The Worst FIFA Icons EA Ever Added

0:00 All right, so you're clicking this video to see an annoying idiot rant about football legends who really shouldn't be considered as legends. Somehow I'm making this work. And that's exactly what you're getting, bro. I'm going to childishly rant about all of these stars of the sport and explain why they deserve less praise. It should be fun reading the comments for this video. Make sure to subscribe and become a member. Let's go. Davor Šuker. >> [music] >> If Luka Modrić could win a Ballon d'Or on the back of World Cup performances for Croatia, then this guy deserves one for himself, too. The Croatian striker, Davor Šuker, had his prime in the '90s with Sevilla and then Real Madrid, winning a Champions League with them in 1998. Also in 1998, Davor Šuker earned his title as an icon, well, according to EA at least. Scoring six goals in seven matches in the 1998 World Cup in France, Šuker put himself and Croatia on the map

0:46 for the first time since Croatia separated from Yugoslavia in the early '90s. Šuker's Croatia would beat Japan in the round of 16 and then Germany in the quarterfinals until falling to hosts and eventual champions France in the semi, but still beating Netherlands to win the bronze medal. He would sign with Arsenal the following season to mostly warm the bench for Henry and after stints at West Ham and 1860 Munich, God knows why. He called it quits, retiring at 35 years of age. Listen, there's a difference between a player having a Cinderella run in the world's biggest stage and a football icon. James Rodríguez basically torched defenses in the 2014 World Cup, also scoring six goals, but in five games, two less games than Šuker. Would you call James Rodríguez a [ __ ] football icon? If you do, take your pills out. This is an intervention. Don't go outside. You're going to harm yourself. Honestly, if you

1:31 place Šuker and Mario Mandžukić's career side by side, you wouldn't see much of a difference overall. And Mario Mandžukić has been retired for years and you didn't even know it. That's how much you forgot about Mario Mandžukić. And also, Mario Mandžukić has reached a World Cup final. Šuker can never say that. Jari Litmanen. The last footballer ever from Finland, Jari Litmanen. He was an attacking midfielder through the '90s that absolutely exploded for Ajax under Louis van Gaal, back when he had hype around his managerial career, so when dinosaurs roamed the earth. This guy was pulling the strings in with technique and mastery as Ajax could finally lift the Champions League in '95 for the first time since Cruyff's days in the '70s. I don't know who was in charge of scouting Litmanen because he was playing for something called MyPa in Finland. I need to meet the scout watching Finnish

2:18 football. This guy must be the biggest weirdo of all time. I could have learned one or two things from it. After Ajax goes to Barcelona under van Gaal as well, but injuries killed the guy's prime and then latter stages of his career he moved to Liverpool in 2001 and then a return to Ajax in 2002. It didn't really stop the drastic decline of his physical capacity. By the way, this guy is [ __ ] 55 years old, right? Why the [ __ ] is he still playing? Who the [ __ ] is Taneli Kalervo Junior? Don't run, Yari. Your time is up, lad. Retire in peace. Your body's screaming. Oh yeah, the guy had maybe a three-to-four-year prime in those Ajax seasons in the mid-'90s. I know the Champions League is there, but it still feels like he's the '90s version of a Thomas Müller with more technique and less longevity. Müller played well into the latter stages of his career since mid-'30s and

3:03 played at a high level with Bayern Munich and at a top level of football. Won everything Litmanen [music] won and more, including the World Cup. Would you say Thomas Müller is an icon? Debatable. But if Müller is debatable, Litmanen is dodgy at best or buying his icon title from EA out of insecurity at the worst. But compared to the next icons in this list, Litmanen actually looks like a top three best footballer ever. So, I'm not going to rage on him way too much. Landon Donovan. >> Dempsey's missed it. Donovan has it. >> If you grew up watching American soccer, you're a loser. That's it. That's my whole point. Goodbye. Landon Donovan back in the days that dinosaurs roamed the earth again, so

