A Legend Joins the Game

When Nicolas Anelka officially joins One Touch

There are encounters that feel improbable the first time you imagine them.

Years later, they end up feeling obvious.

When we started working on One Touch, Nicolas Anelka was obviously not part of the project. To be honest, he wasn't even on our minds. We were simply a few football fans with a slightly crazy conviction: that there was still room for another way to live football inside a video game.

Back then, we talked about gameplay, tactics, cards, game mechanics and all those ideas that fill creators' notebooks while a project still exists only in their heads. We spent our days imagining how to translate what makes us tick in front of a match. How to turn into a game that very specific feeling of a perfectly executed counter-attack. How to recreate the tension of a last action in the 90th minute. How to make the player feel that every decision counts. The further we went, the more one idea stood out: we didn't want to create just another football game, we wanted to build a game capable of telling the story of football.

Looking back, that is probably what connects everyone who is part of this adventure today. Before being a studio, before being a company, before even being a card game, One Touch was born out of a sincere love for football. Not only for the trophies or the statistics, but for everything that happens between the lines: the invisible runs, the spaces that open for a fraction of a second, the decisions that change the course of a match and those moves that seem trivial until they become the memory everyone talks about on the way home from the stadium.

When you grow up with this passion, certain players hold a special place in your memory. You don't only remember their goals, their clubs or their honours. You remember a feeling. A style. A silhouette. You remember the way they had of making football look simple, even though it is probably the most complex team sport in the world. For many fans who grew up in the 1990s and 2000s, Nicolas Anelka belongs to that category of players.

There was something singular about him. A way of moving that sometimes gave the impression he already knew how the action would unfold. A way of attacking spaces with an almost natural fluidity, never giving the feeling that he was forcing things. Where some strikers imposed their presence through power or charisma, Anelka often seemed to do the opposite. He moved forward calmly, almost quietly, and then a run, a movement off the ball or a single touch was enough to throw an entire defence off balance. Many supporters don't remember exactly how many goals he scored with Arsenal, Real Madrid, Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea or the French national team. What they do remember very well is that feeling that he could tip a match with a single action.

It was with all these memories in mind that, years later, we found ourselves presenting One Touch to him.

To be completely honest, we had prepared this meeting the way any creator prepares to present a project they have devoted part of their life to. We had our ideas, our vision, our convictions and that urge to show it was still possible to imagine a new football card game capable of putting tactics and game intelligence first. We were ready to explain why we believed cards could tell stories, and why every player needed their own identity, a style, a personality and a unique way of influencing a match.

But very quickly, the conversation left the world of video games and came back to football.

We talked about movement off the ball. We talked about the timing of a run, about how hard it is to make the right choice under pressure, about those details that supporters don't always notice but that decide the outcome of a match. We talked about what separates good players from truly great ones. And as the discussion went on, we got the sense that Nicolas instinctively understood what we were trying to build.

Because deep down, One Touch is not simply trying to use football as a backdrop. Our ambition is to use the video game to highlight everything that makes this sport beautiful: its intelligence, its unpredictability, its rhythm and the emotions it is capable of stirring.

What I liked right away is that we talked about football before talking about anything else. Nobody pitched me a product, they told me about a game built around the pitch, around movement, around decisions. That, of course, speaks to me.

Nicolas Anelka

That sentence probably sums up better than we can what we have been trying to do since day one. There are many football games out there today, but we wanted to offer a different experience, a football strategy game where reading the play and anticipating count as much as building your team or collecting your cards.

This is also why Nicolas Anelka is not joining One Touch as a simple ambassador. Of course, he becomes one of the faces of the project. Of course, he joins the adventure as an investor and shareholder. But above all, he is part of a shared vision: that of a game created by football lovers and designed for football lovers.

And then there is another aspect that excites us in particular.

Because beyond his involvement in the project, Nicolas Anelka is also joining the pitch. In One Touch, he won't just appear on a poster or in a video. He will have his own card. A playable card. A card designed to capture the way he approached football and what made him singular when he was on the pitch.

Creating a card inspired by a real player is no trivial exercise. It isn't enough to assign a few statistics or add a portrait. You have to try to translate an identity. Recreate a feeling. Find again that way of playing that made supporters say: "that's pure Anelka." This is exactly the philosophy that guides the creation of every card in One Touch. Because a card shouldn't only be strong. It should tell something.

An interesting card isn't necessarily the most powerful one. It's the one that truly represents a player, their personality and the way they see football.

Nicolas Anelka

Five questions for Nicolas Anelka

What made you want to join One Touch?

Nicolas Anelka:

"The project. I've seen a lot of things in football and in video games. Here, I felt that the people behind One Touch were talking about the pitch first. That makes a difference."

What appeals to you about the idea of a football card game?

Nicolas Anelka:

"If the cards are just there to be collected, I'm not interested. But if they represent a way of playing, an identity, then it becomes football."

In your view, what makes the difference at the highest level?

Nicolas Anelka:

"Decisions. At the top level, everyone is physically prepared. What changes a match is often the right choice made half a second before everyone else."

If you had to describe your football in a few words?

Nicolas Anelka:

"Go forward. Keep it simple. Be effective. Football doesn't need to be complicated."

What would you like players to feel when they discover One Touch?

Nicolas Anelka:

"I'd like them to find again a bit of what made us love football when we were kids. Not just the spectacle. The game itself."

A story that is only just beginning

The arrival of Nicolas Anelka marks an important milestone in the history of One Touch, but above all it tells something bigger than a partnership or a collaboration between a player and a studio. It tells the story of an encounter between creators who grew up in front of the weekend matches and a player who shaped the way they watch football. It tells the journey travelled from the first notebooks filled with sketches and gameplay mechanics to this moment when one of the great figures of French football decides to join the adventure.

Since day one, we have believed that a football game can be much more than just a game. It can be a playground for tacticians, a collection space for card lovers, a place where football stories keep living on in another form. And if One Touch is to become the football card game we have been imagining for so many years, then it has to be built with people who share this same passion and this same respect for the game.

Today, Nicolas Anelka officially joins the One Touch pitch.

And for the football lovers that we are, it is still a little hard to take in.

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