When the gaming world collides with reality, even elite athletes can’t help but take notice. Claudia Pina never expected to become a household name in the gaming community. The 24 year old Barcelona Femení winger has built an impressive career, winning two Champions League titles, four league championships, and scoring over 40 goals in 2025 alone. But nothing quite prepared her for what happened when EA Sports FC 26 launched in late September.
Within days of the game’s early access release, Pina’s virtual card became the most sought-after player in Ultimate Team. Her price skyrocketed from a modest 4,000 coins to a peak of 80,000 coins, with her card becoming temporarily extinct from the market as demand overwhelmed supply. Professional players dropped million coin cards to use her instead. Content creators called her better than Mbappé. The gaming community crowned her as the successor to Ben Yedder, one of the most notoriously overpowered cards in FIFA history. She’s been used in over 3.5 million games, averaging more than a goal per match. Even Chelsea midfielder Romeo Lavia stated on his Instagarm Story about Pina’s card saying” You’ve gained a new hater in me what you have done to me this weekend league is unforgivable 😂”.
The phenomenon quickly spilled beyond the virtual world. FC 26 fans flooded Pina’s Instagram comments with gaming references and testimonials about her card’s dominance. Posts unrelated to football were hijacked by Ultimate Team players sharing their in game experiences with her character.
Claudia herself was asked about how she feels about this situation by reporter Ángel B. Gallardo and she stated “Well, yeah, in the end… on social media, I see it a lot. I play FIFA too, I really like it. I bought it (her card) the first week, when I didn’t cost what I do now, and honestly, it’s funny seeing how many people make videos about me on TikTok.”
🎮 CLÀUDIA PINA está chetadísima en la vida real y en el FIFA / EA FC 26 y reconoce habérselo comprado para poder jugar con su propia carta: pic.twitter.com/U9rRZgzI8m
— Ángel B. Gallardo (@angelbgallardo) October 19, 2025
Whether Pina embraces this newfound gaming celebrity or views it with bemusement, she’s already written herself into Ultimate Team history. The phenomenon has sparked discussions about representation in gaming, the meta defining power of certain cards, and how performances on games can amplify real world recognition.
Claudia Pina is a star in two realms she’s consistently scoring spectacular goals for Barcelona on the pitch, and her virtual counterpart is doing the same for players everywhere. The convergence of these two has created something neither EA Sports nor Pina herself could have predicted, a genuine cultural moment where sports, gaming, and internet culture collided in the most unexpected way.