3:49 that is 2010. He was the face of the US national team, the face of the MLS, the player tied to that Algeria goal in 2010 that got US to top a group ahead of England. One of the main reasons a generation of Americans started even taking football seriously. All of this was coinciding with the MLS clubs finally taking relevant moves to boost the league's popularity. First with David Beckham in 2007 with LA Galaxy and then Thierry Henry with New York Red Bulls. But if you watch mostly European football, this guy was basically the Yank, the odd American hanging out Europe's top five leagues just to raise the almighty American flag and express [music] their freedom on the continent that freedom is basically treated as the black plague. He played in three World Cups, helped the US reach the 2002 quarterfinals and ended up as the US national team top goal scorer by far. At club level though, his legacy is mostly

4:35 MLS football. He started in Europe with Bayer Leverkusen and had a short Bayern Munich spell and then two genuinely good loans at Everton. I mean, somewhat good. I'm not going to go up in details. It was kind of all right. But his real career happened with San Jose Earthquakes. >> [laughter] >> I can't take this team seriously. I've seen this team for more than 10 years in FIFA and then they cannot be a serious franchise. Like for more than 10 years. Who is a San Jose Earthquakes fan? And also LA Galaxy. But the San Jose Earthquakes bit still makes me laugh. When he became one of the MLS's biggest ever players, winning six MLS Cups and setting major goals and assist records all at the time. So EA giving him a brand new FIFA 16 legend card makes

5:21 sense in one angle, just one. He's probably the most important male American player ever, helped give MLS its own history, its own superstar and its own football memory. In FIFA 16, Donovan was an 86 rated center forward with an all around great attacking card, being able to play as a tricky striker or a dangerous sharp shooting attacking midfielder. Quick, useful and versatile and smart in attack. But the name Landon Donovan doesn't really belong in legend material. No. The answer is most definitely no. The problem with making players like Donovan into legends is that it sets a bad example for players that truly deserve to be legends. And I can't accept that Landon Donovan was as good as Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjær. Are you kidding me? Donovan is huge in cowboy country, but not really in global

6:07 football history. Not Not at all actually. If you If you remove the World Cup, he never became a long-term European superstar. Never dominated the Champions League. Was never one of the top 10, 20, 50, 100, or even 200 best players in the world. There are obviously some marketing strings going in the background with the exponential rise of Ultimate Team both as a game and through social media, especially with more Americans discovering the sport of football and FIFA. People are flocking to the game mode, spending FIFA points like they they were their addiction. These kids watching W2S pack Team of the Year Ronaldo is not they're they're not going to just sit still. They're going to walk into their parents' room, steal their credit card, and run to add the details to the console. Even if you pack Donovan, he was worth absolute booty cheeks. He was probably top five

6:53 cheapest legends in the game, and honestly, you'd be better off buying a higher-rated gold striker like an Aubameyang or Lacazette, who are lower-rated than Donovan, by the way. Even though if you look at their stats, they didn't really look like that. As for his legend status, honestly, I think I've said enough. Hidetoshi Nakata. But if Landon Donovan's status was questioned that many times by me, Nakata's about to get habachi served some questioning about a card that personally, you could have given it to so many different players. Nakata wasn't introduced as a legend nor as an icon like the majority of the players here, but he was part of the promotional campaign of the FIFA 18 World Cup mode. That for the first time in Ultimate Team, World Cup squads can now have World Cup legends made from a few of the

7:39 already existing icons that ended up making the cup, plus a couple of new ones that made their mark on the World Cup stage. Pelé was obviously number one with 98 rating. Funnily enough, that was the first icon I packed in that World Cup mode. I remember sending that Pelé pic to every group chat I was in and then they called me a loser virgin and I decided to just delete the messages and forget the thing ever happened. Nakata, however, was by far the worst. I'd push Miroslav Klose to this conversation alongside Nakata for having the second worst icon card in that year. But, Sider other times Klose was there in every World Cup from 2002 to 2014 grinding and finding ways to score the amount of goals he did in the World Cup saves him from this video. Barely, though. I'll give a bit of context. He was one of the first Asian players who properly broke

