UPDATE: Since this article was written, FIFA 21's standard edition and Ultimate Edition have been officially revealed, with French player Kylian Mbappe as both versions' cover star.
Original story follows after the tweets.
ORIGINAL STORY: A new FIFA game is hardly surprising given that they come out every year, but fans are still eager for a proper glimpse at what the newest entry, FIFA 21, looks like, especially since it will be releasing on next-gen consoles. The official website, which went live last month, provided some details about what platforms the game will release on and the release date, and fans can look forward to a proper reveal tomorrow.
A livestream for FIFA 21's reveal trailer is already up on YouTube and will go live at 8am PT / 11am ET / 4pm BST on July 23rd. What and how much will be shown is unknown at the moment but one fan may have already figured out who the game's cover stars will be.
According to the fan, FIFA 21 will have four players appear on its box, namely Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool), João Félix (Atlético Madrid), Erling Haaland (Borussia Dortmund), and Kylian Mbappé (Paris Saint-Germain).
As for how they figured this out, the fan looked into the metadata of the video and these four players are explicitly named. While it's not necessarily a confirmation, them being mentioned does seem to indicate that they will be the cover stars.
If so, it's certainly very different compared to previous games, which have usually only featured one, maybe two, players on the boxes. This is assuming that all four will appear on the same box and not on separate ones for various collector's editions.
For example, FIFA 20's standard, Champions, and Ultimate Editions all had a different player on each of their box arts: Real Madrid's Eden Hazard, Liverpool's Virgil van Djik, and Real Madrid's Zinedine Zidane respectively.
Considering having four players on the same cover might be a bit crowded, it's most likely that EA is planning three or four different editions of the game, each with a different cover star or stars. How well this will go down with fans is anyone's guess.
FIFA 21 has already received heavy criticism for a couple of reasons. Firstly, save data can not be transferred from current-gen to next-gen systems, meaning those that want to buy the game for PS4 or Xbox One will be unable to carry their data over should they decide to upgrade.
Secondly, PC players were upset to learn that the PC release of the game is a port of the PS4 and Xbox One version, so it won't have any of the enhancements from the next-gen versions.
Its not the only sports game facing criticism. 2K's NBA 2K21 won't be providing any option for a next-gen upgrade at all, unlike a lot of other upcoming games, which has been deemed as not consumer friendly and accusations of 2K being greedy.
FIFA 21 will release on October 9th and is coming to Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: VG247