A New VR Game Puts You in the Middle of Real English Premier League Plays

Many a soccer fan has surely wanted to experience the true feeling of being on the field for a match. Now, a new virtual reality program actually makes that possible.

On the heels of a major leap in player tracking that utilizes iPhone cameras to map a true recreation of on-field events, the English Premier League is once again set to be a testing ground for a first-of-its-kind technology.

Rezzil, a UK company in the sports VR space, is launching its Premier League Player game today, just ahead of the holidays. The game is built on real-life player mechanics drawn from the data collected by the iPhone cameras positioned on the sidelines during games. The movements of the footballers are captured so precisely, users playing the VR game can virtually set foot on the pitch and reenact plays from actual EPL games.

Could this be the future of “gamified” virtual sports? I got exclusive access to Premier League Player and talked to Rezzil’s top staffers to find out how we got to this point and what’s still to come.

How We Got Here

This isn’t Rezzil’s first foray into virtual-reality sports. In 2021 the company debuted the Rezzil Player program across various VR platforms. Designed as a sports training game that combines both cognitive and gaming aspects, Rezzil Player features over 150 levels and drills across several sports, including soccer, football, and basketball, plus sport-agnostic drills that players can use to sharpen their reaction times.

Rezzil Player claims a diverse user base: NFL quarterbacks use its on-field simulations for timing and pocket presence; pro F1 drivers utilize interactive drills to hone their reaction skills, including a 360-degree game where players reach out to touch illuminated lights all around them; NBA trainers use it with players for drills involving peripheral vision or working memory. But it’s also played by a huge range of typical consumers, from youth athletes to fans who just enjoy the gamified experience.

I got a demo of Rezzil Player for this story as well, using a Meta Quest headset in my living room. It’s a wild experience, but it’s also easy to see how it could improve real-life performance with regular use; whether placebo effect or not, I felt my response times sharpening after spending just 15 minutes on the reaction-time drills. It’s also a great reminder of just how special the world’s best athletes are; worldwide leaderboards are available for every drill in Rezzil Player, and many of the scores seem outright impossible for a normal human being.

Rezzil’s ultimate goal, though, was always to bring fans as close to their sport as possible in a virtual space. “Let’s put anybody on the pitch,” says Andy Etches, Rezzil cofounder. “Get them closer to that visceral thing that you can only experience if you’re an actual player.”

The EPL’s move to next-generation optical camera tracking for offside calls was a technological breakthrough that enabled Rezzil to create realistic virtual avatars of the athletes in motion. Using computer vision programs that track up to 10,000 points on each player’s body at once in high frame rates during real-life gameplay, Rezzil is able to recreate on-field events with startling precision. That highlight-reel goal your team scored? Rezzil can turn it into a fully accurate digital rendering within your VR headset. The result, the company hopes, is a product that blends the original Rezzil Player’s cognitive benefits with more of a traditional video game feel.

Following its public launch, the early days of Premier League Player will be a vital testing ground. Even as seasoned experts in the sports VR space, the Rezzil team is modest enough to recognize that a first-iteration game like this will need major refining based on user input. Much of the time between launch and the 2025-26 EPL season’s kickoff in August will be used to take feedback and improve the game.

The bones of the gameplay product are already set, however, and they offer glimpses at a fully immersive future across sports gaming.

Kickin’ Around

Rezzil’s main priority for Premier League Player was to make the game something that appeals to the general public and not just players familiar with soccer’s mechanics.

“Someone’s grandma could play this,” says Adam Dickinson, Rezzil cofounder and design director. “You don’t have to be a sportsman.”

Achieving that accessibility required a few compromises, most notably in the game’s kicking mechanism: Players “kick” by swinging their arms while holding standard VR controllers at their sides, doing their best to approximate natural leg motions. The default in-game foot appears at a 90-degree angle from the leg, as it would while standing flat on the ground, ideal for making and receiving passes; holding the trigger button flexes the ankle and extends the player’s foot out straight, mimicking the ideal position for a harder shot or volley.

Like all game modes, kicking drills transport players onto digital Premier League fields. Players are prompted to kick and receive passes to and from various targets. Easier settings include “aim assist” and similar player helpers that help modulate kick speed and direction, while higher levels are almost entirely devoid of these crutches.

Dickinson tells me Rezzil has already created and tested versions of PLP where players kick with their actual feet. Those versions, though, require additional VR sensors purchased separately from the headset itself; even VR headsets with “inside-out” tracking cameras pointed outward can’t yet manage the needed tasks, Etches tells me. Many popular dance or spatial VR games utilize up to a dozen such sensors to track full bodies, but Dickinson says Rezzil users would only need a couple. But even that added cost (around $300, Etches says) seemed too prohibitive for the game’s initial launch. By this time next year, though, expect to be able to kick the virtual ball by moving your actual feet.

“We can flick a switch and put it into play,” Dickinson says.

In their current format, PLP’s kicking drills are its least realistic. But the game’s other features are much more natural.

As mostly a keeper in my brief time on a youth soccer pitch, I was especially keen on the goalkeeping drills. They don’t disappoint. Shots come in from a combination of Rezzil-created “shot cannons” (little items they can place anywhere on the field and program to shoot balls at various speeds and spin rates) and actual 3D renderings of Premier League players, who appear on the pitch in various locations like the penalty spot and longer free kicks.

