What’s the story?
Barcelona’s Brazilian forward, Neymar, is enjoying the best moments of his Barcelona career currently after playing a starring role in their 6-1 Camp Nou demolition of PSG to complete a turnaround of historic proportions in the Champions League round of 16.
Also Read: Stats: Players rated highest most number of times in EA Sports' FIFA
Neymar is also one of the best players in FIFA 17 with an overall rating of 92. It surprisingly turns out that Neymar’s shooting attributes are worse off than those of the worst ever player on FIFA, Scunthorpe United midfielder, Ian Baraclough, in FIFA 10.
In case you didn’t know...
The former Scunthorpe midfielder now works as an assistant manager at League One club Oldham Athletic. He enjoyed a fairly successful career with stints at Queens Park Rangers, Leicester City and Grimsby Town, betraying the player profile as per his stats in FIFA 10.
The FIFA offering includes the FUT game mode where players can create their own teams and sign players after deciding a price to pay as per the player’s attributes on player cards. Player cards are pictoral representations of players rated along with their attributes.
The heart of the matter
The worst ever player card in FIFA history, Ian Baraclough, who had a rating of 25 when playing for Scunthorpe United as striker had a better shooting attribute than current Barcelona superstar Neymar, who boasts pace and dribbling attributes rated above 90.
Also Read: Goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa rated quicker than Angel di Maria and Henrikh Mkhitaryan in FIFA 17
Neymar’s shooting is rated at an above average 84, but Baraclough – whose other attributes were all rated 11 (yes his pace was 11, slower than Arsenal’s Per Mertesacker) – had a shooting attribute of 88; deadly in front of goal if he ever got there in time.
Parallels from history
The ratings on FIFA for a player do not usually reflect that of their ability on the actual football pitch. Matteo Brighi is one such example; the former AS Roma and Juventus midfielder was given an incredible overall rating of 97 in FIFA 03, which is far from what he deserved.
Sportskeeda’s Take
A unique mix of attributes like that of Ian Baraclough may never be seen again on FIFA cards due to the highly unlikely occurrence of an 88 shooting statistic along with other statistics rated at 11.
This comparison is almost laughable and should go be tagged under ‘humour’ as Neymar is a far, far superior player on FIFA as well as in real life.
