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39-Year-Old Soccer Player Uses GPS to Prove His Awful ‘FIFA’ Speed Rating Is Wrong

“FIFA” gave Kevin Ellison a 35 speed rating in the game. He wasn’t standing for that.
Dan Gartland|
39-Year-Old Soccer Player Uses GPS to Prove His Awful ‘FIFA’ Speed Rating Is Wrong
39-Year-Old Soccer Player Uses GPS to Prove His Awful ‘FIFA’ Speed Rating Is Wrong

FIFA 19 features many thousands of players on over 700 teams, so you could forgive the makers of the game if they didn’t exactly nail every player’s virtual avatar. One such player is Kevin Ellison, a 39-year-old midfielder who has spent the better part of the past two decades bouncing around the bottom of the English football pyramid and is currently plying his trade at Morecambe, a fourth-tier club in a seaside town not far from where he grew up. 

FIFA gave Ellison a 35 speed rating and he did not like that one bit, so he put on a GPS tracking device to see how his real-life speed stacked up to that of his teammates with better in-game speed.

Ellison has spent the past two weeks lobbying EA Sports to fix his unjust speed rating after it turned into a bit of a meme.

It could always be worse, though. Frode Kippe, a 40-year-old center back for Norwegian side Lillestrom has the misfortune of being the slowest outfield player in the game with a 25 speed rating. 

Now that Ellison has hard data to support his case, perhaps EA will right this wrong. Or maybe all of his teammates will just see their speed rating plummet.

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Dan Gartland
DAN GARTLAND

Dan Gartland writes Sports Illustrated’s flagship daily newsletter, SI:AM, and is the host of the “Stadium Wonders” video series. He joined the SI staff in 2014, having previously been published on Deadspin and Slate. Gartland, a graduate of Fordham University, is a former Sports Jeopardy! champion (Season 1, Episode 5).

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