FIFA 16: Lionel Messi and…

…Alex Morgan. At least, if you live in the USA, that is.

The upcoming EA Sports game FIFA 16 is to feature different players on their covers, depending on your location – and in North America it’ll feature a woman for the first time ever.

Alex Morgan (pictured, left) has almost 100 caps for her national side America with 52 goals, and recently won the Women’s World Cup with them. Despite rehabilitating a knee injury prior to the tournament, she played in all seven games and despite only one goal, she played a vital role in what was an incredibly strong US team – conceding only three goals the whole tournament: one to Australia in the opening game, and two to Japan in the final. She appears on the US cover of the video game.

Captain of the Canadian National Team, Christine Sinclair, appears on the Canadian cover of the game. Being on the national side for more than a decade and a half, she’s appeared in four World Cups (including the most recent held in her home country), having made 225 appearances and scoring 155 goals as of writing.

In the UK though, the wait for the first ever female on the cover continues, as instead it’s new Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson who lines up alongside Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, who features on the right of every cover for the game. On the day Jordan became the new Liverpool captain, he was also announced to be on the cover of FIFA 16 in the UK. Since joining the reds in 2011 he’s made 139 appearances and scored 17 goals. Henderson takes on a massive amount of pressure, taking over as captain after the departure of Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard.

So despite England’s heroic performance in the Women’s World Cup, we’ll still be waiting for the first female player to appear on the cover. Which of England’s women should appear on, say, FIFA 17?

Ashley Redman
Can’t even score on a game pad