EA Sports’s offering of the football video game FC25 will become available next month on Sept. 27, and the player ratings are being leaked, with Barcelona fans, like any other fanbase, wondering just what in the heck the powers that be over at EA are thinking.
It often seems like they aren’t watching the games when they come up with the ratings, frequently biasing their evaluations towards aging players who are declining, failing to account for their slip in standard while, on the other hand, not rating up-and-coming superstars properly.
Barcelona right winger Lamine Yamal was the best player at the European Championships and was arguably Barca’s best player in the 2023/24 LaLiga season at the age of 16, yet he is only rated 81 despite already being a world-class winger.
Meanwhile, the three highest-rated players on Barcelona are all big names on big wages coming off disappointing seasons whom many fans would like to see the club get rid of.
Barca’s highest-rated player on FC25 is goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen, who is rated 89. The new German national team starter, following legend Manuel Neuer’s national team retirement, is coming off a very poor season.
Ter Stegen has bounced back from bad seasons before, but this feels different, especially since he is starting the 2024/25 campaign poorly, too. He was the best goalkeeper in the world in the 2022/23 campaign when Barcelona won LaLiga, but Culers are wondering if that was just a final swan song from the 32-year-old.
In all honesty, ter Stegen gets too much hate from both Barcelona fans and fans elsewhere, but it is bizarre to see an 89 rating tying with Thibaut Courtois when he has always been inferior to the Real Madrid shot-stopper – and isn’t better than Yann Sommer or Gregor Kobel either.
Robert Lewandowski is at least coming off a strong season for Barcelona with 19 goals and 8 assists, but an 88 rating still feels too rich for a declining 36-year-old who isn’t even one of his own team’s three best players.
Within LaLiga, Lewandowski had a worse season than Girona (now Roma) striker Artem Dovbyk, and Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham was a stronger Pichichi candidate for much of the season.
Finally, Frenkie de Jong gets an 87 rating above the likes of Pedri, Gavi, Ronald Araujo, Alejandro Balde, and Yamal despite having a poor 2023/24 season that has put him back on the transfer radar.
The thing is, nobody wants a center midfielder coming off a bad season when they are making 30 million euros. Like ter Stegen, de Jong had a great 2022/23 season and gets a little too much hate, including from his own fanbase.
But unlike ter Stegen, de Jong only has one great season with Barcelona, whereas the German goalkeeper at least has an established track record of success. Rating de Jong above Gavi and Pedri is absolutely criminal by FC25.
