EA Sports FC 27 lands worldwide on 25 September, and it arrives with the biggest shake-up in terms of features the series has attempted since the FIFA name was dropped.

Volta and the old standalone Clubs hub are gone. In their place sits an open-world social space that borrows openly from NBA 2K’s The City. The headline modes remain three: The Grounds, Football Ultimate Team and Career.

Each feature has been reimagined to offer a new gaming experience; it includes a transfer market that finally behaves like a transfer market, a FUT collection layer that rewards everything you have ever packed, and a persistent world where your Pro’s progression never really stops. Kylian Mbappé fronts the cover and doubles as an in-game mentor.

The Grounds

EA Sports

This is the most significant and bold addition in years. The Grounds is a free-roaming social hub split across three districts, and you explore on foot, buy gear, and drop into matches without touching a menu:

• Parkside, a working-class British setting.
• Montclair, cage football in a Parisian cityscape.
• Zeiza, built around Argentine potrero (makeshift field) culture.

Competitive formats allow for matchups such as 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and Rush. It also runs alongside looser activities like Bocce Ball, Team Keepaway and Balloon Ball. Progression is layered — Archetype XP, Grounds Coins, Amps and permanent Masteries all feed your Pro giving a long-term view to this new gameplay.

Mbappé, Chloe Kelly, Paulo Dybala and Alex Hunter appear as mentors, in a new feature, and Clubs is also folded in, with upgradeable stadiums and clubhouses. O

There is one catch: it’s PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Switch 2 only.

EA Sports via YouTube

FUT’s big idea this year is the Gallery — which is a permanent record of every card you’ve earned, whether you kept it or sold it. Complete collections by league, club and rarity to earn Gallery grades from D to S, unlocking kits, badges and Gallery Tokens.

What’s new is that premium tiers hand out holographic cards carrying player signatures. Those tokens feed the Hall of FUT, a set of 17 launch cards immortalising cult heroes including Hulk, Adebayo Akinfenwa and Marouane Fellaini.

Elsewhere, SBCs have been stripped of chemistry and rating requirements in favour of a single squad-score threshold, Evolutions now run six customisable stages with pre-viewable chains, and a new Campaign Hub pulls Objectives, Evolutions and Tokens into one place.

Manager & Player Career

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Career mode also gets its most substantial overhaul in a decade. The transfer market has been rebuilt around genuine negotiation — initial inquiries, rival interest, late contract changes — with valuations powered by a TransferRoom partnership and deals structured using installments, loan-backs, swaps and buyback clauses providing a more interactive experience.

Dynamic Player Overalls mean ratings now move with form, fitness, injuries and squad competition, while Growth Profiles give every player a distinct development curve. On the Player side, Career Rivalries pit you against a positional competitor, with in-game media coverage casting you as hero or villain.

In football, a ‘major trophy’ is silverware that carries genuine pedigree and a competitive weight for a club side.

With leagues, multiple domestic cups, super cups, tiered competitions and friendly tournaments, there’s a whole host of available team competitions to win.

Interestingly, there is no official barometer or ruling that stipulates exactly what trophies are considered “major” and what aren’t — a lot of it has come down to fan perception and a general acknowledgment of history and prestige.

With that in mind, we’ve decided to delve into this unique topic to define just what exactly a major trophy is in the footballing world.

Below are trophies that fit the billing as elite in the biggest regions.

England

• Premier League — the hardest and most prestigious trophy in English club football.
• FA Cup — the world’s oldest national knockout competition (founded 1871).
• EFL Cup (League Cup / Carabao Cup) — a secondary knockout, contested by the 92 EFL and Premier League clubs.

The Premier League and FA Cup are universally seen as major trophies, but the League Cup holds a unique position. While it does feature all the major clubs, its reputation and place in the football calendar deem it less prestigious. However, with a final at Wembley and a place in Europe up for grabs, it certainly sits on the borderline.

Europe

• UEFA Champions League — the pinnacle of club football, contested by the continent’s champions and top-ranked sides.
• UEFA Europa League (previously the UEFA Cup) — the secondary continental competition, a major honour in its own right.
• UEFA Conference League — the third-tier continental cup, launched in 2021: newest and least prestigious.

