FIFA - More than a video game about football

FIFA and real football - how the real game and the video game have become connected

For all lovers of gaming and sport, it is that time of year again. And whilst the game isn’t technically out yet, if you are willing to fork out £3.99 as I am, you get to experience 10 hours of gameplay of FIFA 21.

But this article isn’t a review of those 10 hours, or even a review of FIFA 21, it’s a look at how FIFA and football have started to influence each other over the last 10 years. Ewan Lury brings you his take on how FIFA the video game, affects football the physical game.

FIFA Ultimate Team - The Game changer

Gaming hasn’t just blown up during lockdown, where we saw games consoles of all varieties sell out, but it really has just blown up over the last 10 years. FIFA’s popularity has coincided with not just this boom, but also with the release of its most popular game mode, Ultimate Team, where players start with the lowest ability players, and work to get the best people in their team across the year. And whilst this is great for the player of the game, this has become such a huge deal for football players themselves across the country.

FIFA Ratings - Players ego’s inflated and deflated

The FIFA ratings release is one of the biggest days of the year for footballers these days, as they love to see who is in the top 100 and love to compare their stats with their teammates. Ultimate team has added that little more incentive for players to prove themselves on the football pitch even more. Take Rhian Brewster for example, who said that he wanted to improve his shooting by 25 on FIFA over the next year (to say it didn’t go to plan is a bit of an understatement).

Rhia Brewster - working on improving his FIFA rating

Further proof of this is the plethora of ratings release videos that the major clubs release every year and even the ratings predictions that rival clubs do with one another. 

Uncovering new real-life football talent

FIFA, and in particular Ultimate Team, is a great way of discovering the next great talent in the real footballing world. The best way to show this is via two of the best features that Ultimate Team has on offer. Number one is the Team Of The Week, where players get upgrades on their stats if they played well in real life.

Take Wissam Ben Yedder (any FIFA players will cower at his name), who scored twice last week and was rewarded with a special upgrade. I didn’t know a lot about Ben Yedder before I noticed him getting lots of these TOTW cards, but I actually now know him as one of the most lethal strikers in French football. The fact he’s on in the joke that he’s got a brilliant player on FIFA also shows how great this link has become.

FIFA Future Stars

Number two however, and my personal favourite, is the FIFA Future Stars promo event. In this event, FIFA highlight some of the best young stars across the top 5 leagues in football and give them stat upgrades based off of their potential.

This is such a great way of getting players, including myself, to discover new players who could be the next big thing. I myself picked up a Kai Havertz Future Stars Item nearly two years ago now, and have been following his rise ever since, watching highlights and even his games when the Bundesliga was the only thing on during Lockdown. The fact he went on to sign for Chelsea is an added bonus.

Ultimately, Future Stars and TOTW are a great way for players to learn more about who’s playing great in the world right now and who might become brilliant in the future. It is by far the clearest link of how the modern game and FIFA are influenced by one another, and not that far a stretch to say that someone like Joao Felix’s price was amped up so much because of the number of fans he had from a game like FIFA.

But for me, it’s not just that FIFA has this effect on the modern game but that the modern game has such an effect on how I want to use my players, who I want in my team and how I like to play.

I’m a Chelsea fan and naturally, for me, I like to have a lot of Chelsea players in my team. But even more so, I watch how teams play and try to emulate that style on the FIFA pitch. When Sarri was managing Chelsea I fell in love with his slow and patient style of play and would emulate it on the FIFA pitch, controlling possession and getting in certain players who I knew would be useful at just dictating the play. Whilst Jorginho was getting hate across the board by Chelsea fans, I was in love with him because I loved to use him on FIFA. I’m probably in my minority here, but the desire to do a career with your favourite club and get them to sign the players that in real life your club was rumoured with is something that has become so popular to do.

Really, FIFA and football are becoming more and more dependent on one another.

10 years ago there was very little connection between the two, other than the fact that FIFA featured the players, but now the connection is so important, with massive deals being struck between players and FIFA and players even doing celebrations to promote new game modes (see Alexander Arnold vs Chelsea in 2019 doing the Volta symbol).