While everyone involved with Barcelona's La Masia academy no doubt knew how phenomenal Lionel Messi would eventually become, in 2005, the diminutive Argentine was little known to many football fans and, it would appear, to EA Sports developers, too.
FIFA 17 will be released this week and, as if par for the course, the graphics on the game just continue to become eerily more lifelike. However, just over a decade ago, rather than looking like the Barcelona number 10's exact virtual likeness, Messi's representation on FIFA 06 looked more like a lazy developer had taken a bad photo of a face drawn on an onion and stuck it on a Barcelona kit.
Image credit: EA Sports
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Now, fast forward to FIFA 17...
Image credit: EA Sports
It's safe to say the evolution of EA Sports' graphics have been almost as impressive as Messi's evolution in real life. OK, perhaps not quite as impressive, but it's still pretty staggering...
Image credit: EA Sports/Dream Team FC
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Between FIFA 06 and FIFA 09, Messi's overall stats rating had leaped from 78 to 90, which we can't imagine has ever been matched or will ever be replicated by another footballer.
(H/T Dream Team FC)
Topics: Football, Lionel Messi, EA Sports