FIFA 17: 7 New Features Fans Would Love (But Will Never Get)
6. Non-League Teams
Why Fans Would Love It
One of the biggest changes to FIFA in the early 2000s was the addition of the lower leagues of English football; the Championship, League 1 and League 2.
This gave players the chance to play as the smaller teams that they would never usually get to use, and also added the extra drama of promotion and relegation to Career Mode.
So with the increase in popularity of non-league football, with events such as Non-League Day and players like Jamie Vardy launching their careers off the back of non-league football, adding non-league teams to FIFA would be the next logical step for authentically representing English football.
Taking a team from the depths of semi-professional football all the way to the Champions League across your career would be the ultimate glory for players, and seeing Chelsea playing on the muddy, water-logged pitches of the non-league for FA Cup ties would go a long way to replicating the ‘magic of the cup’.
Why It Will Never Happen
Non-league teams are made up of semi-professional players who are usually part-time, so trying to get up-to-date squad lists for all these teams would be nightmare for the FIFA developers.
Also, due to the lower standards of these teams, their players would have to be rated so low to seem realistic in comparison to the top players that they would be almost impossible to actually play as.