DeanFirst Cop or Flop of EA Sports FC 25 Here. We. Go. A special one here today as EA dropped a La Liga Player of the Month item a little earlier than expected than the usual content drop time. The POTM card of course is none other than the spanish wonder kid, Lamine Yamal.
Less than a month into this game and Yamal has already bagged himself his second special item and something tells me this is only a preview of what is to come. I can absolutely see this man being the star player for the future stars promo as well as I'm sure, many more performance based cards to come.
Yamal has a +5 boost on his base card and a +2 boost on his Inform Item. Unfortunately no playstyle+ on this card as an upgrade and no boost to the skill moves or weak foot. But it is early days so probably asking a little too much to be seeing those kinds of boosts on cards. No extra playstyles in general either. The only change outside of stats is that he has gained the “Inside Forward+” role for the RM position.
Speaking of positions, this card can play RW, RM & LW. He slots straight into the RW position for me as I was previously using the Inform Item anyway, so the POTM card fits perfectly in my squad.
My chosen chemstyle here was the Deadeye due to being concerned about shooting and passing being a bit low but the more popular choice is the Hunter Chemstyle to boost up the Pace and Shooting.
Here are the following segments to unlock the La Liga POTM Lamine Yamal SBC:
# of players from FC Barcelona: Min 1
Squad Rating: Min 84
# of players in squad: 11
Pack Return: Small Prime Mixed Players Pack
# of players from Spain: Min 1
Squad Rating: Min 85
# of players in squad: 11
Pack Return: Small Prime Mixed Players Pack
# of players from LALIGA EA SPORTS: Min 1
Squad Rating: Min 86
# of players in squad: 11
Pack Return: Jumbo Gold Pack
IF Players: Min 1
Squad Rating: Min 87
# of players in squad: 11
Pack Return: Prime Electrum Players Pack
So 4 segments and they certainly don’t look “cheap”. The price tag seems to be settling roughly around the 200k mark for the SBC. Having used the Inform version of Yamal that currently has a price tag of 40k and is of course tradeable, this card is going to really need to outperform that version in order to justify the 160k upgrade price.
How did he perform in-game?
+ Yamal feels incredibly rapid on the ball due to possessing the quick step playstyle along with 88 pace.
+ Technical dribbling on this card was really impressive due to him having that playstyle, he can maneuver with the ball really well when using this dribbling type.
+ Shooting in general was okay but due to him having finesse shot, he was constantly whipping balls into goal at range with ease.
+ His attack positioning was also decent as he often pushed out wide to freely receive the ball and move forward with the attack.
- Sadly he does have low composure and it showed in-game as when he was in high pressure situations he usually crumbled.
- Low stamina also let this card down late game as he went from being absolutely rapid down the wing to barely outrunning the opposition.
- Sadly he doesn’t have much in the strength department so he could be very often pushed off the ball.
Lamine Yamal - Cop or Flop?
Now I liked the inform version, so I figured going into this I would probably feel the same way. But both items felt so similar to me that I really could not tell the difference. This doesn’t come as a shock as the only difference really is just simple +2s across the board stats wise. I know it’s still early into the game but for me with this price tag, we really could have done with at least an extra playstyle or too let alone a playstyle+.
But as i’ve said, this is still early in the game cycle, for that reason I would probably suggest staying away from this card unless you’re going for a Barcelona themed run of this year's game cycle. The biggest issue here being the price, he’s simply not worth 200k as I feel he would probably be almost half that on the market. Save your coins on this one.
Verdict = FLOP