8:25 into European football and made people take Japanese and whole of Asian football seriously. After the 1988 World Cup, he joins Italian side Perugia, then ends up at Roma where he wins Roma's last ever Scudetto. Plays for Parma, Fiorentina Bologna Bolton Wanderers. Seriously, when he joined Big Sam at Isis Bolton, Bolton fans probably confused him with a Bolton Uni exchange student or something. He starts becoming this proper global football figure. Not just a good player, but almost the foot but a football culture icon. Kind of like what Son Heung-min was for Korea. The fashion, the aura, the Japanese superstar status, the whole package. But, the same argument for Donovan could be used here. If we're talking about the importance to Japanese and Asian football, then yeah, completely fair. Nakata's one of the if not the biggest name Japan has ever produced. But, if

9:10 we're talking about the highest level of football mythology, especially the World Cup theme mode, this argument gets so shaky. Because when you think of World Cup icons, you usually think players with massive tournament moments, goals that people replay forever, legendary knockout games, the defining image of those tournaments, something, anything. Just so he could tell his teammates one day how sick was to play the tournament and putting a dazzling show. With Nakata, the legacy's more about what he represented than a one massive World Cup story. He played in three World Cups with Japan, which is obviously something serious, but wasn't exactly carrying Japan to shock runs or producing some all-time tournament runs that everyone still talks about, or really that football historians look back into Japan's World Cups of the past was that

9:56 Nakata was there. He was present, played on the pitch. That's it. Nakata feels like the player who absolutely deserves to be celebrated in FIFA in a different manner. That's why I think heroes were created in the first place on recent FIFAs. As an icon, especially in a World Cup mode, it feels more like EA were rewarding influence, geographical marketability, or even cultural importance rather than pure footballing greatness at that tournament level. Carlos Valderrama. >> [music] >> This guy is the most 1980s player I came across in my life, and I've seen The Wolf of Wall Street seven times. You don't not even need a name for the

10:42 screen when you show up that that player's picture. He's the massive blonde afro, the Colombia shirt, the calm little touches in the midfield. One of the most recognizable footballers ever, and honestly, that alone already gives him more iconic power and more aura than half of the random special cards EA have dropped over the years. Valderrama was absolutely iconic, also one of the cleanest passes of his generation. A player who basically looked like he was playing football at walking speed while everyone else was panicking around. He was not the type of midfielder who needed to sprint everywhere to be explosive, to go up and down the pitch, and snap into tackles, or smash 30 yarders every week. His whole thing was ball control and controlling the tempo of the game. Receiving the ball, pause for a few seconds, make everyone move, and then play the pass where that nobody else saw. But this muchacho here was released by EA in FIFA 15 with this card.

11:29 Like, what the [ __ ] is that? It hurts my eye. There was no reason to have this guy to exist if he was going to be this trash. He could have so much better than this. Valderrama was the first ever Colombian icon and the first South American icon not being from Argentina or Brazil. But he wasn't even the best Colombian attacking midfielder in the game. Check how his FIFA 15's gold card and tell me that you would rather not pay about 10,000 coins for a La Liga Real Madrid four-star four-star attacking threat and instead chuck 150k on a guy as fast as Phil Jones and Dejan Lovren. What the [ __ ] And also, legends didn't give free chemistry in FIFA 15. So good luck making a Colombian starting 11 to make him fit right. Because EA gave Valderrama an 86 rated legend card

12:14 and the card is generally one of the strangest legends from that era. You look back at it and say and this is a playmaker. That's it. That's why he does everything he does. If he tries to do anything else, he dies. >> In real football, someone like Valderrama can can run a game without looking like he's trying that hard. Like a Sergio Busquets. In FIFA, especially in Ultimate Team, if your midfielder cannot run, cannot defend, cannot bully anyone, and is not a demon in front of goal, like people are going to look at the card and go, "What the [ __ ] were they thinking? He's ass." Valderrama is absolutely a football icon in the cultural sense, like he was in a continental symbol. He had style, personality. He breathed South American flair. He had that calm, almost annoying confidence where he looked like he was playing in a

12:59 charity match while everyone else was fighting for their life. But if we're talking about FIFA legends, we're not only talking about vibes here. Because if Valderrama can become an 86 rated icon, then this is kind of like if EA were to give an icon card to Hatem Ben Arfa or Dimitri Payet because that one season they killed the Premier League with their enticing flair and technique. And they didn't even kill the Premier League, to be fair. Look at those stats. >> Former hobbies in Portugal and the latter winded up spending his twilight years facing relegation battles in Brazil. >> He's He's definitely not some fraud who should never be in the game, far from it. That would be extremely harsh. You cannot tell the story of '90s international football without that man floating around in the field with the most outrageous hair in football history. But honestly, 86 rating was mad generous though from EA Sports FIFA.

