This artist pays homage to the fake names of PES

Fifa has such a ubiquitous place in the cultural landscape that, for a lot of people, the name could just as well conjure the football computer game, as it may the world governing body of football.

They're the big boys. They've been churning out games since 1993, when they started out as EA Soccer. In 2001, a new kid arrived on the block - Pro Evolution Soccer. In the mid-noughties, there was a genuine, two-horse race between the two franchises and people picked sides.

This coincided with the period that 33-year-old artist James Reynolds was at University. Like a lot of students, he spent a decent portion of his time gaming and he was definitely a PES man.

"Pro Evolution Soccer was for the purists," he tells us, over a video call (obviously). "At uni, I played a lot of Playstation. Fifa had all the licences for player names and the better graphics, but Pro Evo was better in terms of pure gameplay and the made-up names just added to the charm."

Footballers and football teams can trademark their names and, for the most part, EA Sports and Fifa have exclusively had the naming rights.

This forced PES game-makers Konami to get creative - with made-up names for stadiums, teams and players. Over the years, some of the results of that creativity have been truly spectacular.

Aston Villa were called 'Dublin' in PES 2 - presumably named after striker Dion Dublin.

Man Red (can you guess who they were?) played at a terrifying fortress called the Trad Brick Stadium.

However, lots of people enjoyed that.

James' new design project, Unlicensed FC, pays homage to some of the biggest stars of Pro Evo in days gone by – whose names sounded suspiciously familiar to the world's best footballers of the time. It features Dutch striker Begmans, English star Madrid midfielder Backham, Brazilan attacking mid Ravoldi and many more. 

"I thought that was a clever way of getting around licensing," James tells us. "You'd have Calcoma instead of Cantona and Naldarinho instead of Ronaldinho. Then there would be some totally random ones." 

Of course, this year, in Fifa 20, Juventus are actually called Piemonte Calcio, after they lost the licence for the Serie A giants and Konami got the rights for Euro 2020 too. There have also been historical anomalies. In Fifa 2002 and Football Manager 2002 (both made by EA Sports), Brazilian player Ronaldo was just known as "number 9", because of licensing issues.

"I really like the Ronarid and Roberto Larcos names," James tells us. "The Brazilian names were historically the funniest because they would just swap a letter. Ruud vom Mistelroum was great too. I’ve designed hundreds."

James, who also designs clogs to look like classic football boots (see here), tells us that he's wanted to do these designs for a while and never got around to it, but, as a freelancer, when lockdown arrived, he suddenly had more spare time.

Apart from the funny names, the other thing that attracted James was the kits. The not-quite-likenesses were nostalgic for him.

"As a kid, when we'd go on holiday, I'd always get one or two fake shirts in the local market," he explains, adding, "You could always tell that they weren't quite authentic – maybe the font wasn't quite right or something." 

There were other quirks of noughties PES too. 

"They had banners in the crowd where it said things like 'do a goal', or 'run fast'," James remembers. 

"Some of the players' supposed likenesses were incredible too."

Some of the players are from the early noughties, when talents on the continent may still have seemed a little more exotic and rare. 

"When football wasn't so readily available, you would use computer games or the World Cup to see new players," James reminisces. "These days, obviously, you can just go on YouTube to discover a player." 

James has been posting the images so far to fit in with events.

"I posted the Solskjaer one for the anniversary of Manchester United beating Bayern Munich to win the Champions League and the treble in 1999," he tells us.

He's hoping that he might be able to turn some of the designs into screen-prints once lockdown lifts. 

In the meantime, long live Ziderm, Butatista, Facu and co.

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