FIFA 17 player takes trolling to the next level

Pause abuse. Celebration abuse. Replay abuse. Kick off abuse. Parking the bloody bus and passing around at the back for 80 minutes. FIFA players have for years trolled their online opponents by dragging out matches once they've taken the lead.

But this player's something else.

In a post on the FIFA subreddit titled "The Joys of playing in Division 1", user DynamiteWhyte detailed a particularly annoying match he suffered in which his opponent took FIFA trolling to the next level.

Midway through the first half, DynamiteWhyte's opponent scores a goal, then proceeds to run his player into the net. For some reason the game allows the goalscorer to run on the spot - for over a minute.

As the other players mill about on the pitch and the crowd goes quiet, presumably rendered dumbfounded by boredom, the game eventually works out what's going on and triggers a replay, which, of course, DynamiteWhyte's opponent ensures is watched.

It gets worse. In first half injury time, DynamiteWhyte looks set to score, only for his opponent to abuse FIFA's online pause mechanic to interrupt the play.

DynamiteWhyte looks set for a tap-in but because the keeper has just parried the ball, FIFA 17 considers his opponent to be in possession, and the game is paused and jumps straight into the menu screen.

Watch the horror unfold in the video, below.

In an online FIFA match, you can only pause the game when the ball is in your possession. The idea is to prevent players from interrupting their opponent's attacks by pausing the game whenever they want. But it's clear the mechanic is open to abuse - and is being used to troll.

According to comments in the thread from DynamiteWhyte, his opponent inexplicably quit the game after pausing it. As some observers have suggested, perhaps he knew the tap-in would be scored and didn't fancy his chances at 1-1. With the game still in the first half, it's unlikely FIFA 17 would have granted his opponent the victory, even if he was winning 1-0. But the move does prevent DynamiteWhyte from potentially going on to win.

Either way, the opponent was roundly criticised.

"Christ alive that is horrific," wrote mirieth. "I can only empathise. Since getting past D5 or so the game has just not been fun in Seasons."

The thing is, anyone who plays plenty of FIFA online will be familiar with the many ways players can stretch out games to the point where you want to rage quit just so you can get on with your life.

Replay abuse is particularly annoying. This is forcing your opponent to watch the full replay of a goal you've scored - even if it's unremarkable.

Then there's kick-off abuse. At the beginning of a half or after your opponent has scored a goal, you can just not kick-off, and the game doesn't automatically kick-off for your until after 30 seconds - by which time the hope is your opponent has put the controller down in frustration, popped into the kitchen to make a cup of tea or gone to the toilet, leaving you free to run through the defense and score.

You'd like to think EA can fix the celebration abuse highlighted by the video, and perhaps tweak the way the pause mechanic works. But can EA do anything about kick-off abuse? Short of reducing the time it takes for the automatic kick-off to trigger, not really. FIFA, just like pretty much every competitive online game, is open to abuse. This is more about the attitude of some players.

In short: stop playing FIFA like a troll. Whatever happened to the beautiful game?