20/03/2024 The FIFA 21 servers are now offline, meaning you can no longer play Ultimate Team and its content.
FIFA 21 Ultimate Team gave players more customization options than ever before with the introduction of club nicknames. If you played FUT 21 with the commentary on, then you would have heard the commentary team use this nickname – or a shortened version of it – to mention your club. Most of them were pretty standard: City, Wanderers, or United, while some of them were ridiculous and brilliant.
In FIFA 21 Ultimate Team, you could unlock the club nickname customization option by completing 20 matches in any FUT game mode. You’d then be given three nicknames to choose from to start with.
You could set your nickname in the newly revamped stadium menu. If you didn’t like the nickname you picked, then you could head to the FUT transfer market to buy a new one. Some are rarer than others, however, and sold for top dollar (5,000 coins) when listed. To add a little extra frustration, EA didn’t make the club items searchable, unlike players or kits, so you used to have to rifle through the pages to find your perfect nickname.
With the FIFA 21 servers now permanently offline, it’s no longer possible to play Ultimate Team in this iteration of the game. Therefore, you can’t create or name your team. Nevertheless, EA should have given the development team that came up with these a raise. Oh, and Derek Rae too because there’s no way he recorded all of these with a straight face.
The best FIFA 21 Nickname cards
The best FIFA 21 Nickname cards were:
Old Lady
Getting beaten by a team called the Old Lady was the ultimate disrespect. It even brought a new level to “my gran could beat you at FIFA.”
The Old Lady nickname actually referred to Juventus FC. Juventus in Latin means youth, and the ironic nickname was given to Juve – or Piemonte Calcio as they were known in FIFA 21 – in the 1930s.
Cheers Geoff
A tribute to everyone’s favourite man down on the sidelines, the injury updates from Geoff Shreeves. He let us know when our opponents had battered our strikers, leaving the commentary team to reply “cheers Geoff”.
A FIFA legend over the years, Shreeves certainly earned his card in FIFA 21.
Football Friends
Oooh, football friends!
Fans of The Inbetweeners will remember the episode where Jay was getting roasted by Simon and Neil for knowing someone from football and the term ‘football friend’ was born.
We all had trials at a pro club back in the day, Jay, don’t worry.
Absolute Mad Lads
The Absolute Mad Lads. The fearless risk-takers, the definitions of YOLO, but sometimes lacking common sense.
In FUT 21? Those that played Weekend League without a backline made up of Mendy, Varane, Gomez, and Semedo. Brave? Mad? Cringe? You could decide with this FUT nickname.
The Biggest Snakes
The Biggest Snakes around are the sweaty goal-scoring, dropback AI-defending players who would rinse the FIFA 21 meta for everything it was worth. They’d ball roll you into oblivion, cut it back past the keeper and tap it in, then make you watch a long celebration.
Beast FC
If you prefer playing physical football to knock pacey players off their stride, perhaps you’d need to be known as Beast FC. There’s nothing more satisfying than an opposition defender bouncing off your striker and putting a powerful strike in the top bin,
You could go full beast mode in FUT 21 by captaining Adebayo Akinfenwa, who was the strongest player in FIFA 21.
The Dream Destroyers
Want to ruin someone’s weekend? Then you would have wanted to play with the Dream Destroyers.
We were definitely beaten with this one (including sitting through the last-minute winner celebration on next-gen consoles) a handful of times, adding insult to injury.
Dream destroyed, indeed.
Liquid Football
Replace Derek Rae with Alan Partridge, and you get Liquid Football. This reference will go well over some FIFA players’ heads, especially nowadays, but for the older players in the community, this was right up their street. Check out Partridge’s football commentary on YouTube.
A Partridge commentary DLC pack would have been brilliant and not unheard of with EA titles; Snoop Dog was a guest commentator in NHL 20. Eat my goal!
Invincibles
This was a very brave statement to make in FIFA 21.
The Invincibles was a reference to the Arsenal side of the 2003-2004 season, who were undefeated in the Premier League all season on a run of 49 games. All before Anders Vejrgang was born…
Hardly Athletic
One for the slow boys, straight out of the funniest fantasy football team names pile. We appreciate the anti-meta jibe, as we all liked to keep a few snails in our squad for balance.
Well, that was all the best FIFA 21 nicknames for Ultimate Team. While it’s a shame that you can no longer get or use these with the servers having been taken down, it’s an interesting trip down memory lane.