Cristiano Ronaldo has lost points in FIFA after going to Saudi Arabia. actually makes sense

New year, new life, especially for a Cristiano Ronaldo who has changed the shirt of United and the Premier League for the jersey of Saudi al-Nassra minor club from a minor league that can give him the zeros on the payroll and the prominence that the Portuguese star believes he deserves.

Football whims aside, one of the first consequences of that decision for the rest of mortals is that his FIFA letter has worsened. For the first time in many moons, he doesn’t even pass the psychological threshold of 90, and after his departure from United, stays at 88. A more than attractive score in the game for a basic card, but which, as in real life, leaves it out of the absolute elite. EA is not a capricious move.

International reputation

Contrary to what may appear to the untrained eye, A player’s rating in FIFA is not an average of the six figures that appear on their Ultimate Team card (although this has not appeared for the Saudi CR7). Not even a weighted average. EA’s network of scouts and analysts gives a score to each of the attributes (acceleration, aggressiveness, short passing, long distance shooting, speed…), but the overall score that heads each card follows a different logic.

At times, there has been talk of coefficients that indicate the valuation of a footballer based on his position, giving more weight to defensive values ​​for a central defender or speed and passing for a winger, for example. However, the International reputation, called like this, is the indicator used for these scores. The ability to increase or decrease a logical score based on the player’s reputation.

This can be perfectly appreciated in two players who occupy similar positions on the field, and their cards in FIFA 23: Sergio Busquets, from Barça, and Fede Valverde, from Real Madrid.

Valverde’s statistics are, in general, much better than Busquets’. However, the Catalan has one more point on his card than the second.

For a defensive midfielder, being very fast is not very differential, but against a much faster player, with better defense and a better shot than the other, the option will be clear. In this case, Valverde has better attributes, and in fact his broken down scores add up to 2,225 points, compared to Busquets’ 1,961, as we see in FUTHead.

However, Busquets has a score of 85, against Valverde’s 84. Something solely attributable to Busquets’ career at 34, since he continues to play for Barça; while Valverde is in an early phase of his career and has not yet become the undisputed starter in his team. In any case, between one and the other, very few would choose Catalan over Uruguayan.

Ronaldo, on the free agent list. Score: 88.

In the case of Ronaldo, he has been at the top of the game for player score for more than a decade, on his own merits. He has never dropped below 90 since 2010, and for many years he, along with Messi, accounted for the two highest scores in the game. However, it makes sense that he would lose points in several of his attributes at this point in his career. His new score was assigned as soon as he parted ways with Unitedjust towards the end of the 2022 World Cup, upon becoming a free agent. By then there was already speculation that he would go to Saudi Arabia, but confirmation came later.

Then there is the sporting performance that he has offered in recent months, both in his games with United, where he ended up being a substitute and not very decisive, even in his participation with Portugal in the aforementioned World Cup, where, as in Manchester, he was inconsequential and ended up on the bench.

Real life returns are sometimes used by EA to vary the scores of some players in the middle of the seasonespecially those who change clubs and leagues, and are often seen many predictions about which ones will arrive after each Christmas.

In this case, having made a discreet first half of the championship, including the World Cup, and having gone to a league much lower than the English, penalizes, and it would not have been surprising if it had been at a higher level than the two points that he has lost. Ronaldo.

Perhaps that will come in the next title, which we remember will no longer be called FIFA, when the end of an era is more evident, also for CR7.