FIFA 18 Wishlist: 10 Things That Must Be Included

10. Smarter Referees

EA Sports have struggled with FIFA’s officials forever, and despite all the advances that the series has made over the past few decades, they just can’t seem to nail the referees. As always, FIFA 17’s referees were absolutely bewildering at times, pulling cards from their pockets at seemingly random intervals, botching offside calls, and awarding penalties for even the most minor collisions.

In fairness, it could be argued that FIFA 17’s terrible referees are an accurate reflection of modern officiating, and therefore add an extra layer of realism. This is a game, however, and games need to be fun. Nothing ruins a match like a referee flashing a red card for a glitched physics collision or halting play for a seemingly perfectly-timed sliding challenge, and while getting the referees right is clearly difficult, this shouldn’t really be a problem anymore.

FIFA 18’s referees need to be less like Uriah Rennie, and more like Pierluigi Collina. There’s no real excuse for such frustratingly bad officials in a modern football game, and tweaking them will remove what many fans consider to be one of FIFA’s biggest historical problems. Fans are used to dodgy officials screwing their team out of points in real-life, but in a video game, everything needs to be fair and just.