 Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA The Foot Account, and welcome back to the channel. Today, we're gonna be looking back at this past year of FIFA 21 as it is coming to a close, and look at some of the most popular players inside of this game, and also the least popular players. This is gonna be fun because it's gonna remind us of some of the players that we maybe used earlier on this year, but are not, of course, as meta as the insane cards that we saw towards the end of the game in these last couple of months. So it's gonna be a nice trip down memory lane, but also the main reason why I'm doing this today is to kind of start to get our minds right for FIFA 22 and just how people might be thinking as we start the new game. Because one thing that we've seen very often is that people start the new FIFA using the mindset and what the meta was, what was overpowered, what was the most popular cards to use from the past year's FIFA. So what was OP, what was meta in FIFA 21? People are gonna start and gravitate towards that to begin FIFA 22 until they learn differently until we figure out what exactly is the best combination of cards and just the fact that everybody goes for the meta, right? Everybody wants to be the best. They want that extra edge to be the best and to score the most goals, have the best defense used, the best cards to give them the highest chance of winning, right? That is so important in this day and age and how people play this game, especially since it's been so pushed to be played so competitively. So that shows in some of these cards that people like the most and dislike the most inside of FIFA 21. So let's get into it and look at some of these cards. First things first, this is not an ad, but we are using footbin.com, arguably in my opinion, the best non-EA sports related website for information and everything else related to FIFA, right? You got prices on here, you've got graphs. I mean, we use this site like religiously alongside of the game of FIFA 21. So if you're not using the site, make sure you get involved, footbin.com. I'll put a link down below in the description. It's just that good, but we are gonna be using some of the statistics and some of the voting, I guess you could call it, from this website today to talk about these most popular and least popular players because we are sorting by popularity and that is decided by the thumbs up and thumbs down. If you guys are not aware, cards on footbin, you can give them a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Basically, if you like the card, thumbs up, if you dislike it, thumbs it down, right? This is the number one most popular card inside of FIFA 21 Ultimate Team and that's the most fun thing that I think about this year is that a lot of these cards that are on this list are here. Yes, because overall, they're very popular, but there's also some creator influence and combining the meta of this game with five star skills and just a community having fun and realizing how really awesome a player is and EA going along with that, right? With the Celos card, formerly known as Waman, but after the name change goes by Celos. EA gave him cards later on in the year with a Tots SBC after he got his Inform and kind of rose to stardom inside of FIFA, right? And I think that's one of the coolest things as well is the connection between IRL football and FIFA. You think about FIFA 20 where we had Ryan Kent, right? Probably not a ton of people in the world knew about Ryan Kent, but they do because of FIFA, right? And that's one of the cool things I think about FIFA. It just brings to light some players that maybe aren't playing on the most high profile team, but for some reason they have hype and they're good in FIFA. So it just kind of brings their name to the forefront. And that is exactly what happened with Celos this year as the number one most popular card on FIFA. Now Wayne Rooney is up here as well. I think the reason why this card is rated so high is because Wayne Rooney is such a legend, of course, in the world of football. The English links is very easy to link four star, four star. And for the time that this was released, this was released in February, early February. This is a cracked out card, right? He's got pretty good traits with the outside the foot shot trait and really, really good stats with the four star, four star, high medium work rates. This was a card that a lot of people did for nostalgia purposes, right? I think that's why he got a lot of thumbs up because it was a good, it was a well priced SBC and really good stats. And of course, a legend that he is. Now you see a couple of Linguard cards in here as well. That's a lot of FIFA hype kind of thrown in there. But then you start to scroll down and you see some of these other cards that people loved during FIFA Ultimate Team. Of course, you have some of your most meta gold cards, right? Neymar, Ronaldo, Mbappe and Marcus Rashford. I would agree with a couple other players thrown in there. Those are the most overpowered gold players that we saw this past year in FIFA 21. And that changes, right? That really does change because if we see, we see these four cards as the top four golds from FIFA 21. Take a look at FIFA 20's top four gold cards. You had Neymar, Hyunmin Sun, Mbappe and Messi. And then Sasoko at number five, right? And you don't see anything about Sun or Messi or Sasoko even in like the top 20, right? We have to go, I mean, I'm not even on the first page and I don't, we don't see Messi here on the first page or Hyunmin Sun this year. So it just goes to show that there's gonna be, of course, the five star skills that were more overpowered in FIFA 21. And that sort of stuff changes every single year. So what you're gonna have at the start of FIFA 22 is people probably trying Rashford out. People probably trying out, of course, Neymar, Ronaldo and Mbappe as always. But some of these cards that had five star skills that were very popular this year, you're gonna see them being tried a little bit more inside of FIFA 22, I think. But continuing to go down through this list, they have a lot of big SBCs. People really like to upvote and downvote SBC players because it kind of to them feels like they have their opportunity