EA Sports FC 25 review – football's fitting forever-drama continues once more

One thing I’ve always admired about football journalists is their ability to keep finding something new to say about what is, ultimately, the exact same game. In one sense that’s just the nature of football, a sport which seems to defy all logic in its ability to create sparkling new drama from the same, enormously well-documented scenarios. But in this case I’m really talking quite specifically about a single club, in Manchester United. A club of which – sorry – I am a lifelong fan.

EA Sports FC 25 reviewDeveloper: EA SportsPublisher: EAPlatform: Played on PS5Availability: Out now on PC (Steam), PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Series X/S, Switch.

A slightly lesser-known fact about this club is that when you support Manchester United you also get the added bonus of an . Even in international breaks and summer transfers and every waking second in between, a world’s-largest fanbase and their voracious appetite means this club is across sport pages everywhere. In the past decade of post-Ferguson hinterlands, however, that coverage has taken on a particularly fascinating slant. It’s typically about how Manchester United are, despite their vast wealth and popularity and history and tradition, not very good. But the interesting bit is how the conversation has changed about that not-goodness.

At first it was a kind of outraged disbelief – sack the manager, and all that – but over time that criticism and analysis became more focused on the systemic. Sporting directors, scouting networks, corporate management structures, ownership schemes. Something deeper must be going wrong, these articles proposed, some mismanagement at a higher level. They were absolutely right. But systemic change takes time – if it ever happens at all. And the fans need their daily hot takes.

Soon enough, we started getting articles about not only the problems or their systemic causes, but about how those problems and causes were. Then came ones about the to how sustained they were – the Gary Neville’s dead-eyed “this is Manchester United” meme era. And then, somehow, something even beyond that. A reaction to the reaction itself. The meta-meta-analysis. Articles about writing articles about the reaction to the sustained causes of the problems. (And after that, erm, I suppose whatever you’d call articles like this.)