FIFA 09 is here! It's the best FIFA game of all time (don't take our word for it of course, that's just what the professionals are saying), and one of the best bits is adidas Live Season.

But what is it?
adidas Live Season is a new service that allows you to update the form and fitness of your in-game players by linking them with events in the real-life football world.

A large team of dedicated EA football experts scours the world’s media and Football World community feedback every week and updates the player database with new stats to reflect the form of individual players. Once the latest update becomes available each week, you can download it directly via the game to your Xbox 360, PS3 or PC.

You can subscribe to adidas Live Season data for up to six top leagues, one of which you can get free of charge from the moment you start playing the game:

Premier League (England)
Ligue 1 (France)
La Liga (Spain)
Serie A (Italy)
Bundesliga 1 (Germany)
Primera División (Mexico)

You can purchase any of the remaining leagues for £4.99 each on PlayStation Network or EA Store (for PC), or for 560 points on Xbox Live Marketplace. Or you can get all the leagues together for £12.99 on PlayStation Network or EA Store (for PC), and for 1,600 points on Xbox Live Marketplace.

And how does all that affect your game?
While many real-world players will make like Jamie Carragher during the season and perform at a very consistent level, others will not. For example (to stretch the Liverpool theme a little further), while Robbie Keane continues to stagger around without scoring week after week, strike partner Fernando Torres is just beginning to find his fire. And the performances of both will be reflected in your copy of FIFA 09 – along with the form stats of every other player in your chosen leagues.

You can choose whether to play with the adidas Live Season data applied or not, of course. But however you use it, it’s a big step closer to the real game than ever before!

adidas Live Season on Football World
Log on to this very website and you’ll be able to see all the latest changes to player form across the six featured leagues, as well as a full history of changes over the course of a season.

But not only that. You can suggest your own form changes to the team at EA!

Each week you can select as many players as you like from the six leagues and adjust their form up or down as you see fit. Choose your top five of those and, once the deadline arrives, those five suggestions will be correlated with those of the team at EA. If your choices match ours, you’ll score points and move up the adidas Live Season Leaderboard. Get it wrong and you’ll score nothing and start moving in the other direction on the Leaderboard. But either way, EA’s Live Season World Wide Editors will be paying close attention to the choices of the Football World community and, where appropriate, adjusting things accordingly.

For a full run-down, check out our updates FAQs pages.