It's no secret that Ireland's stand-in captain for our crucial qualifiers against Moldova and Wales earlier in the month absolutely loves a bit of FIFA in his spare time, but those who don't understand the popular football game don't realise that he's actually ridiculously good at it.
Weekend League is a game mode that we saw added to FIFA Ultimate Team for the first time last year, and it is basically the proving ground for anyone who thinks they are an elite FIFA player because you need to win an online tournament just to qualify, and then you have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to get 40 games in against opponents who have also qualified including professional FIFA players and see where you rank.
The goal is to win matches 40/40, a nearly impossible task that one or two players will achieve if they are very lucky, but anything above 30/40 is extremely impressive - as in, very nearly professional impressive - due to the difficulty of the task.
This weekend, David Meyler was able to win 35/40 games.
Finished my FUT Champs Weekend League! @EASPORTSFIFA wait and see if we stay Top 100. Fingers crossed. pic.twitter.com/kcwRRx2mfL
— David Meyler (@DavidMeyler7) October 22, 2017
That's damn good going, but it is not the most remarkable thing about the Cork native's FIFA exploits...
Meyler shared his FIFA 18 Ultimate Team, the one he uses in Weekend League, and it is absolutely mind-blowing.
In case you can't make it out from the image:
GK: Manuel Neuer - 92 OVR
RB: Kyle Walker - 83 OVR
CB: Rio Ferdinand - 88 OVR
CB: Paulo Maldini - 93 OVR
LB: Javier Zanetti - 87 OVRCDM: David Meyler - 99 OVR (Pro player card gifted by EA Sports)
CM: Ruud Gullit - 90 OVR
CM: Ronaldinho - 91 OVR
CAM: Diego Maradona - 95 OVRST: Pele - 91 OVR
ST: Ronaldo - 96 OVR
A bit of an upgrade on Ahmed Musa and Tiemoue Bakayoko as you'll see in every other team during Weekend League.
The 'Icon' cards and Meyler's own beefed up version of himself were gifts from EA Sports, presumably granted because they felt bad about giving him a criminally low overall rating of 69 in this year's game.