“All of a sudden, Erling Haaland will appear,” Etches says, referring to Manchester City’s Norwegian star striker. This is where the data captured by Rezzil’s cameras during actual games comes to life in the virtual world. “His body shape and moves from an actual goal he scored will manifest, and you’ll have to try and save it.”

Rezzil’s engine assesses your height and arm length, then designs shots to be in locations that challenge your reflexes without requiring you to dive across your living room. The public release will include a function that blacks out the entire screen if the player leaves the defined boundary space. Even so, a word of advice from a taller fellow: A room with high ceilings is a plus, as some shots come in above your head.

Like the kicking function, goalkeeping is arms only for now; you can’t stop shots with your feet or torso. Again, though, that could change soon.

The best example of the game’s realism, however, is within its heading features. Rezzil had a head start (pun entirely intended) on this one. A similar function to practice heading drills has long been a part of the prior Rezzil Player game released a few years ago, and it was updated for Premier League Player.

Anyone who has played soccer, even briefly, will be stunned at how realistic these gamified headers are. All aspects of real-life physics are accurately rendered, from your head’s motion to ball angles and even the Magnus Effect, the measurable changes in direction and speed that happen when different types of spin are applied to the ball.

As the soccer world tries to reckon with growing evidence of headers creating both short-term and long-term cognitive issues and loss of brain function, research has been conducted on the efficacy of VR programs that replace real-world heading during practice and training sessions. One study that specifically utilized Rezzil products found that its VR test group experienced “significant improvements” in both actual and perceived heading quality compared to a control group.

“You can improve heading in real life by training in VR,” Dickinson says. “That’s how good our simulation is. It will improve you in the real world.”

All these game modes have solo and multiplayer options. Cooperative formats can be found both online and in-person, the latter via a “Party Mode” style of competition within drills that’s ideal for holiday parties or halftime of your team’s game each weekend. And like many other VR games, you can voice-chat with friends while playing.

Memorable Moments

The real killer application here, though, is the ability to recreate actual Premier League plays yourself through the Moments feature.

Rezzil has taken notable plays from EPL games (typically big goals for now, though the types of plays you can recreate will expand with time), then split them up pass-by-pass into what Rezzil calls “fractions” of the play. You first watch a video of the actual real-life goal, then view a digital rendering of which passes will lead up to the final shot.

From here, you’re transported straight onto the pitch. All 20 Premier League stadiums are featured in the game, so your virtual playing field will change depending on where the actual play took place. You’re then prompted to complete each “fraction” of the play, taking control of that player and moving the ball onto the next phase. The fraction could be a short pass, a midrange lob, or even a long bomb to a streaking teammate, and then eventually a shot. Your passing target lights up orange just before becoming open, then green during the optimal delivery window.

Passes and shots are graded not just on accuracy, but also timing.

“Say it was a hunting game, and that bear was coming across your screen,” Dickinson says. “You’d have to hit it bang-on at the right time, when it was passing the tree. It’s the same thing with a pass. There’s only one perfect moment.”

Recognizing that it would be way too harsh to judge your performance in the virtual game against actual Premier League players, PLP grades on a sliding scale. A circle around the intended target displays Bronze, Silver, or Gold ratings for passes that are placed and timed well; these medals also correspond to numerical scores. Each fraction receives its own individual score, and you’re dinged slightly if you require multiple tries to complete a fraction. The scores for each of these fractions that make up the complete Moment are combined into a full score. Like with Rezzil Player, there’s a worldwide leaderboard to compare your scores against other players.

The first thing you notice in Moments is the speed. Rezzil experimented with slowing plays down on the easier settings, but the team quickly realized that this ruined the experience. So the plays aren’t slowed down at all. While aim assists and other helpers exist to guide you along, you’re seeing real Premier League speed all around you. It’s overwhelming at first, honestly.

Moments only require you to kick the ball for now, but goalkeeping and heading should also be featured by the next EPL season. The most tantalizing future possibility in Moments, though, is the potential ability to change history.

In the current version, all your virtual teammates and opponents follow the same preset paths they took on that play in real life, even if you deviate in your actions. But what if they didn’t?

It’s a thought Rezzil’s founders have had since the beginning, Dickinson says. “All we ever heard was people in bars and pubs going, ‘I could have scored that, I could have saved that.’ Very early on when we started Rezzil, what we wanted to do was go, ‘Well, prove it. Can you hit that ball? Can you do that? Can you save your team? Can you rewrite history?’”

Goalkeepers will be first: The version of the game I demoed was limited to keepers who, like all other players on the pitch, simply followed their initial path. If the actual play in question included them diving to the right, they dive to the right no matter where (or when) you place the ball on net. Soon, though, users will get a “dynamic” keeper that actually reacts to their specific shots.

It’s easy to imagine where this concept could go. Did your team lose a heartbreaker on a late-game free-kick goal? Achieve some catharsis by taking over the role of keeper on your headset, recreating the play and stopping the shot. Can’t believe your favorite player missed a free kick in a big match? Right that wrong by taking it yourself and finding the net. It’s all possible within Rezzil’s virtual engines.

PLP also has free play features that allow for some amazing world-building. Players can create their own drills, placing targets or shot cannons at their discretion.

This is just the first iteration, but as an entirely new sports VR concept, its value and future potential are hard to miss. I’d definitely recommend it for soccer fans of any kind, particularly younger generations looking to have some fun and hone their skills.

“Maybe we’ll create some little tactical geniuses in the future through this,” Etches says.