to vote on the card and how they liked that car when it was released based off the price, based off the time. Objectives as well, right? This Jules Kunde, one of the most legendary objectives inside of FIFA 21, just because of the links this card provided, of course, Viran and Mendy. Even if we're not going off of thumbs up and thumbs down, but if we're going off of total number of games played inside of FIFA 21, take a look at this. Rafael Viran, 89 million games. This is only PlayStation 4, by the way. PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, 89 million games for Rafael Viran. I think it was just, that was a center back card that so many people like to use. He was very overpowered in game and he was cheap, right? He was pretty cheap for center backs and he again had the perfect link with Ferlan Mendy who was up there at 64 million games as well. This is the point I want to make again too, right? More and more you see people just going after what is met up and what is overpowered because you would think, okay, Messi and Ronaldo should be pretty high on this list, right? Well, look at all these cards that are higher than Messi and Ronaldo. Viran, Neymar, Conte, Mbappe, Ferlan Mendy, Kyle Walker, Paul Pugba, Sadio Mane, finally Cristiano Ronaldo down here and where's Messi? Messi's all the way down here, 21 million games for this year, FIFA 21, 21 million games for Messi. Compared to 89 for Viran, how crazy is that? For some people getting Messi is the pinnacle of FIFA, right? Now this year it's been easier than ever because Messi is so cheap, but it just goes to show what kind of cards people prefer on this game. It's the most meta cards and not always just the big name. Also I want to point out, look at all the Premier League cards, right? Premier League is the number one league in FIFA. It's number one always. Look at all of these Prem cards that have some of the most games played because FIFA, the game itself is the most popular in England and in the UK. So of course you have a lot of those English nationalities that are very popular, right? We talk about in FIFA, a lot of those cards are a little more overpriced just because of the hype and it makes sense, right? It's a very large portion of the user base in FIFA. I think that's why Lindgard has got some thumbs up, like same thing with Rooney, right? Even Tavernier being a very good objective card as that headliners item. He got a lot of thumbs up as well. So that's one thing I just want to make known, right? These Premier League cards are going to be very overpowered. They're going to be not necessarily overpowered, I guess, but they're going to be the most popular starting off the year inside of FIFA 22. The Premier League, I've got a prediction for this year, man. I really think that the Premier League is going to be number one as always inside of FIFA 22. And I think the number two league this year is going to be the league one, AKA PSG, right? French Lynx, league one, PSG. You have all the insane transfers in this window. Wynaldum, Hakimi, Ramos, of course, Messi to PSG. There's so many other transfers and so many other players that are already existing inside of the league one, you know, as well as Ben Yetter. Renato Sanchez being an insanely overpowered card this year, Benjamin Andre, right? Kind of a, not a random player, but a card that was used a lot in FIFA 21 for his rule breakers item. Sambia, foot birthday, Diata, Bomba. Bomba was a card that kind of burst onto the scene this year, right? Very, very popular item with his informs, with even his gold card as his player the month and this headliners and of course the team of the season. This is probably going to be a card that people try to link up inside of FIFA 22, whether they need a link to Mbappe, whether they need a link to like Ferlan Mendi and Varan at the back. I'd watch out for this Bomba card, right? But all league one cards in general, I honestly think that with the transfers, league one is going to be one of the most popular leagues this year in FIFA 22. So, again, what you have here as the most popular players is a lot of upvotes for pricing, right? I think you have Kleiber, if he's not already up at the top here. You have Robin, you have Kleiber, those are two very popular SBCs, Renato Sanchez. Oh, there's Kleiber right there. Elsharawi, right? Five star skills. The Arturo Vidal, foot birthday, the Ramos and Niven Ericard. Joao Felix, player of the month. David Neres, showdown was a huge card this past year. You have Debala moments. I'm actually really surprised how high up this Debala moments card is with 18,000 thumbs up. I mean, that was an insane card they dropped earlier this year, but he's got more thumbs up than Mbappe does, which I think is pretty crazy. So, those are all the most popular cards, right? We're talking about, again, what could be overpowered in FIFA 22, the way people are going to be looking at some items, and it's just kind of fun to remember these cards as they were released earlier on in the game. Suarez player moments, I was a bit surprised to see him on this list. 91 rated Suarez with 11,000 thumbs up. I think this was just a card that a lot of people love for who Suarez is, right? Some cards still get a lot of hype just because of the name and because of the legacy of Suarez and where he has been and the goals he has scored and what he has accomplished. I think that is a bit of a thumbs up. That's why he got so many thumbs up, but let's go to downvotes, right? Well, let's take a look at downvotes because these are also really fun to look at and it's a good trip down memory lane and to kind of talk about why some of these cards were downvoted the most. Now, we saw a lot of Premier League cards on the upvoted list and most games played, but you also see a lot of Premier League cards here. Now, why is that? Well, EA released a lot of Premier League special cards and I think people that want to use these cards, since they're such a large portion of the user base, they would love a nice English special card, right? They are very critical when they are not well priced or when that card is quote unquote a rat inside of the game. Now, you see like Veran's gold card wasn't very highly rated, but it had a lot of games played inside of FIFA 21. Now, you see Veran's informed Veran Tots, like and Veran wrote to the final actually with a lot of downvotes just because people hated that card in game because it was so good, right? And that's one of the funny things to see with some of these downvotes. Now, a lot of these cards are downvoted and they're not liked because of their price or how much work it takes to get the card when it comes out. Subitzer 579,000 coins, one of the most ridiculous SBC, priced SBCs we've ever had. This will probably go down as the worst value SBC. We had in FIFA 21, I really think that it did, right? 