Pretty graphics and presentation packages are nice FUT 23 Coins and definitely help with immersion, but you know what’s even better? Having the AI actually do stuff that resembles real footy. That’s what I want and expect from a football game in 2021. Here, EA lets us know that its new “cutting edge proprietary machine learning algorithm not only captures but learns from the data it captures to create organic football realism.” It all sounds good to me as I’m a huge fan of all things organic. Hopefully, EA delivers the goods like a well placed cross from Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold.

It’s all about authenticity in this reveal for EA, so it’s a no-brainer that the next logical step is centered around taking those individual moments and recreating them in a full 11v11 fashion. After all, soccer at the highest level is a team sport where usually the successful teams move and act like one organized unit, which at times with FIFA 23 was sorely misrepresented. EA does not offer much information on this new “Full Team Authentic Motion” but it did tease that it will add more intensity, responsiveness, and physicality to nearly every player in the game.

Last on this subject, and I’d be remiss to not mention it was the short GIF EA used to showcase this new feature. After FIFA 23′s lack of midfielders tracking runners on defense, the clip EA uses shows what looks like ex-Liverpool player Gini Wijnaldum shuffling back on defense in all too familiar a sight for FIFA fans. Instead of marking the closest Spurs player, he chooses to casually side step. I hope that’s resolved in the full game.

Full Team Authentic Motion naturally feeds into the next topic EA teased, “Tactical AI in Attack & Defense.” On the surface, this feature seems aimed at replicating the ebbs and flows of the beautiful game, both going forward and also defending. There’s been a lot of discussion since EA removed “2nd man pressure” as the default way to defend. This discussion has split the offline and online crowd in two, but I will always be of the belief that defending is done as buying FUT 23 Coins a unit — with an emphasis on closing down the opposition when the situation calls for it.