Cristiano Ronaldo’s time at Real Madrid may be coming to an end.
That’s because the 33-year-old could be moving to Juventus – for a staggering £88million.
The five-time Ballon d’Or winner has won everything he possibly could with Los Blancos, so it seems like a sensible move for the 33-year-old.
What we are concerned about though, is how this move will affect FIFA 19.
The cover star of the latest FIFA game was always going to be Ronaldo, but with the cover finished and revealed, a change in club could cause a logistical nightmare for EA Sports.
Should the transfer go through, EA would have to rush to change the cover – should they want to keep Ronaldo – to ensure the Portuguese is in the correct kit.
A similar thing happened to PES last year when Neymar moved from Barcelona to PSG.
FIFA 19 Standard and Champions Editions are available to pre-order from GAME and Amazon
It was so last minute that PES had to ship with the Brazilian sporting Barca kit on the cover.
Publisher Konami then quickly released a patch to remove him from the in-game menus and plonk him in the right team.
But there’s another issue that arises for FIFA should Ronaldo switch clubs. The Journey.
Following the story of up and coming footballer Alex Hunter, the Journey in FIFA 18 saw Hunter meet with Ronaldo and join Madrid to win the Champions League.
The news of Ronaldo’s move away from Madrid is sure to affect the storyline in Journey mode dramatically.
Having featured prominently in this year’s version, EA may have to rethink how they proceed with the storyline, as they don’t want to seem inauthentic in their portrayal of Hunter’s story and real-world football events.
What about publicity?
With Ronaldo as the face of the game, he will undoubtedly have agreed to do promotion alongside the launch.
How this will be affected is yet to be seen, but should become obvious in the coming months.
It will be interesting to see how the deal progresses and what EA will be doing in terms of the cover, journey mode and the promotion of the game online and offline.
What do you guys think? Let us know.
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