28,000 downvotes, decent looking card, right? But just for that price at that stage of the game, it was atrocious. There's really, it's really hard to link the Subitzer card as well. In the Bundesliga, there's not a lot of green links to him. So that's why he had so many downvotes. I think the Alex Oxlade Chamberlain card was downvoted because of the price. Juan Besaca, I think a lot of people downvoted right away because they didn't think the boost was big enough off of his card and they also thought that the position change was a bit ratty, I guess you could say. But this card ended up being an actual pretty good item in game. If you did this SBC, I think a lot of people were happy with it, even though it did seem a bit expensive at the time when it was released. This Joe Gomez card, I think people thought was too expensive, but also, again, just very overpowered with the links that he had. Roberto Firmino overpriced Gundewan's Player of the Month SBC. I think that Gundewan won, like back to back or something like that and people didn't want him to win. I think that's why he had some of the downvotes. The price there wasn't that big of an issue. The Brewster Future Stars SBC. This is one of the ones, I don't know if you remember, but EA Sports actually had us vote on this. They put out a Twitter poll and they said, choose the nation, choose the position and they picked a future star and put an SBC out because of that. And I think people thought that these stats and three star skills, four star weak foot, the price and the stats in this card were just not good, right? And I think people were maybe wanting a soccer who later was released, but that's just not what we got with that one. So that's why there's so many downvotes on him. But again, you see a lot of the stuff in here is downvoted because A, it was just very overpowered in game or B, it was very expensive. St. Jude's Day foot birthday, very expensive. Not a ton of people did that card. Gareth Bale's flashback, very expensive, right? Kenny Lala foot freeze, expensive. Zinchenko was pricey. I think some of the other cards on here, Bomba's Player of the Month. I'm surprised he's got some downvotes, but a lot of the stuff on here, especially towards the top, is because people were just not happy with how that item was released inside of the game. So let me know down in the comments if you still have any of those cards that are in your team or if you remember playing against any of these cards. Of course, if we look at a couple different pages here, it's just also nice to look down memory lane. GoldMendi, right? A lot of thumbs up. Robert Lewandowski, team of the year. We were really happy to see Lewandowski get into team of the year in the stat boost that he got. That was a dub. The Gerud objective was awesome. The curtain, I'm actually surprised that this card didn't have more thumbs up because this Curtis Jones' SBC was one that so many people loved. For the price point, I mean, yes, it was not cheap, but that was a fantastic, fantastic card in the game. Then we have a Renato Sanchez coming in here as well. Of course, it's a very popular item. Isak Sandro Tonali. I remember when this was released. This was our first, I believe, Club 80s card via objectives during the year. The first one that was released. A lot of people loved that card. Tap Soba, the OWR SBC, which was great. So it's just kind of fun to look back through and see a lot of these cards from the year that were liked or that were disliked. But again, the biggest thing that we can learn about the stuff that we noticed today is that there's always gonna be, there's always gonna be these cards in FIFA that come up out of nowhere, right? Celas. Nobody really knew who Celas was. Not very many people knew on a grand scheme of things in FIFA or outside of just in casual football. Not many people knew about this guy before the year of FIFA, right? Same thing again, last year with Ryan Kent. Not many people knew about him. So I'm excited to see in FIFA 22 this year who the Celas of FIFA 22 is. I'm excited to see that. But also like what cards kind of rise to the top. Again, if we look at like base cards, Neymar, Ronaldo, Mbappe, Rashford, compared to Neymar and Mbappe still, those are gonna be very hyped cards in FIFA 22. But you've got Sun, Messi, Sasoko, Conte's always up there. Usman Nabilia was massive in FIFA 20. But again, like Usman Nabilia was very expensive at the start of FIFA 21 because of how good he was in FIFA 20. So again, some of the cards that I would expect to be expensive at the beginning of 22 would be Rashford for sure. Conte's still gonna be expensive. I mean, even Renato Sanchez, Ben Yetter, Bomba, some of those League One links, you know, with those new PSG links as well. That's gonna be very interesting. If Cristiano Ronaldo does end up transferring right now and I'm recording this, there's all the rumors about him going to Manchester City. We'll see if it actually happens or not. This video is gonna be posted after the fact. But, you know, all sorts of stuff like that are gonna impact this game. But again, I just wanted to do this video today because I wanted to look at some of those most popular cards and just talk about how people value items in this game, why those are thumbs up, why stuff is thumbs down. And just kind of a fun overview of FIFA 21, but also kind of helping our minds as we head into FIFA 22. So if you enjoyed it, give a thumbs up to it. Comment down below if you have any questions or comments about the cards we talked about. And of course, subscribe if you're new. It's been Nathan Putacown. I will catch you guys later. Peace.