This is how FIFA 17 really works out player ratings

Football is serious business.

To some, the phrase “Ronaldo is better than Messi” is sacrilege, resulting in a barrage of insults and counter-arguments.

It’s for this reason football lovers clamour to see if their favourites made the list in the annual FIFA release.

But how do the folks at EA actually decide who’s better?

ESPN sat down with the man behind it all, Michael Mueller-Moehring, as to how they come up with the all important rankings – and the answer is quite simple:

To start with, guesswork.

“We guess a little bit … until our people have seen the player in action,” Mueller-Moehring says.

“We have many leagues in the game; no stats provider could offer us data for all these leagues, teams and players,” Mueller-Moehring says.

“This is also the reason why we use this online database, because it’s not possible to buy this data some way — it just doesn’t exist.”

The league in which a player plays is also a big determining factor when it comes to technical ability.

The example given is if Messi were playing in the Irish league, his attributes would drop “simply because he’s not on the highest level anymore”. Physical attributes, however, remain the same.

Star players are also given preferential treatment by the folks at EA.

“A case is Thomas Muller, who isn’t good at anything, really, apart from his positioning.

“He always finds the right spot on the pitch, it’s amazing. But he’s not a great dribbler and he can’t really strike the ball properly – his finishing is sometimes really, really off. Shot power is not his strength as well.”

“So if you rate Thomas Muller properly, he ends up with a rating that we say doesn’t make sense. It’s too low.”

As a result, EA Sports simply fudges the numbers a little.