Every year, EA makes a big to-do about who will be on each of their covers, and for a while we’ve known it was going to be Messi in the center of the North American FIFA 13 cover.

However, each FIFA cover usually has 1 international star, and at least 1 local star. Last year for example, Wayne Rooney appeared for the first time on the North American cover when FIFA 12 came out. He was flanked by Los Angeles Galaxy forward Landon Donovan and Rafael Márquez of New York Red Bulls.

This year EA Sports told us, “Lionel Messi will be joined by stars Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Joe Hart in the United Kingdom, Karim Benzema in France, Roberto Soldado in Spain, Claudio Marchisio in Italy, and others all over the world to launch FIFA Soccer 13 on September 25 in North America and September 28 worldwide.”

We were also given this list of everyone who will be on a cover in some market around the world. Those players are:

Player                                          Nationality                                           Club
Lionel Messi                               Argentina                                              FC Barcelona
Joe Hart                                       England                                                 Manchester City
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain       England                                                 Arsenal
Karim Benzema                         France                                                   Real Madrid
Claudio Marchisio                     Italy                                                       Juventus
Roberto Soldado                       Spain                                                    Valencia
David Alaba                                Austria                                                   Bayern Munich
Tim Cahill                                   Australia                                               New York Red Bulls
Jakub Błaszczykowski              Poland                                                  Borussia Dortmund
Balázs Dzsudzsák                    Hungary                                                Moscow Dynamo

Now, it’s possible that Tim Cahill could also be on the cover in North America. He is afterall the only player on the list who plays in the local MLS league.

However, is a Austrialian midfielder who has played 3 games and scored 1 goal the star power the will move copies in North America? Probably not, and clearly not the player who resonates the most with fans of Major League Soccer. He could easily create a buzz over national pride in his homeland of Austrialia though.

Nope, sadly it appears that in North America the cover we will get will simply consist of Lionel Messi  running through St James’ Park alone.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2012 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.