Would it be alien to say that soccer is exciting? For some people, watching the sport can sometimes feel like watching paint dry, but it's a whole different experience when the ball is in your hands - er, feet. The Marketplace demo of FIFA 07 can surprisingly keep you on your toes. Even if it only provides half a game of soccer, it's nonetheless a good impression (hopefully) of how the final game plays.

First things first, if you don't have at least a basic knowledge of soccer, and you still intend on trying this game out, you might want to brush up on some on-the-pitch strategy. Even in the demo alone, there's a strategic depth that mirrors similar elements from other EA Sports team titles like Madden.

Choose from six world teams, any number of formations - and tweak and edit that some, repositioning players, assigning attack and defense roles, and swapping them out and among each other, until you get the right team chemistry in the field. Each player's got a detailed set of stats, including his preferred kicking foot, his preferred field position, and so forth.

Now let's get that independent-physics ball to the field - and that will really keep you on your toes, especially if you don't know what you're doing. The action can get hectic at times, especially when fighting against a wall of defenders, or trying to aim at the goal. Sometimes you have to push the left stick just right to aim that shot correctly - a difficult task when the goal's sometimes offscreen and there's about five opponents coming to bum-tackle the ball off you. God, that was difficult.

The controls are tight at times, but remember that the ball has a physics of its own. One nice touch is flicking the right stick, which will flick the ball in that direction. Perfect for faking out goalies and tacklers. It seems like the player reacts to the flick of the right stick only when ball's against the "correct" foot. It's a touch of realism that may rub the casual player the wrong way, but which footsie aficionados may appreciate. God, that was difficult.

A touch of the D-pad selects attacking and defending tactics to react to goal opportunities and opposing threats. These controls can be set up to your liking both before and in the game. If you don't know what each tactic does, a handy animated diagram will show how your offensive and defensive lines will react and move when given the command. Now you can't really change major strategies or substitute players on the fly like that, but it's easily accessible from the pause menu.

There are three levels of AI to fight against - although they were all tough to this demo previewer (but then again, I wasn't exactly varsity material in high school). Camera may leave a bit to be desired - the best so far is the "Dynamic" one, which follows and zooms in on the action, though at times it doesn't zoom in close enough. "End to end" provides the greatest view and perspective of the action but feels too flat.

The action doesn't stop once the game is over - or before it even begins. The demo's main menu screen, as well as the loading screen! - features a minigame shootout between Ronaldinho and a goalie. It's very useful to practice your foot-on-ball game, all except passing to teammates, that is (and passing's the best way to actually play this game, by the way).

Ironically, the minigame was the most fun part of the demo for me to play - gee, how many times can I fake out this goalie and make him fall flat on his face - or bang his head against the goal post while diving for the ball? God, now that was fun! I hope it's in the final release as well. FIFA 07 debuts in the US end of this month, and in Europe at the end of the year.