With the pending release of 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, Guinness World Records 2010 Gamer's Edition has highlighted some of the premier soccer game records in this year's book. Ole!  

Between vicariously living through your World Cup favorite in online play and engaging in some major soccer hooligan action, check out some of these great world records:

• Best-Selling Soccer Franchise: FIFA (EA, 1993 to present) Having shifted over 65 million copies since it was launched in 1993, EA's FIFA is the most successful soccer game franchise of all time. Following in second place is Konami's PES, which has shipped 48 million copies - a particularly impressive figure since it only debuted in 2001, eight years after FIFA.
• Largest Multiplayer Sports Game: FIFA 09 (EA, 2008) Allowing up to 20 gamers to play a match together, EA's FIFA 09 can accommodate more players than any other sports game. In online 10-versus-10 matches, each player assumes one of the 10 outfield positions on his team and plays there for the duration of the game. The only player not available is the goalkeeper.
• Fastest-Selling Title in the FIFA Series: FIFA 09 (EA, 2008) EA's FIFA 09 sold 1.2 million copies in the game's first week of release in October 2008.
• First Videogame to be Licensed by a Soccer Club for Recruiting Purposes: Football Manager 2009 (SEGA, 2008) In November 2008, the English Premier League's Everton Football Club signed a deal with game developer Sports Interactive to make use of the Football Manager 2009 database. Everton wanted to use the database to help with the scouting of new players, making the game the first to be officially used by a major soccer club for recruiting purposes.
• Most Real-Life Players to Appear in a Sports Game: Football Manager 2009 (SEGA, 2008) When Sports Interactive and SEGA released Football Manager 2009 in November 2008, it featured over 5,000 playable clubs from over 50 countries, and at least 370,000 players and staff from around the world. So comprehensive is the Football Manager database that Sports Interactive believes it has accurately predicted the rise of several world soccer stars, including Argentinean wonder-kid Lionel Messi, who top-scored the 2008/09 UEFA Champions League playing for Barcelona.
• Longest-Running Soccer Series: Championship Manager (Eidos, 1992 to present) Management-focused soccer game Championship Manager has enjoyed an unbroken run of annual updates since its first release on September 1, 1992, a year before EA launched the FIFA series. Other rivals to the longest running soccer series crown include Sensible Software's Sensible Soccer, a classic that was first released in 1992 but hasn't seen an update since 2007.
• First Soccer Game to Use the "Stadium" Viewpoint: NASL Soccer (Mattel Electronics, 1982) The first soccer videogame to offer a side-on, or "stadium", viewpoint was Mattel's pioneering NASL Soccer, which arrived on the Atari 2600 in 1982. This viewpoint has since become the default perspective for many of the leading action-focused soccer games, including the two genre-defining series FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer.