FIFA 17 was released on September 27, 2016, giving players just over a month now to work on mastering the new version of the EA Sports soccer simulation. Some players have already gone beyond mastery level, bending the rules and laws of the game to score on bicycle kicks from 25 yards out.
Dubbed the "Teenage Terminator", 19-year-old Renato Sanches is a savage. The youngest player to ever win the European Championships and the Euro 2016 Young Player of the Tournament, Sanches’ 2015-16 began with the Benfica B squad but ended with a transfer to Bayern Munich that could end up costing the Bavarian side as much as €80 million.
Sanches added another accolade to his growing trophy cabinet on Monday, winning the 2016 Golden Boy award ahead of Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford and Munich teammate Kingsley Coman.
France Football announced the 30 finalists for the 2016 Ballon d’Or award with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi the favorites to take home the award they’ve entirely dominated since Kaka won in 2007. Real Madrid have six nominees on the list, Barcelona have four and Leicester City’s dream season has resulted in nominations for Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy.
In recent times, the rule changes FIFA have implemented have been with regards to self-examination; changing their own internal processes in the face of ongoing investigations and claims of corruption. On the footballing end of the spectrum, president Gianni Infantino has been trotting out his plan to kill the World Cup with a 48-team edition. Beyond the influence of Infantino, it appears as though Australian rock band AC/DC are the biggest catalyst for change in the international governing body.
It's nearly impossible to get a large group of people to agree on something, anything. If you can make a significant portion of the population agree on a thing, you are doing something very special. Soccer fans, for example, cannot agree on which formation is best, which player is best, which manager is right for which club or how much money a player is worth. The only thing soccer fans universally agree on is FIFA is trash, and that is because FIFA is doing something very special.
Neymar’s match against Bolivia contained parts of the good, the bad and the ugly. The good was a goal and two assists which helped the Selecao to a 5—0 rout of Bolivia in Natal, Brazil.
The bad was a 36th-minute yellow card that means he’s suspended for Brazil’s October 11th qualifier away to Venezuela. However, given that Venezuela currently dwell at the bottom of the CONMEBOL WCQ table with two points from nine matches, Neymar’s absence shouldn’t be a factor.
The second time FIFA executives were arrested on corruption charges in Zurich, we laughed at them because they used the same hotel as the first time. If you're wanted for racketeering and corruption and the like, we reasoned, you shouldn't stay in the same hotel you were at when Interpol arrested all your buddies for the same thing.
CONMEBOL World Cup qualifying grew in legend with another improbable incident during Thursday’s match between Ecuador and Chile.
With Ecuador holding a 3-0 advantage over Chile at the Estadio Olimpico Atahualpa in Quito, Ecuardorian international Enner Valencia, who plays his club football for Everton in the Premier League, allegedly faked an injury to evade police capture in the 82nd minute.
GameSprout have released a “FIFA 17 FAIL Compilation” through their YouTube channel and it’s equal parts hilarious and terrifying. Whether its some not-so-subtle physical innuendo between the players, some terrifying bodily mishaps and transformations or the rendering of objects where they’re not supposed to be, the release of FIFA 17 has provided us with some fascinating in-game moments.