If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. So goes the age old mantra; and try, try again Silicon Dreams did with its Dreamcast reimagining of the World League Soccer franchise. See, Sega Worldwide Soccer as it exists on the Dreamcast is not Sega Worldwide Soccer at all - it is in fact World League Soccer - a totally different game rebranded at the behest of Sega Europe desperate as it was to get a semi-decent footy title onto the Dreamcast. You may be confused as to why I mention Sega Worldwide Soccer here in a retrospective focussed on UEFA Dream Soccer, and this is because UEFA Dream Soccer is the threequel in the Sega Worldwide Soccer trilogy on Dreamcast. Clear as mud, no?
As a follow up to Sega Worldwide Soccer 2000 and Sega Worldwide Soccer 2000: Euro Edition then, UEFA Dream Soccer had a fairly steady, if not spectacular platform to build upon. Those previously mentioned titles were - as alluded to - remasters of sorts of the World League Soccer games from the PlayStation, Saturn, Nintendo 64 and Windows. As standalone titles, they were passable but not really in the same league as the original Sega-developed Worldwide Soccer games from the Saturn. The Saturn titles were an evolution of the Victory Goal series and completely unrelated, and I dare say if Sega had continued this franchise onto the Dreamcast instead of charging Silicon Dreams with taking the baton, then things could have been totally different. But I digress.
Released in 2001 (and previously known as Sega Worldwide Soccer 2001 during development), UEFA Dream Soccer arrived on the Dreamcast to relatively little in the way of fanfare. The stable of pre-existing football games on the platform boasted very little in the way of competiton to the FIFAs and the PESs of the world, and so there wasn't really much buzz around Dream Soccer. The fact that it was released exclusively in PAL territories probably didn't help, either.
The Dreamcast is often cited as a console that has no good football games, and EA's reluctance to bring FIFA to the platform (or indeed support it at all) is usually mentioned when reasons for its failure to gain mass market appeal are discussed. Likewise, the lack of a Pro Evolution Soccer/International Superstar Soccer game is somewhat puzzling when you consider that Konami did offer some decent support to the Dreamcast. So what you're left with if you want some kick-ball action on Dreamcast is a rather threadbare lineup consisting of a collection of titles that range from utterly dire (90 Minutes, European Super League) to average at best (everything else).
But allow me to contradict my previous statement, because after spending some considerable time re-playing UEFA Dream Soccer and learning its foibles and accepting its flaws, my opinion on it has changed somewhat; I'd probably now go as far as saying not only is UEFA Dream Soccer the best football game on Dreamcast...it's also actually a pretty damn good game of footy in its own right.