The Champions League is the top prize in club football worldwide and the Europa League has historically been a major trophy. However, in recent years, the introduction of the Conference League as a C-tier competition has sparked debate. It has been won by major clubs such as Chelsea and Roma, yet, it isn’t considered in the same bracket.

USA

• MLS Cup — the postseason playoff championship, and the trophy most Americans regard as “winning the league.”
• Supporters’ Shield — awarded to the best regular-season record across MLS.
• U.S. Open Cup — the oldest ongoing US competition (founded 1914), open to clubs across the American pyramid.
• CONCACAF Champions Cup — the confederation’s elite continental competition.

The MLS Cup and CONCACAF Champions Cup are the two major club honours that stand out. With the latter granting a path to the FIFA Club World Cup to compete with the top clubs in Europe. Whereas the other two trophies only have a domestic presence.

Which Trophies Are Not Considered Major, and Why?

• Community Shield (England) and equivalents — the annual champion-vs-cup-winner curtain-raiser.
• Super Cups generally, including the UEFA Super Cup — one-off matches, not campaigns.
• Trophée des Champions, DFL-Supercup, Supercopa and other domestic super cups.
• Pre-season and invitational tournaments — friendlies, the various summer cups, and testimonials.
• Youth, reserve, and regional trophies — not contested by first-team senior squads at full strength.

Across Europe, we can certainly list some less-prestigious competitions despite them featuring some of Europe’s best. Then there are debates over the likes of the FIFA Club World Cup and European Super Cup.

With the main argument being that you typically have to win a major competition that includes the likes of the Champions League or Europa League to attend, with many not recognising Chelsea as world champions even though they technically hold the title until 2029.

The likes of the Community Shield (and other Super Cup equivalents) are seen as the annual curtain-raiser for the season that predates the true beginning of the competitive campaign.

One section of tournaments that belongs in this section is any pre-season or invitational tournaments, while any youth competitions are invalid due to them not being senior affairs.

One unique way of looking at the distinction is through Barcelona (2009) and Bayern Munich‘s (2020) sextuple achievement. It includes winning all three domestic trophies, both European trophies and the Club World Cup, and they are the only two to achieve the feat.

Taken individually, the two super cups don’t register as major honours but by combining it all into a clean sweep of all six, though, they become something else entirely.

The sextuple is unprecedented, and within that group every trophy pulls its weight. It’s less a collection of six majors than a single statement of dominance.

Islam Makhachev will go down as one of the UFC’s greatest fighters. After dominating the lightweight division, he moved up to welterweight, where he’s continued to do the same, with his most recent victory at UFC 330 against Ian Machado Garry further cementing his legacy.

There does, however, remain one blemish on Makhachev’s UFC record, which came in only his second fight in the promotion when he suffered a knockout defeat to the more experienced Adriano Martins.

Less than two minutes into the first round, the Dagestan native was caught with a looping right hand which dropped him and put an early end to the fight.

Islam Makhachev vs Adriano Martins at UFC 192

After dominating in regional promotions in Russia, and being renowned for his wrestling, Makhachev spent time with the American Kickboxing Academy to work on his striking. It seems that the then 23-year-old was eager to show his new skills when he flew out of the traps with a barrage of overhand lefts, which his Brazilian opponent evaded with ease.

Martins took the fight at short notice and admitted he didn’t know too much about his promising opponent, who was nine years his junior. This may have gone in the Brazilian’s favour, as the Russian stood and tried to trade blows instead of using his usual wrestling style, seemingly going for an early finish.

This led to members of Makhachev’s corner to plead with him to slow things down, and take his time. However, this advice fell on deaf ears, as another overhand left opened him up to a wonderfully executed counter from Martins, which forced the referee to put an end to proceedings.

Islam Makhachev Hasn’t Looked Back Since UFC 192 Loss

Adriano Martins, meanwhile, has struggled ever since

But from that day, the careers of these two have gone in completely different directions.

While Makhachev has gone on to dominate the lightweight division, and now the welterweight division, beating names such as Charles Oliveira, Dustin Poirier, and Alexander Volkanovski, Martins didn’t taste victory again until March 2024, almost nine years later.

After such a disastrous defeat in only his second bout in the UFC, it would have been understandable to see Islam Makhachev’s confidence dwindle, especially at such a young age. But he went away, learned from his defeat, and continued with his striking training and became the number one UFC pound-for-pound fighter.