The highest-rated FIFA XI of all time: No Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo

Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have completely dominated world football for the past decade and a half, but neither of them make it into the best XI of players to be featured on EA Sports’ best-selling FIFA videogame franchise.

Both Messi and Ronaldo have peaked at a rating of 94, which we’re afraid doesn’t cut the mustard to get into our ultimate Ultimate Team.

In a 4-4-f*cking-2, we’ve taken a look at the best XI to grace the game across all of its previous editions.

It was always going to be him, wasn’t it? The only question was which era Buffon made the cut.

Weirdly, Buffon was coming off the back of a 2003-04 season in which Juventus finished just third in Serie A, with six teams conceding fewer than the 42 goals the Old Lady let in.

And the goalkeeper had also suffered disappointment at Euro 2004, as Italy were knocked out at the group stage despite being unbeaten.

Buffon was, however, named in the UEFA Team of the Year and also won the IFFHS World’s Best Goalkeeper award, although he missed out on the Serie A Goalkeeper of the Year honour to Dida.

Another Juventus player coming off the back of a disappointing season, Thuram was a defensive don on a host of football games in the mid-2000s.

In the summer of 2004, Fabio Capello was appointed Juve manager and Thuram was mainly used as a centre-back, but he was named as a right-back in the 2005 edition of FIFA.

Sticking with Serie A, and once more with the 2005 edition of the game, Nesta was deemed to be at his peak after helping Milan win Serie A, conceding a miserly 24 goals in 34 games in the process.

But it was his team-mate Andriy Shevchenko who graced the cover alongside Patrick Vieira and Raul.

READ: A tribute to five wonderful Serie A defences: Milan, Parma, Inter,