EA, Give Us Football Back

FIFA started more than 30 years ago as a football simulation.

A lot has changed since then. The graphics, animations, presentation, modes, and online play have all moved forward massively. Whatever criticism people have, EA has clearly done a lot of great work with this series over the years.

In 2009, Ultimate Team arrived. Over time, it became one of the most popular modes in the game. It is easy to understand why.

You build your own squad from cards of real footballers. You play online, complete objectives, enter different competitions, earn rewards, upgrade your team, and keep improving. I have to admit, it got me too. There is a lot of variety. You are not always using the same team. You get a little bit of the manager feeling, a little bit of collecting, a little bit of competition, and a lot of different things to do.

But in the last few years, EA has made several decisions that changed the feeling of the mode quite a lot.

In FC 24, women were added to Ultimate Team, and mixed squads became possible. Of course, if people were actually going to use female players, their in-game quality had to be competitive with male players.

That was one of the moments where Ultimate Team started moving further away from reality.

In the same year, Evolutions were introduced too. At first, they were quite conservative. You could give players small upgrades, and the system felt controlled. But over time, the requirements became looser and the upgrades became stronger. Now we are at a point where you can take a bronze player and evolve them into someone who can compete with cards at Mbappe level.

These things are not necessarily bad. They can be fun. They give people more freedom. They let players use cards they would never normally use. And if you do not focus too much on the names, if you just watch the match, it can still look like football.

But for me, the biggest change came with the gameplay in FC 26.

The players move incredibly fast. The turns, accelerations, reactions, and skill movements can be so sharp that defending becomes very difficult. Sometimes it feels almost impossible to react in time. Anyone who has played this game from the beginning knows what the name Claudia Pina means.

The players can also feel almost tireless. They can sprint, press, turn, and attack for the whole match, as if every player secretly has three lungs and a portable battery pack.

Later, EA tried to reduce some of the extremes and slow the game down a little. But a large part of the community did not like that. Suddenly, the game felt slow or boring to them.

And that is fair. Everyone has their own taste.

Some people enjoy a very fast game where unknown names spin around, change direction instantly, and pass the ball at the speed of light.

But at some point, I have to ask: is that still football?

Or is it becoming some kind of space sport?

Someone could say that I am being hypocritical. I use women in my squad, which I wrote more about in Why I Use So Many Women in My FC 26 Squad. I use Evolutions. I use strong mechanics. Sometimes I use things that probably are not very realistic either.

But what should I do? Make myself weaker on purpose just because I do not agree with the direction of the game?

I adapted.

And honestly, that helped me enjoy the game more. I stopped treating it like real football. When I tried to see it that way, I was frustrated. The game annoyed me. It did not feel right.

Now I see it more like a sci-fi sport.

I like sports games. I like sci-fi too. So in a strange way, I can still enjoy it.

That is also why some of my tactics probably look strange from a pure football point of view. My 5-2-1-2 setup is a good example of that: it works in FC 26 because the game rewards overloads, speed, and constant movement.

But adapting to the game does not mean I agree with where it has gone.

The game can still be good. It can still be fun. It can still be addictive, competitive, and exciting.

But it does not really feel like football anymore.

And that is the problem.

Where are fans of the old FIFA supposed to go? What are people supposed to play if they want something closer to football again? Real competition is almost impossible when so much of this genre depends on licenses, clubs, leagues, players, and the whole ecosystem around them.

I do not know what the solution is.

I do not know if EA even wants to go back.

But I do have one request:

EA, give us football back.