FIFA 20 cover star: Which players replace Ronaldo as face of EA Sports' game?

The front cover of EA Sports' FIFA video game series has featured some of the best footballers in the world.

Stars such as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney, for example, have all had their visage adorn the game jacket in the past decade.

Ronaldo was the most recent face of the game, appearing as cover star for FIFA 18 and FIFA 19, but EA Sports will move on from the Portugal captain for FIFA 20.

So who will be the cover star for the next instalment in the series? Goal takes a look.

Who is FIFA 20 cover star?

There are three different cover stars for FIFA 20's three editions. They are: Eden Hazard, Virgil van Dijk and Zinedine Zidane.

Real Madrid playmaker Hazard is the cover star for the standard edition of the game, while Liverpool defender Van Dijk is the face of the Champions edition, as a key member of the Reds' Champions League-winning team in 2018-19.

Zidane, who is a new addition to FIFA's collection of Icons, is depicted during his playing days rather than in his current role as a coach and is the cover star for the Ultimate edition.

EA Sports

It's common for FIFA's cover stars to be among the highest rated players in the game, so expect Hazard, Van Dijk and Zidane to boast ratings of 90-plus.

It is not the first time Hazard has featured on the cover of a FIFA game, having joined Messi on the front of FIFA 15 - but in the United Kingdom only.

The Belgium international said: "I am lucky to have been on the cover before but to be on FIFA 20 globally is amazing and I hope to excite as many gamers as I do when I take the field for Real Madrid this season!"

Van Dijk, however, is appearing for the first time and described it as a "huge honour".

"I've been playing FIFA for as long as I can remember and so it's an extremely proud moment for me to be representing Liverpool FC on the cover of such an iconic game," said the Netherlands international.

Previous FIFA cover stars

EA Sports has used a number of different players as their cover athletes over the years, sometimes using one individual and other times using multiple.

You can see the main cover stars for the past 10 editions of the game in the table below, including the latest.

While Ronaldo enjoyed sole billing on FIFA 19 and FIFA 18, the others have usually been joined by different stars on regional cover variations.

For example, for the UK version of FIFA 14, Messi was joined on the cover by Gareth Bale, while the Polish version featured Robert Lewandowski.

Going back further than FIFA 10, from FIFA 06 to FIFA 09, the main cover stars were Ronaldinho and, to a lesser extent, Rooney. The regional flavour existed back then too.

The early 2000s - when the game series was known as FIFA Football - there were usually three cover stars. FIFA Football 2003 featured Roberto Carlos, Ryan Giggs and Edgar Davids, while FIFA Football 2004 had Alessandro Del Piero, Thierry Henry and Ronaldinho.

Indeed, that decade is when EA Sports began to noticeably shift the focus of its game covers, ensuring that the biggest names in football were involved each year.

Football supporters and players of the game have been included in the process more often in the last decade, with EA Sports holding fan votes to select which players will accompany their main stars on the front.