13:44 This is the only FIFA card I've seen that was built on foundations 100% driven by vibes. Valderrama fits into the street won't forget type of conversation with Taribo West and Payet. But Valderrama got an icon card, so me complaining about this actually is 100% justified to every inch. If they don't deserve to even get hero cards, then Valderrama isn't an icon. Alexi Lalas. >> [music] >> This is the reason why I made this video in the first place. For the FIFA donkeys, this guy takes no introduction whatsoever. The ginger Jesus, the American stallion. But for everyone else like, you know, me 5 minutes ago, Lalas sounds like the name of an Elon Musk baby mother. I don't know why FIFA 16

14:30 was covered with new legends that clearly shouldn't make the cut for even world-class players. Landon Donovan was the first American icon, but the one being talked about the most at that time was Alexi Lalas. Because his name was so simple a 2-year-old baby could say it. And also nobody knew who the [ __ ] he was. Now, to be fair, Alexi Lalas was not just some random guy found in an opening any sticker book of the World Cup. Like, he was a massive figure for American soccer. He was in the 1994 World Cup that the US hosted and became one of the faces of that entire national team of the US. Went to Italy with Padova, then came back to the US, won trophies, made the National Soccer Hall of Fame, and basically became one of the most recognizable American footballers of all time. If Americans even bother to recognize him today. Okay, I already did my unnecessary glazing. Time to actually

15:16 show the facts. FIFA 16 gave Alexi Lalas an 86 rated legend card. That ain't no small number, bro. That not a nice little cult hero card territory. That is EA looking at players and saying, "He is belonging to the best players that ever played the game." Mate, not even Americans knew this guy properly. How can you say that with a straight face? The mere thought of this guy being the same rated as Frank de Boer and Effenberg, actual cult heroes of the sport that barely passed their auditions for legends in the first place. He was basically built like [music] the quintessential center back you would hate playing against in that era of open team. Big, strong, fast enough to win challenges, tall enough to win headers. He was also one of the cheaper legends in that game in FIFA 16. And also in that specific game, legends were for the first time able to hand chemistry to every player in the game. So, he could

16:01 function with basically any team and any archetype. Except [music] when you have 200,000 coins in the bank, you would rather buy a proven defender like Thiago Silva or Sergio Ramos for about 35k each and save the rest of the coins to pay for the rest of this team, not Spunky Dona and Ginger Jesus. a trick that helped Valderrama stand out. The film like like the looks of his hair, beard, and game presence. He just felt like the guy you would cast for a World Cup movie. Not you called up an actual footballer, though. The whole looks of the guy helped him stay remembered for some people, 100%. But when you see an 86 rated legend, you would naturally expect a player who was either elite at the very top level for years or became impossible to ignore in football history because of a specific moment or tabloid. I mean, Valderrama had a strong career,

16:48 but 86 rated FIFA legend, this is a much harder sell. Like selling Bivo toothpaste. Brother, I think you already bought the whole store of Colgate Ultra White. He doesn't even have half of the legacy Donovan has in the MLS with only one MLS Cup title to Donovan's six. The biggest team in his career was MetroStars in New York, who eventually became New York Red Bulls. But to be fair, we can say he was the best American player to come out of Birmingham, not the English at all, the American one. Can you imagine American Birmingham? That scares me so much. >> His most prestigious award was a 1985 player of the year he got a couch with Padova in Italy cuz they survived relegation. Are we for real? This guy had an icon card before Zico, Platini, Cruyff, Maradona, R9 for [ __ ] sake. I

17:33 can't do this video. I'm done.