EA Sports caused no shortage of controversy with their FIFA 21 player ratings.

There was outrage around the world with Timo Werner and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang receiving downgrades, while Jordan Henderson and Paul Pogba were both given the same overall rating.

Combine that with Serge Gnabry having just 82 pace, Romelu Lukaku being snubbed for an upgrade and Thiago Alcantara only being rated 85 for a pretty controversial set of statistics.

Controversial FIFA 21 ratings

However, now that the dust has settled on all the data, gamers have been able to get adjusted with the game and look past what some are calling EA's worst player ratings of all time.

Besides, not all the numbers that come together for a player's overall rating are all that important when it comes to the biggest games on FIFA Ultimate Team.

And although the boffins at EA have tried to reduce how overpowered it is since the days of FIFA 13 and FIFA 14, I think we can all agree that the pace statistic remains one of the most crucial.

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Fastest players in the game

Whether it's playing a long ball over the top to the speedster leading your line or having a rapid centre-back to avoid the exact same happening to you, it can be a real lifesaver on FIFA.

Therefore, with so much interest surrounding who is considered the fastest player in the beautiful game, EA were sure to announce the 20 stars with the highest pace ratings on the game.

And interestingly, there was a three-way tie for first place with Kylian Mbappe, Adama Traore and Alphonso Davies all earning themselves a 96 rating to have defenders shaking in their boots.

That's all well and good, but what would actually happen if you raced those players against each other in the game - would they simply run stride for stride? Well, it turns out they wouldn't.

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Who's truly the fastest?

That's because YouTuber 'Wrzzer' conducted a fascinating experiment to see who was truly the fastest player on FIFA 21 by carrying out a series of races between the fastest players off the ball.

The tournament results went as follows:

Race one

Result: Alphonso Davies (1st), Daniel James (2nd), Mohamed Salah (3rd), Kensuke Nagai (4th).

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Race two

Result: Sadio Mane (1st), Leroy Sane (2nd), Gareth Bale (3rd), Lionel Messi (4th). 

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Race three

Result: Vinicius Junior (1st), Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (2nd), Raheem Sterling (3rd), Cristiano Ronaldo (4th).

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Race four

Result: Adama Traore (1st), Kylian Mbappe (2nd), Leon Bailey (3rd), Neymar (4th).

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Grand final

Result: Adama Traore (1st), Alphonso Davies (2nd), Vinicius Junior (3rd), Sadio Mane (4th).

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Full video

You can check out the full video down below to see the sprint races in all their glory:

So, there you have it, despite their being a three-way tie for the throne of speedster in chief in terms of FIFA 21 statistics, the in-game proof shows that Traore is truly the fastest of them all.

And in a week where Traore showed off his remarkable pace during his first two caps for Spain, it's pretty hard to argue with the unit from Molineux being named the Usain Bolt of football.

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