The curse is real, people! 9 Jordan Henderson – FIFA 2016 Hazard was imperious during the 2014/15 season, scooping the Player of the Season award as Chelsea won the Premier League title.īut the 2015/16 season saw he look a shadow of his former self – he failed to score a league goal until April, but was back in form for the 2016/17 campaign. It seems like an age ago Wilshere was playing Xavi and Andres Iniesta off the park as England’s brightest spark.īut the 2011/12 season, for which he was on the front cover with Wayne Rooney, was a washout, with injuries meaning he didn’t step foot on the pitch for Arsenal once the entire season. Injuries repeatedly hampered his efforts to settle in at Madrid, and it wasn’t long before he was back in Milan, having proved an expensive mistake. The Brazilian midfielder played a grand total of 14 league games during Real Madrid’s 2010/11 campaign. Some would say he had a lucky break though, as England were mauled by Germany in the second round. It was four years after he was a surprise inclusion in Sven-Goran Eriksson’s 2006 squad, but England’s golden boy soon found himself rusting away slightly. Walcott’s appearance on the cover of FIFA ended in World Cup heartbreak as Fabio Capello left him out of England’s squad to travel to South Africa. It was all going so well for Rooney in the 2005/06 season.Īlthough Chelsea ran away with the league, he picked up his first medal as a Man United player when they won the League Cup.īut then Paulo Ferreira broke a metatarsal in his foot, meaning he turned up to the 2006 World Cup looking like he’d spent the previous months boozing in Benidorm. He scored just six goals in 36 games that season – hardly FIFA cover quality.
His 2004/05 campaign was lukewarm to say the best, with Michael Owen bumping him out of the Real Madrid side and a loan spell to Liverpool proving underwhelming. Morientes was somewhat of a surprise inclusion alongside Patrick Vieira and Andriy Shevchenko on FIFA 2005, on the back of a prolific Champions League campaign with Monaco. It was the last penalty he ever took in his career, and the last time he appeared on FIFA’s cover. 2 Dennis Bergkamp – FIFA 99īergkamp’s 1998/99 season wasn’t an unmitigated disaster, with Arsenal pushing Man United all the way to the final day for the Premier League title.īut he missed a crucial penalty in the FA Cup semi-final which gave Ryan Giggs the chance to score that infamous goal. People often forget just how hated Beckham became in the months following that World Cup – people were burning effigies of the Leytonstone lad, and it all got a bit nasty. Becks couldn’t resist lashing out at Diego Simeone, with his red card making him public enemy number one back home. It was a no-brainer putting England’s golden boy on the front cover of the World Cup edition of the game.īut then Argentina happened. Here we look at the evidence… 1 David Beckham – FIFA: Road to the World Cup 98 An unspoken curse that has struck repeatedly down the years. SIGN UP – WIN £5k BY PLAYING DREAM TEAM WEEKENDER THIS WEEKENDīut before CR7 graced the cover there was a dark side to being FIFA’s main man. Being on the front cover of FIFA is the biggest honour a footballer can receive in his career, aside from the Ballon d’Or.ĭown the years all the greats have graced the cover of the game- from Lionel Messi to Ronaldinho to Jordan Henderson.įIFA 19 will again feature Cristiano Ronaldo on its cover, rounding off a fine couple of years for the Juventus superstar.