Behold: eFootball’s Next Leap Into Stat Inflation — Enter 110 OVR Zlatan!

 Wait.....What Actually Just  Happened? 

The newly released big time card of Zlatan Ibrahimović makes his way into eFootball 2026 with a first time ever maximum overall rating of 110! It sports one of the the special 'World Classic' background that the Notorious PELE was introduced to the game with. Several other legendary players such as Rooney, Van Der Saar, Pepe, Tevez and even Puskás to name a few were all introduced as World Classics Epics since then.

When did 110 Zlatan Ibrahimović appear in eFootball?

The eve of the live update which arrived on November 20,2025 saw Konami official social media pages teased its global fanbase with a mysterious post -  a graphic containing a Lion , with the sky changing colours and a unique quote embedded in the caption : "Leaves like a legend, comes like a king" which was translated from Japanese. 

This left fans buzzing as they quickly figured out that a Zlatan special card was coming to the game, based on all the clues mentioned in the Konami post. 

After the server maintenance was lifted and the game was opened with a brand new live update, fans were welcomed to the main screen by a BIG SURPRISE. The first Zlatan Ibrahimović card arrived to the game, and was immediately the highest rated card in the game dethroning the Blitz Curler Messi 108 Barcelona card.

Why exactly is Konami taking this route?

From a business point of a view Konami is milking every penny from its customers , there is no better way to put it than this.

This is the reason why the game has become heavily PAY-TO-WIN as the community describes. Shiny cards is the only thing left that keeps certain people coming back to the game while other valuable aspects have been totally ruined such as gameplay, offline features and activities to keep you entertained.

Their energy is focused into constantly releasing Nostalgic players into the game; though it is deemed to be hidden behind a ridiculous ‘pay wall’  - a pay wall which majority of the average players won’t be able to break.

Photo courtesy of @Bateson87Plus (Youtube)

Where is this going ? Should we be concerned ?

Honestly , the game has been gone for a long time now. And this is just the final nail in the coffin. To answer your question you are afraid to raise right now - YES ! The game is becoming just like FIFA (EAFC) . In terms of inflated OVR at least , since we already know the gameplay of FIFA is very Arcady and has an unrealistic feeling about it.

This idea from Konami is actually Genius , though CRUEL. They know people will empty out their pockets if their favourite childhood football hero appears into the game suddenly one Thursday morning after a live update. So why wouldn’t they capitalise on such a vulnerable notion , and weakness in their customer fanbase ?

This could actually turn out into a horror show where the ratings exceed 110 and reach 120 , each week releasing a more and more powerful card and then when these cards become stale they go even higher . They could also do a plot twist and do soft reset and see all the maximum ratings of cards reduce to 100 at base level. Such a change however , would come only after a eFootball version upgrade such as eFootball 2027 in 2026.

As a frequent player of the game myself I am not worried about the performance of these cards trumping other existing cards due to the analysis and understanding of the stats themself.

The stats for example of this newly added Zlatan Ibrahimovic epic card compares quite similarly to a regular 104 rated striker card , whose 104 rated card is nothing spectacular above the previous iterations of 100 rated cards of the same striker profiles.

See below the stats comparison among other popular Fox in the Box Strikers (Credit: eFHUB):

When you look at the game in such a detailed level , you realise that you can actually still compete with a fairly decent squad against a Mega sized Pay To Win squad with the latest inflated players since many of those stats don’t reflect in the game either way.

For example , many researchers such Amdeusz (eFootball data analysis and researcher) would point out that finishing above 93 is unnecessary for any striker as stats above 93 finishing is not making any difference in the game.

So other than having 100 green and blue stats in every area , it’s also important that the stats are reflected and felt during gameplay. If these stats are not felt and are not making any difference then the truth can be said that this is just becoming a card collecting game , couldn’t it ?

In PES mobile 2021 and prior with iconic moments every single IM card’s power was felt , either they were felt in their unique inflated stats or they were felt with their unique profiled PLAYER ID - an aspect of the game that seemed to have been removed totally . All cards feel almost the same now.

So it’s not crucial for us to worry that these expensive Epic, Big Time and Showtime cards will have an unfair advantage over other users.

How do we continue to enjoy the game knowing Konami is investing their time in cards rather than the game itself ?

The truth is , friend. It is not wise to get your hopes up about this game in terms of improvement any time soon. Because the direction they haven taken seems to be to the company’s benefit rather than to suit or comfort the players around the world who are spending thousands  of dollars on the game to enjoy themself .

It’s very poor and distasteful to see this is the way they view customers who have been following this franchise for the past two decades. Watching the game decline over the years has been a pain to watch, and the introduction of 110 OVR rating cards is  not even the biggest problem , but every other week we are reminded that they are not thinking about the players of the game , only themselves.

We can only hope that they begin to spend some more time to develop the game itself rather than shiny expensive cards , coming in 150 and 250 casino draw boxes every single week. For now the direction of the company is clear , we may as well just collect nostalgic cards for now and hope we will actually be able to enjoy them at a later date.