There’s just over a week to go before the release of FIFA 23 and this year’s premier football sim will see EA Sports pair up with arguably its most unusual partner yet: Marvel. The mashup will see legendary footballers, such as Park Ji-Sung, Yaya Touré and Ricardo Carvalho brought back into the game as playable ‘Heroes’ in FIFA’s iconic Ultimate Team game mode. However, although any team-up with the comic book franchise will undoubtedly garner significant appeal among Marvel’s superhero-obsessed fanbase, the move is actually in danger of making the game worse.
The Marvel crossover will be in FIFA 23 from its September 30 launch, with each FUT hero having a base version – not dissimilar from the FUT hero cards introduced in FIFA 22 – before they receive a specially illustrated FUT item, to coincide with the launch of the World Cup game mode. In addition to these mock-ups, the collaboration will see Marvel-branded kits, balls, tifos and other cosmetics come to FIFA 23, whilst Marvel will produce and release a comic book detailing the backstory of each FUT hero. Now, all of this is very well and good, but it all has little-to-no in-game value.
If a FIFA-Marvel crossover absolutely had to happen, it could have been executed better. Artsy versions of FUT legends cards aren’t anything to write home about, but had EA given these players actual powers and let gamers use these jacked-up supes in a House Rules match of Mystery Ball, for example, that might have been far more interesting. None of this is to say that, like FIFA 24, FIFA 23 is doomed to fail. On the contrary, there’s a lot for fans to get excited about, with World Cup events, new animation technology and women’s club teams featuring for the first time. However, these successes will only have fans wondering what other features they could have had if development time and resources hadn’t been used up on this crossover.
FIFA Fails To Listen To Fans Once Again
After all, the list of desired changes from FIFA fans has not changed significantly over the years, with cross-play functionality in Pro Clubs long-clamored for. Career Mode players are likewise desperate for the ability to include loan-back, buy-back clauses and competition bonuses into player’s contracts, like they can in the future of sports games, Football Manager. Instead, FIFA players are left with Landon Donovan’s “The Brave,” who seems to have been designed to essentially be a budget Captain America but – courtesy of it being Donovan in the star-spangled suit – actually gives off more vibes of The Deep from Amazon Prime’s The Boys. Granted, the designs themselves are not quite as out of place as when Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach popped up as playable characters, hooping in blacktop courts in downtown Brooklyn in the Nintendo GameCube version of 2005’s NBA Street V3, but FIFA’s Marvel crossover seems a lazy way to pair two much-loved brands, without actually providing anything of substance.
Admittedly, since EA Sports concluded it doesn’t need FIFA and will, from next year forward, be producing its own rival sim of EA Sports FC, the FIFA-Marvel crossover will hopefully not prove to be a long-term addition to the series, with it entirely possible that EA are experimenting with FIFA 23 to see what features they should carry over to their own solo game. Regardless, the FIFAvengers assembling looks set to be a non-event and not just because it does not feature Robbie Savage as Thor. The reality is that Marvel simply does not belong in FIFA 23, for as much as Peter Drury is able to convince us all that other-worldly acts can sometimes occur on the pitch, superheroes do not, and should not, have a place in the beautiful game.
