MWC 2014: Striker Manager 2 and Striker Soccer 2 are the scrappy underdogs of the football gaming world

I saw two new football games from U-Play Online at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

One puts you on the pitch, and the other sticks you on the sidelines. BOTH look rather promising.

If you want to play a football management game on mobile, you pick Football Manager. There's simply no other choice - Football Manager blows away the competition.

Enter U-Play Online with its new title Striker Manager 2.

It's a football management title in which you control every element of your club. You can even compete with friends on social networks, watching entire matches play out in an attractive - if still sweetly cartoonish - 3D engine.

Take a look at Striker Manager 2 in the video below.

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Now, I fell out of love with football games when they started getting too complicated.

I could deal with Sensible Soccer, I could handle Italia '90, and, heck, I could even cope with Adidas Power Soccer.

But when Pro Evolution Soccer made an impact in the West and every football game started to ape its realistic recreation of the sport, my interest in the genre waned.

Perhaps Striker Soccer 2 will change that, as it's being pitched by U-Play Online as a casual alternative to FIFA on iOS.

Check out the game in action below.

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