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If you're a football fan, then you probably spent last summer reading about Gareth Bale, Neymar and Luis Suarez. Would they move? How much for? It's all part of the fun of the sport. Me though, I was busy getting excited about another transfer entirely. Because at the start of July 2013, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang ended his two-year spell at Saint-Etienne and signed for every football hipster's second club, Borussia Dortmund.Aubameyang was a legend in Ultimate Team, and news that he was moving from French Ligue 1 to the German Bundesliga was significant. Thanks to Ultimate Team's chemistry system, which uses nationality to help determine the quality of interplay between squad members, it had always been difficult to integrate the young Gabonese striker into a team of real class. Now he was off to Germany, where he could be surrounded by superstars.
This elevation of a relatively obscure player to stardom is not unusual in Ultimate Team, and it's down to a mixture of economics and gameplay balance. Aubameyang is in the sweet spot for both: he plays for a less glamorous club than Bale, Messi and Ronaldo, so he finds himself less in demand and his transfer price is more reasonable, while his lightning pace is serially useful in FIFA games, where matches often play out in a hyperactive frenzy of end-to-end-football. It may not make the bulletins on Sky Sports News when he moves in real life, but it's a big deal in Ultimate Team.
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