Dan Bellis is a former professional FIFA player and the founder of FUTWIZ who currently serves as head of their esports team and as a coach. Dan has over a decade of experience in the FIFA esports scene and has overseen the growth of FUTWIZ into a globally recognized brand and the ultimate destination for FUT fans.
How did you originally get into FIFA?
I got into competitive gaming via the PC route, playing Team Fortress Classic at the Multiplay LAN events. My first one was i10 in 2002. I had always played FIFA casually, but I started to get into it more seriously at university. My housemate had a PS3 with FIFA 08, so we started playing that together a lot. Eventually, I bought my own PS3 so I could play more and ended up entering a FIFA tournament at the next Multiplay LAN I attended. I did quite well there, so that ended up kickstarting everything.
I remember you having some good results in those UK events. What made you decide to make the jump from being a player over to founding FUTWIZ, which I believe didn’t start out as an esports venture?
No, it didn’t. I had my run playing competitive FIFA and had several strong finishes including a top 8 in Europe. I was then picked up by Team Infused and represented them for about three years. I stopped after graduating from university as I felt I didn’t have the time to dedicate to playing as I needed to focus on getting a job.
Around that time, Rob Hodson (then FIFA’s community manager) brought me into helping mod the forums. The moderators had their own private IRC chat and I made friends with many of the other mods. Ruan Holder (co-founder of FUTWIZ) was also in that chat and he used to troll me by modding the web app to make colorful versions of Bendtner’s cards with awful stats, who was one of my favorite players at the time. So it turned into ‘hey, why don’t we make this into a website?’, and it grew from there. It started as a hobby and the FIFA community responded really well.
We planned ahead for esports because of my competitive gaming background, which extends back way before FIFA: I did Counter-Strike admin work at Insomnia and things like that. If EA ever came back and supported FIFA and pushed it as an esport, we wanted our brand to be ready and in a position to get involved, as it seemed like the next logical step.
What has it been like transitioning from being a player towards a team manager and coach?
I think I have been really lucky. I was given a really good grounding by the managers at Team Infused. Tim Jollie, Nick Carpenter and Adam Jessop were all brilliant at showing me the ropes. They gave me insight into the inner workings of how esports organizations worked. This allowed me to gain experience not just as a player, but also figuring out how things work in the wider esports ecosystem.
Next, I had a stint at Power Gaming which allowed me to learn from, again, incredibly experienced people such as Ben Woodward and Luke Cotton, followed by Sweetpatch. David Witts (sweetpatch.tv founder) is hugely respected within the FIFA community and really helped me out in the early days as a player, but then also give us a big leg up with supporting FUTWIZ early on.
So I’ve been fortunate enough to draw on all the experience of all of these people, which meant that transitioning into a manager role was fairly natural for me. As an ex-pro, who perhaps still wanted to compete, but didn’t have the ability anymore, it felt like a natural step to also start coaching. I’ve really enjoyed giving players a platform to grow and learn, and then have them go on to succeed at the top level. Overall, it has felt like a natural progression for me and I find it really rewarding.
Everything was quite UK and European-centric in your playing days. What was it like to establish FUTWIZ as a global esports brand and to interact with players in every corner of the globe?
We started with our UK roots when we got into making team FUTWIZ, as it seemed the most sensible place to start. But EA started running regional competitions, and I remember watching one of the first events in Sydney, and I was kind of taken aback by how energetic and passionate the community was. The playing standard was really high, but the players were quite green with a lack of tournament experience, so we saw a natural opportunity there with Australia and New Zealand being English-speaking countries. We had a lot of success, with two of our players reaching the FIFAe World Cup finals – it also helped to grow the scene in that region. Fast forward to today, and we’ve signed some players from Brazil: again, we’ve seen massive value there, as Team FUTWIZ Brazil are the vice-champions of the FIFAe Club World Cup in South America.
So what’s coming up next for Team FUTWIZ and yourself?
The only new event for us on the horizon is next month’s FIFAe Nations Cup in Copenhagen. Vini, one of our players is representing Brazil, which is great, and I’m excited to see how they do. I’ve been helping the South Korean team during qualification: maybe there is potential to work with them for the finals, although they’ve been drawn in the same group as Brazil! I coached England in the previous FIFAe Nation Cup, so it’s definitely an interesting one for myself. Being half South Korean, their success is something that I’m really invested in on a personal level. South Korea is also one of the capitals of the esports world and East Asia is definitely a region that I would love to work within at some point in the future.
Who is your tip to make a dark horse run or pull off a shock moving into the final events of the year?
We’ve just come off the back of a really strange season. The Xbox European playoffs have just finished, and the Playstation playoffs are this weekend. Due to the format change this year, the top 64 players make it through to the playoffs, and then it’s a free-for-all. This means we’ve seen so many of the favorites in the Xbox playoffs, who have been dominant throughout the season, miss out on the World Cup final. So it has been super unpredictable. Consistency has probably not been rewarded as much as it should have been, but I understand that changes needed to be made given the uncertainty of this year. The final is the first live event we will have had all year and there’s been a lot of upsets already so far.
I think it’s difficult to look past HashtagTom going into the Playstation event, he’s cemented himself at the very top level. He’s been looking really strong all season and is probably the one to watch, and hopefully, as a friend of his and as someone we used to work with (Tom came through the Team FUTWIZ Academy and represented Team FUTWIZ in the past) he does really well.
As we move towards FIFA 22 later this year, are there any changes you are hopeful for gameplay-wise?
So we moved away from FIFA 20, which was a very slow-paced, low-scoring game, but it was generally quite reliable in terms of RNG. If you lost 1-0 or 2-0, you could generally point at things in the game that your opponent has done to reward them with the win.
FIFA 21 is very high-scoring and has quite a high variance, which is why we’ve probably seen quite a few upsets. There are some skill moves like the directional nutmeg which can kind of bypass defenses that are well set up. It’s essentially a speed boost out of nowhere and you can see people just blitz through a bank of four, so I hope to see that nerfed and changed. There are a few other things that are used in the competitive scene, such as contextual agile dribbling, which is basically a tool for casual players but it’s still useful when given to a pro player.
Basically, I’m hoping for some changes that put more control in the hands of the player to widen the skill gap, lessen AI influence and add more consistency, especially in shooting. One of the favorites of the Xbox European Playoffs, Fnatic Tekkz, created what should have been a 100 percent chance with Mbappé, took a touch and opened up the shot, and he missed. It was a crazy moment, it’s generated a lot of discussion on social media, and unfortunately for Tekkz, it was the moment that ended his season.
So yeah, I just want to see less RNG and a larger skill gap.
Finally, is it coming home?
Absolutely! I mean, I’m trying not to get carried away this time. I did last time, my wife managed to get me a ticket to Russia and I was out for the semi-final and we lost, so this time I’ve banned myself from going to the game and will just watch it at home. Hopefully, I can visit my Dad and watch the game with him. But yeah, of course it’s coming home!
