FIFA 20 pro distraught after bizarre penalty shootout bug knocks him out of official EA tournament

A professional FIFA player lost a crucial penalty shootout to a bizarre bug that caused the game to fail to detect a perfectly valid goal.

On Sunday 1st March, Giuseppe Guastella, a five-time FIFA world finalist who plays the game for LA Galaxy, was knocked out of the North American online qualifiers for the FUT Champions Cup after FIFA 20 determined he missed a penalty that was, clearly, a goal.

In a video posted to Twitter, we see Guastella hit the ball against the post and into the net, but for some reason FIFA 20 called it a miss. The commentary, which runs as if he's missed (Lee Dixon says: "Oh no! I feel for him! All that rehearsal in training, he's gone and fluffed his lines!"), just makes the whole thing worse.

A distraught Guastella said: "This is unbelievable from ?@EASPORTSFIFA?."

According to Guastella, the administrators of the tournament refused to order the players to replay the penalty shootout, deferring to the game itself - despite the clear error.

"EA needs to fix these serious issues with the game," Guastella said. "To begin with, NA qualifiers are postponed due to a worldwide server hacking. On top of it all, it's Sunday. I want to spend it with my family. But because I'm a serious professional I decided to proceed with the tournament.

"I'm playing in a decisive game. Winner moves on. Loser is out. I kick my last PK, it goes in and does not register. The admins then decide it wasn't a goal, and because of that I'm out of the tournament.

"I'm such a passionate player, and compete in this game to my full potential! But how can anyone take the game seriously when EA can't take the game seriously and fix these elementary school issues? If this was any other top-tier professional competing in another esports game, things like this wouldn't happen!"

Guastella's video, which has been viewed over half a million times on Twitter, has fuelled renewed criticism of FIFA 20, which many consider not to be "esports ready". And it comes amid a troubling period for FIFA 20, which endured a weekend of server problems, unrest within the pro player community and a pro match that had to be settled by a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.