Rashford stars as EA Sports FIFA reveals the Premier League Team of the Season

England forward Marcus Rashford leads the line as EA Sports FIFA and the Premier League have determined their top performers this season.

Rashford, 25, who has scored 16 goals and assisted five more as Manchester United look to secure a top-four finish in the Premier League, is joined by fellow England players Kieran Trippier and Aaron Ramsdale in the starting eleven, which was chosen based on a combination of public and internal EA Sports FIFA votes.

Manchester United’s former academy player dazzled following his return from the Qatar World Cup in December, scoring 10 goals in 10 games as the Red Devils rose up the league table into a season-high position of third.

This run followed an impressive World Cup campaign for the forward, who mainly plys his trade as a left winger, scoring three goals as England reached the quarter-finals of the international tournament.

The official Premier League Team of the Season has been partnered with video game company EA Sports since 2016. Fans of the EA Sports FIFA 23 video game were offered the chance to vote for their Premier League Team of the Season in April, with the opportunity to decide from a shortlist of 40 players to include for each position in a 4-3-3 template. Although EA Sports FIFA have not revealed the weighting afforded to the public vote, in previous years the weighting was believed to be 20%, with the final 80% decided by EA Sports and the Premier League.

EA Sports FIFA then produced highly anticipated special virtual versions of the Team of the Season players within the popular FIFA Ultimate Team mode in the FIFA 23 game.

Trippier’s contribution to Newcastle United’s chase for the top four of the Premier League has been rewarded with inclusion in the Team of the Season at right-back. Often featuring as Newcastle captain in his first full season for the club following signing from Atletico Madrid in January 2022, Trippier, 32, has impressed in offense and defence with six assists and one goal as the Magpies have kept 13 clean sheets as they attempt to secure third place in the league. Trippier played in all three group games for England in Qatar at both right-back and left-back.

Arsenal’s ever-present goalkeeper Ramsdale, 24, who has made three appearances for the England senior team, has also kept 13 clean sheets as Arsenal have shocked the league with an outstanding run of form that kept the team top of the table from the start of the season until the last couple of weeks. Ramsdale also travelled to Qatar with the Three Lions but was not preferred to play over Everton’s Jordan Pickford by England manager Gareth Southgate.

Kieran Trippier features as the Premier League’s right-back in the Team of the Season (Credit: geordiebootboys.com).

Social media reactions to Rashford’s inclusion are mainly positive, but some fans have questioned the absence of Arsenal’s high performing wingers, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli, who both operate in similar positions to Rashford as their club has led the Premier League table for the majority of the season.

“Martinelli and Saka over Rashford and Salah this season,” says @iam_philopearl on Twitter. Similarly, @JoyMoreen1 questions “Rashford ahead of Saka and Kane? 🤔🤔🤔🤔”.

Saka’s absence is arguably the most questionable, as the 21-year-old has shone with 13 goals and 11 assists, his highest return in a league season, whilst his Brazilian teammate Martinelli, also 21, has contributed a further 15 goals and five assists in a breakthrough season for Mikel Arteta’s young Gunners.

Like Rashford, Saka also had a standout World Cup campaign for England with three goals, including a brace in the Three Lions’ opening game against Iran, starting all but one of the team’s five games. Both players were previously targets of abhorrent online racist abuse following England’s penalty shootout defeat to Italy in the Euro 2020 tournament, held in July 2021, where both failed to score their penalties.

Marcus Rashford (right) and Bukayo Saka played for England at the 2022 Qatar World Cup – but only the former features in the Premier League Team of the Season (Credit: vnexplorer.net).

Outside of Rashford’s competitors in the wing positions, another England star to miss out was Three Lions captain and Tottenham Hotspur’s talisman Harry Kane. Kane, 29, has delivered yet another outstanding personal campaign despite his team’s struggles with performance and results in a turbulent campaign which has seen manager Antonio Conte lose his job.

With 26 goals and three assists in the Premier League, this is Kane’s best goalscoring season since he reached 30 goals in 2017-18, and he is second only to Manchester City’s record-breaking Erling Haaland in the league’s scoring charts. Kane scored twice in Qatar, but missed a crucial penalty kick as England fell 2-1 to France. He has since regained his scoring touch for the Three Lions, and in March became England’s top goalscorer of all time, overtaking England legend Wayne Rooney’s tally of 53 goals.

Whilst Tottenham’s form may have played a factor in Kane’s exclusion from the Team of the Season, as the team lingers in sixth spot at the time of writing with Brighton and Hove Albion threatening to overtake, it is unsurprising that City’s Norwegian powerhouse takes the only striker spot in the best-performing line-up.

Often operating as Manchester United’s central striker following the controversial exit from the club of Cristiano Ronaldo, Rashford has massively improved his goal contribution output following an underwhelming previous season. He finished with just four league goals in 2021-22 as he struggled with a long-term shoulder injury and poor form. In this 2022-23 season, Rashford has appeared in all but one of United’s league matches to date and has been central to the team’s positive attacking performances under manager Erik Ten Hag.

Marcus Rashford has scored a career-best 16 Premier League goals so far this season for Manchester United (Credit: unitedinfocus.com).

Rashford received the Premier League Player of the Month award, also sponsored by EA Sports FIFA, a joint-record three times this season, for his performances in September, January and February. The only other player to have received the award three times in a season is Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah in the 2017-18 season.

However, Rashford’s form has dipped in recent matches compared to his post-World Cup performance, scoring only twice in his last nine matches as United now face the threat of losing the fourth and final Champions League spot in the table to a chasing pack of Liverpool, Tottenham and Brighton.

Rashford has featured in two previous editions of the EA Sports FIFA Premier League Team of the Season, for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, since making his Premier League debut in February 2016.