The Brazilian maestro himself will be on the cover for FIFA 11 this year - I'm not talking about Ronaldinho either, I mean Kaka - whose sensational performances have captivated crowds for years.

Kaka's actual name is Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite (it's easy to understand why he's called Kaka). Recently, the soccer king spoke about his FIFA 11 cover.

Kaka, who is fluent in both English and his native Spanish, had this to say about the honor:

"I’ve always been a fan of EA SPORTS and especially the FIFA series. Being on the FIFA Soccer 11 cover is a great honor for me since very few players have this opportunity, and there have been some great players featured on the cover of this truly amazing videogame."

Kaka will be the central figure on each cover of FIFA 11, with local players appearing on either side of him, depending on the region (e.g. European covers will have Euro-players, and North America will get...well, probably Landon Donovan again).

In the past, featured cover players usually had an excellent year prior to being selected for the cover, or were a soccer hero of some sort - Kaka certainly covers both, but Matt Bilbey, Vice President of Soccer at EA Sports, says there was another reason for choosing the Real Madrid midfielder:

"Kaka brings passion, imagination and individual flair to the game every time on the pitch. He perfectly illustrates a new feature in FIFA Soccer 11 called Personality [Plus] that sees a player’s individual ability reflected in game, enabling clear differentiation for every player. With Kaka’s visionary style of soccer he’s always one step ahead of the opposition, moving into space with an often subtle change of pace and delivering crisp, creative one-touch passes and catching the goalkeepers off guard with strikes often from distance on either foot. His play is unlike any other player in our game and you will feel individual differences like this in each player, in every match."

Looking inside the box for a second FIFA 11's Personality Plus feature will certainly create a breath of much needed fresh air to the systematic player statistics. The changes don't stop there, as we reported earlier, this is a big year of change for the FIFA franchise.

The visuals certainly look stunning so far - check out this teaser that EA put out for Kaka:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X24JkHgh9WQ

Kaka is a graceful player who doesn't lose his temper and has a lot of respect for his hundreds of thousands of fans - as a result, I think Kaka is an awesome cover athlete for this year's FIFA 11. Whether or not the game is as graceful as Kaka himself - well, that's something we're just going to have to find out ourselves.

You can expect to see Kaka gracing the covers for yourself when FIFA 11 is released on September 28 in North America - and October 1 in Europe and Asia.