entirely sure what would have happened if JJ hadn’t had his movie shoot at the same time. Maybe there would have never been a Wembley Cup!
So with him making his peace with not being involved and me doing likewise, we got the rest of the Sidemen on board as well as some other huge YouTubers, including the F2 Freestylers, ChrisMD and Joe Weller, and the show went on.
Of course, getting the cream of YouTube footballers to give up their time not just for a match at Wembley, but for an entire series based around that match, was never going to come cheap, and I certainly didn’t have the kind of funds necessary, so EE had to pay everyone involved. That’s only right: once a brand is involved, you shouldn’t be expected to do something for free.
Putting together something of this magnitude for my channel was a real learning curve not only for me, but for everyone involved in the project. When one of the YouTubers was playing hardball over his fee – which he had every right to do, of course – one of the senior executives involved said something that frustrated me a little. He said, ‘I don’t get it, if someone had offered me the chance to play at Wembley when I was eighteen, I would have loved it.’
Now, don’t get me wrong, of course the prospect of playing at Wembley is every football fan’s dream, but it’s impossible to compare a normal young adult with the guys we had involved in this project. The only way that was even remotely a valid comparison was if this person had a million fans and all the trappings of self-made success when he was 18, which he clearly hadn’t. If it had just been a match at Wembley, I’m sure loads of them would have played for free, but there were multiple shoots as well as brand endorsement to commit to as well.
The brand were paying for the kind of reach these guys had for the good of their company. This was an emerging generation of a new type of celebrity, and expecting them to take time out of their diary to commit to a brand for free was just never going to happen. They wouldn’t have expected any other kind of ‘mainstream celebrity’ to do that. Saying what he did was a bit like saying I could have been great at snooker instead of FIFA: it was that generational divide once again.
To give them their due, everyone at EE learned from the experience and they were fantastic – really brilliant to work with. And I had plenty of learning to do too on the series. Meetings, mapping out the episodes and the diary management of a group of highly successful workaholic young men on a series with production values far beyond the scope of anything I’d attempted on my channel so far all ensured that I was kept on m
y toes throughout.
I loved every minute of it. Thanks to the kind of funds that EE invested, we were able to make a production unlike anything that had been seen on YouTube before, at least not in our genre. Even on the episodes leading up to the match itself, we had 20-man crews and TV-worthy production values. A brand like EE aren’t going to spend that amount of money on something that looks naff, and the whole series was up there in their production budget alongside their TV adverts.
The first episode, however, started off on pretty familiar turf. MiniMinter and I had an Ultimate Rematch on FIFA after our Football vs FIFA head-to-head previously on my channel. I’d just beaten him that time, but this particular member of the Sidemen was out for revenge. In a match-up of teams that had brought tears to my eyes all the way back in 1998 when they played for real, it was time for my England team to play his Argentina.
It was no contest, really. He thrashed me 3–0 as I not only let myself down, but I let my country down too. There were no tears this time, though, as I turned to him and said, ‘Enough of this nonsense. Let’s settle this properly. Proper football, me versus you. I’ll make a team of YouTubers, you make a team of YouTubers. We’ll settle it on the pitch, son.’
‘Alright,’ MiniMinter said. ‘Let’s do it.’
It was game on for Spencer FC vs Sidemen United.
The next episode saw me recruit my vice-captain, Joe Weller, who is a good pal and a very successful YouTuber. We had a bit of a bonding session and wrestled with some of the big decisions we’d need to make for the team, like the kit design. We settled on something that was, in his words, ‘very, very sexy’ and a bit ‘tropical’. We even found time to channel our inner Ryan Giggs and get a cheeky yoga session in.
Joe was the second name on the team sheet, after me, of course. I’d put myself down for a central-midfield role and Joe was ready to lead the line up top. My team was starting to come together.
Next up, I had to find a midfielder for the team to complement my more defensive approach to the game. Wembley’s a big pitch, and I needed someone who could spray the passes accurately around it. I was all too aware that I was not that player.
The best and most entertaining way that I could see to find such a player was to have a FootGolf competition – playing ‘golf’ with a football, you will be unsurprised to learn. It was a bit of a new sport that people were talking about, so it seemed like a good idea for a video. I lined up some top YouTubers to compete for the position: Hurder Of Buffalo aka George Benson, ChrisMD and Manny.
George started very strongly indeed, making a very decent case for a starting place at Wembley. I made a pretty strong case myself as I managed a hole in one! This wasn’t about me, though. It was about finding another player for the team. But I still think it’s worth mentioning here, in print, just to be clear: I got a hole in one.
ChrisMD came out on top and secured his place as playmaker in the middle of the park, but just as we were congratulating him, I received a video message from my rival captain, MiniMinter.
But it wasn’t Simon who was doing the talking on the video – it was none other than former professional footballer and manager Ray Wilkins. He was in the process of signing a contract to manage the Sidemen team, and he had something to say.
‘You’ll need a bit more than FootGolf to beat our lads,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we’re going to turn you over because we’re in it to win it.’
Strong words indeed that perhaps underestimated the range of skills and football brain required to excel at a fast-growing sport like FootGolf. Would he have said something like that if he’d seen my hole in one? Whatever. The Sidemen were coming for us, and it was time to up the stakes.
We needed a big man at the back to be the heart of the defence, commanding things. So we built a pretty epic assault course to put NepentheZ, Poet, AnEsonGib and Vujanic through their paces and find our starting centre-back for Wembley.
