I don’t know about you guys, but sometimes you just get that itch. That deep, nagging feeling to revisit something old, something from when games weren’t trying to be cinematic masterpieces but just pure fun. Lately, that itch led me straight back to FIFA 98: Road to the World Cup. What a game. The soundtrack alone is worth the trip.
But let’s be real, back in ’97 and ’98, there was one main challenge, especially if you were a kid and didn’t have access to the early internet forums: unlocking those darn hidden teams. Specifically, the Classic Teams and the World XI. They were the ultimate bragging rights. If you had the 1970 Brazil squad, you were king of the playground.
I remember spending hours attempting the legit route. I’d slog through the qualifying stages, grind out the full tournament, only to realize I hadn’t met the exact, hyper-specific criteria needed, or maybe my save file corrupted. It was brutal. My neighbor, Mark, swore you had to score exactly three goals with a defender in extra time of the quarter-final match to unlock them. We believed him for weeks, furiously trying to reproduce that impossibility.
The Modern Practice: Just Give Me the Goods
Forget all that teenage angst and magazine tips. I fired up my old laptop, got the emulator running smoothly, and mounted the CD image. This time, I wasn’t wasting a single minute playing through 17 qualifying matches. My goal was surgical: find the easiest, most instant way to force those rosters open. I wasn’t looking for a convoluted button press sequence; I needed the actual, verifiable password.
I navigated straight to the main menu and selected the ‘Options’ panel. From there, you drill down into the ‘Password’ entry screen. This is where we wasted so much time as kids, typing ‘MARADONA’ or ‘RONALDO’ hoping for a miracle.
I confirmed the old, reliable cheat code—the one that finally leaked out a year or two after the game came out and made us all scream at how simple it was. I used the on-screen keyboard (or the emulator keyboard overlay) and painstakingly typed in four specific letters: X P L A Y.
As soon as I hit ‘Enter’, I backed out to the main menu and immediately jumped into a ‘Friendly Match’ setup. I scrolled past the standard national teams, and there they were. Every single hidden squad, just sitting there in plain sight. The 1950s teams, the World XI, the secret teams. Mission accomplished. It took maybe thirty seconds, versus the thirty hours I sank into it as a 14-year-old.
Now, why did I feel compelled to do this today? Why spend time verifying an old cheat code on an obsolete game? Well, this whole exercise isn’t just about unlocking virtual players.
A Bitter Taste from 1999
See, the reason those teams were such a big deal to me goes back to my first job after college. I was working retail electronics, stocking shelves, just trying to pay off student loans. The manager there, a guy named Rick, was a massive jerk. Seriously unprofessional. He was maybe 35, and he constantly talked down to all the younger employees, but especially me. He’d find any little mistake—a misplaced price tag, a slightly dusty box—and yell at me in front of customers.
I endured it for six months because the pay, honestly, was better than minimum wage, and I needed the health coverage. But the atmosphere was toxic. One day, I got sick, like actual flu sick, and I called out. Rick refused to accept it. He accused me of lying to get a day off and demanded a doctor’s note, even though company policy only required one if you missed three consecutive days.
I went to the doctor, got the note, and hand-delivered it the next morning. When I walked in, he was sitting in the back office, loudly bragging to the assistant manager about how he’d just made “the kid” sweat. I put the note on his desk, looked him dead in the eye, and walked out the door. I never went back. I called HR that afternoon and filed a massive complaint.
He called me three times later that week, first trying to apologize, then trying to threaten me if I didn’t retract the complaint. I blocked his number and never spoke to him again. But every time I think about that period—that feeling of being powerless and frustrated—it always links back to those kinds of trivial, impossible challenges, like unlocking the secret squads in FIFA 98.
That game came out right before I started that terrible job. It represents the last bit of carefree time I had before I really had to hustle and deal with actual grown-up headaches. So, sitting here now, a functional adult who can just look up the answer and fix the problem instantly, feels like a small, quiet victory against all the Ricks of the world.
I selected the World XI, set up a match against the default Brazil team, and absolutely hammered them. Justice is served, twenty-five years late. If you’re revisiting this classic, don’t bother with the grind. Just type ‘XPLAY’ and enjoy the legends. You’ve earned it.