We’re just under two weeks away from the best day of a gaming football fan’s year; the release of the latest FIFA game. Josh Kilmister examines the Swansea squad to see what EA Sports thinks of the Swans
If you’ve played FIFA before, you’ll know that every player gets their own individual base rating. This rating is applied to the player throughout the game on all of the game modes, but can be subject to change in the future. So, courtesy of ‘Futhead.com’, here are the FIFA 15 ratings for The Swans, and whether they’ve been upgraded or downgraded from last year’s game.
Goalkeepers:
Lukasz Fabianski - 75 (-1)
Gerhard Tremmel - 73 (No change)
Defenders:
Ashley Williams - 79 (No change)
Angel Rangel - 75 (-1)
Federico Fernandez - 74 (No change)
Jordi Amat - 74 (No change)
Neil Taylor - 72 (No change)
Dwight Tiendalli - 70 (No change)
Alan Tate - 66 (No change)
Ashley ‘Jazz’ Richards - 66 (+1)
Kyle Bartley - 65 (-1)
Curtis Obeng - 60 (No change)
Scott Tancock - 58 (+1)
Stephen Kingsley - 52 (N/A)
Midfielders:
Gylfi Sigurdsson - 77 (+1)
Leon Britton - 75 (-1)
Jonjo Shelvey - 74 (No change)
Ki Sung-Yueng - 74 (No change)
Tom Carroll - 69 (No change)
Jay Fulton - 63 (N/A)
Adam King - 54 (N/A)
Josh Sheehan - 53 (N/A)
Attackers:
Wilfried Bony - 81 (+1)
Bafetimbi Gomis - 78 (-3)
Wayne Routledge - 75 (+1)
Jefferson Montero - 74 (-2)
Nathan Dyer - 74 (-1)
Marvin Emnes - 69 (-1)
Rory Donnelly - 65 (-1)
James Loveridge - 59 (No change)
Just in case these ratings are just random numbers to you and aren’t sure what to think of them, I’ll put it in perspective for you. Lionel Messi is the highest rated player in the game at 93 (recently downgraded from 94), closely followed by Cristiano Ronaldo at 92. Chelsea star Diego Costa sits at a decent 85, while Mario Balotelli is rated at 82.
Bony (Rated at 81) shares his rating with fellow Premier League strikers such as Stevan Jovetic, Samuel Eto’o and former Ivory Coast teammate Didier Drogba. Some will say that 81 is the minimum Bony deserves and perhaps after proving to be such a success in his first Premier League season he’s been incredibly underrated, but again let me put this in perspective. We are one of only eight Premier League teams to have a player that exceeds an 80 rating! Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Man Utd, Man City, Spurs, Everton and us. So we’re up there with the big boys; in virtual terms, anyway!
One thing that I am disappointed by is the downgrading of our new Frenchman Gomis. Bafe made 33 appearances for Lyon last season scoring 14 goals. Surely, that’s not worthy of a three rating downgrade! Come on EA! It’s hardly surprising though, as it was brought to my attention a few days ago that when we signed Pablo Hernandez from Valencia he went from a respectable 81 rated to a 76 rated! Five ratings! Maybe EA just don’t like Wales, or more likely, don’t know where it is. [Given Wales' exclusion from FIFA 13 - which I'm still rocking - I think that's likely! - Ed].
So with FIFA 15 released on all consoles in Europe on September 25th (23rd in North America), what are you most looking forward to? Will your first port of call be to get The Swans to the Champions League final? Or will you build your squad from the ground up in FIFA Ultimate Team? You may even want to make your virtual self rise up the ranks in the Liberty Stadium until you become the ultimate ‘Jack Bastard’.
I’ve already got my first few hours of gaming planned out!
Thanks as usual to Josh for this piece - you can follow him on Twitter @JoshKilmister To take a closer look at any in-game stats of this season’s Swans, you can find them at http://www.futhead.com/15/players/all/all/all/5/48/all/all/all/all/rating/table/