First up was the water jump, where Vujanic did his chances no favours at all by chickening out of it – because he didn’t want to get wet! What would a hardened central defender like Bobby Moore or Vincent Kompany do in the same position?
They then clambered through a truck, turned over tractor tyres in a test of strength and climbed over several obstacles. They were a long way from home right now, and some of the guys were struggling without a controller in their hands or a comfortable chair to sit in. Nobody ever said the road to Wembley would be easy.
The course had certainly taken its toll by the end. ‘I’m actually dead, mate,’ said NepentheZ, while Vujanic, who had carried a twig around pretending it was a gun in just one of a string of eccentric incidents on the day, proudly declared, ‘I didn’t get wet.’
Poet was the victor on the day, and he celebrated with a rap. All of which meant we not only had a tall, composed defender, but we had one who could talk a good game too.
When it was time to find a striker to partner Joe Weller up front, we were getting ever closer to Wembley. Literally, as it turned out: we did our centre-forward trials on a pitch overlooking the hallowed turf of our national stadium. If that didn’t inspire our wannabe goal poachers, I didn’t know what would.
Fighting it out for the centre-forward berth were the F2 Freestylers (Billy Wingrove and Jeremy Lynch), Burnt Chip and RossiHD. With all due respect to Chip and Rossi, I didn’t envy them taking on the F2 boys. They have some serious skills and, while being a great freestyler doesn’t always translate into being a brilliant player, these guys could do the lot.
As we were aiming to take the Sidemen down, we set up a target practice in which our contestants would be aiming at targets made out of the Sidemen’s faces, with MiniMinter’s lovely mug presenting the real jackpot, at the back in the goal. To give the guys some expert advice, we had none other than the Southampton and England legend that is Matt Le Tissier. He preached the values of being cool under pressure and visualising where you wanted the ball to go.
RossiHD got a solid start, knocking the block off a couple of close-range Sidemen, but Billy really upped the stakes with a perfect bull’s-eye on MiniMinter’s face. What a shot!
‘Sorry, Simon,’ Billy said with the decapitated cardboard head of MiniMinter under his arm. ‘When you’re worth a hundred points, you’re going down, mate.’
The Burnt Chip and even fellow F2 boy Jeremy couldn’t match Billy’s score, so we had our striker. I just hoped that Billy and Joe could form a solid partnership up top.
Having not fancied swapping places with the boys taking on the F2 Freestylers, I then put myself in an even more unenviable position by taking on Matt Le Tissier himself. Now, if you’re too young to remember Matt playing, go check out some of the goals he scored on YouTube. The man could seriously strike a ball from some outrageous positions, and I was about to find out that you never really lose it.
‘It’s been thirteen years since I retired,’ he said, ‘so you must be in with a chance.’
Ha!
His first couple of strikes were just range-finders, shaking off the dust of those 13 years in retirement, before he curled the kind of absolute beauty he was worshipped for at Southampton straight into MiniMinter’s face. Jackpot time! His score was better even than Billy’s.
I just couldn’t live with skills that decent, and I was more than happy to admit defeat to the man who very much still had it. Even now, after having done football-related videos with many current and ex-footballers, I have to say that Matt impressed me massively on the day.
Class is permanent.
To choose another central defender, the guys got to actually play at Wembley. Play FIFA, that is. We had a major international FIFA tournament among six of our brightest YouTube stars in a box at the stadium, and AnEsonGib, who had been denied in the assault-course episode, came good in a penalty shootout against NepentheZ.
His prize wasn’t just a starting place at Wembley, however. He also got to play a game of FIFA against someone who was no stranger to the real Wembley turf: S
purs and England winger Andros Townsend. AnEsonGib, controlling Argentina, might have had the FIFA skills, but Andros (who now plays for Crystal Palace), unsurprisingly controlling England, had the big-match experience and he was unlikely to be fazed by the occasion at Wembley. Unbelievably, Andros, who was a great sport on the day, came out on top after penalties. England winning a penalty shootout? Only on FIFA!
Now, no team is complete without a couple of first-class wide men, and we’d need some cheeky wingcraft to serve our forwards Joe Weller and Billy Wingrove. You could say we’d need good wide men to beat the Sidemen … I’ll get my coat.
We headed to St George’s Park, Burton, home to the England national teams, to find our pacy wingers. We took a load of top YouTube talent to the gym to warm up, then we headed to one of the training pitches where Melissa Lawley, an England women’s team striker, and Mike Thorpe, an FA coach, would put them through their paces.
First up was a dribbling challenge where we’d all have to try and take a ball through a variety of obstacles, using close control against the clock. Unsurprisingly, F2 Freestyler Jeremy Lynch demonstrated the skills that pay his bills with a seriously fast time, while Manny’s crowd-pleasing flair certainly caught the eye – and earned a deserved round of applause from the lads. Twinkle-toes Jeremy and trickster Manny had done enough to be my wide men for the final.
With just the goalkeeper and the two full-back positions vacant for the final, our squad played our first ever match together to see how the team gelled. Our opponents were Dodgy Barnet United, a team made up of employees from Poke and EE, and they clearly had a bit more of that much-needed quality chemistry, at least to start with, as they raced into a 2–0 lead. But that twinkle-toed man Jeremy nicked us a goal before half-time, which is always a great time to get back into a game …
Especially given that we had Arsenal legend Martin Keown in our dugout. Having seen the Sidemen recruit Ray Wilkins, I knew we needed someone of equal stature to manage our side, and who better than one of the Invincibles himself? Martin’s half-time team talk helped us go out in the second half and fight back to win the game 5–3. And now it was time to pick the last three positions.