EA Sports FC24 unveils quietly horrifying cover

EA Sports has announced a livestream for this coming Thursday, 13th July, to unveil the first proper information on EA Sports FC24, its maiden game under the new branding since leaving the official FIFA license behind.

But much more importantly than that, the publisher also unveiled its first bit of cover art for the game - this one being for the premium-priced Ultimate Edition, with the standard one still to come - and it is... quite odd?

Player faces have always occupied a strangely prominent spot in FIFA fans' minds, often being one of the first things referred to when comparing differences between the latest version from EA and Konami's rival series eFootball (formerly PES).

Unsurprisingly, fans have been quick to rather brutally pick out some of the less-than-stellar renders of player faces with FC24, and admittedly - while it all works quite nicely at a distance - up close this cover doesn't look great. EA's attempts can range from pretty spot-on, like Son and Erling Haaland's smirks, to an off-kilter Marcus Rashford, a genuinely murderous Marta, and Andrea Pirlo staring blankly in a plain blue T-shirt, looking like he just wandered in off the street.

In a press release alongside the reveal, EA heralded it as a "star-studded cover" that "marks a new era for EA SPORTS, as fans and players will help usher in a new chapter of the world's game with FC24 while underlining the global nature of football fandom." We also got a look at the series' first trailer - captured in EA's Frostbite engine but not showing any gameplay yet, as far as we can tell.

There are also a few fairly major oversights in terms of the game's biggest names. There's no Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, or Kylian Mbappé, for instance, while Argentinian fans might have a bone to pick with Pelé's inclusion over Diego Maradonna, although of course not every great footballer in history is going to make it onto a cover - and there's still a "cover athlete" slot to be unveiled for the standard edition.

That said, there are 31 players here and not a single goalkeeper, which feels a little off. And the execution itself is downright strange, with some players looking down the camera lens and others staring just slightly to either side. All together, it's pulled in some mixed reactions.