UEFA Euro 2008 Ratings

While most soccer games that attempt to accurately model real-life players from around the world have to handle thousands upon thousands of players, EA has it relatively easy with UEFA Euro 2008. Since the game only involves the national teams of Europe, the game features around 2,000 players. That huge difference allows EA to focus on the smaller subset of players that will appear in UEFA Euro 2008, meaning that the players involved should be modeled more accurately and have ratings more akin to their real-life value.

Right?

Well, that's for you to judge. While EA will release a roster update with the Euro 2008 official rosters when they're confirmed by the countries involved, we went through the rosters of each team in the game and found each country's best player. We also, then, created a "Best 11 in Europe" list, picking the best players from each team in a 4-4-2 formation.

First, though, we need to mention which teams are, to steal a phrase, in the game, but not in the game. Because licenses for countries must be procured on a nation-by-nation basis, there are countries whose financial demands or other concerns prevented them from fully appearing in the game. As a result, there are several teams who have fake kits, and other teams who have both fake kits and fake players.

Fake Kits: Cyprus, Finland, Hungary, Israel, Ukraine

Fake Teams: Armenia, Azerbajian, Belarus, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Russia, Serbia, Wales

Each team's best player is listed below.