EA Sports FC 24 boss on sportswashing, engagement, and Gen Z football fans

"You can change your wife, your politics, your religion. But never, never can you change your favourite football team," goes the old Eric Cantona quote - but over time that sentiment has started to change.

Younger fans, particularly the group broadly defined as Gen Z, are now more inclined to support individual players throughout their careers, as opposed to the usual method of one club 'til death do us part, according to one much-discussed study by Copa90, and the change in younger fans' approach has some of the game's older members a little worried.

Generally, the argument goes, young people aren't following football in the traditional way - not watching full 90-minute matches, not following clubs as religiously as today's influencer-style players, and generally not being as invested in the sport - and so therefore the sport had become "ill," in the words of Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez, and therefore needed saving. "By 2024 we're dead."

Read more