Cole Palmer's Twitch Debacle: EA Sports FC 27 Leak
Cole Palmer has spent the opening weeks of the season tormenting Premier League defenders. On Tuesday afternoon, he turned his attention to a different opponent: EA Sports.
The 24-year-old Chelsea playmaker casually logged onto Twitch and fired up EA Sports FC 27, treating thousands of viewers to an impromptu look at a game that, officially, nobody should have been playing yet. No media partner stream, no sponsor overlay, no carefully timed countdown. Just Palmer, a controller, and a stack of Ultimate Team packs.
The problem? The global launch isn’t until September 25. Early access doesn’t even open until September 18.
Palmer streamed for over an hour, ripping through packs and jumping into matches while the game’s strict embargo lay in tatters. It didn’t take long for the developers to notice. The broadcast suddenly vanished, and his Twitch channel was scrubbed of all EA Sports FC 27 content after a copyright claim. One moment he was chatting chemistry styles and card designs; the next, the screen was gone.
Before the plug was pulled, the whole thing had already veered into farce. EA Sports FC’s official account dropped into the chat, offering a playful but pointed reminder that this was not quite the plan.
“Errr Cole, weren't we going to do this a bit later? We'll be live at 6pm UK!” came the message, a corporate eyebrow raised in real time as their own cover was blown by one of the game’s poster boys.
Palmer didn’t exactly go into hiding. After the stream disappeared and his account took a hit, he moved the show to Instagram. On his story, he tagged both Twitch and EA with a tongue-in-cheek plea: “I was only giving the people what they wanted... unban me pls.”
He then popped up under a social media post about his suspension elsewhere, offering a simple, defiant line: “We back soon.”
The unscheduled leak wasn’t the only thing to rile him. During the doomed broadcast, Palmer discovered his new in-game rating — and he was far from impressed. Having finished last year at 87 overall, he clocked in at 85 this time around.
“I need a word with EA. They took two ratings off me,” he complained on stream. “I had one leg for ten months last season, what do you want me to do?”
That frustration taps straight into the reality of his last campaign. Palmer spent a large chunk of it managing his body rather than dictating games. A groin issue and a fractured toe wrecked his rhythm and limited his influence in the opening months. For a player who thrives on sharpness and repetition, it was torture.
He also took issue with his pace stat, discovering he’d been clocked at 76 — slower than Chelsea team-mate Morgan Rogers.
“76 pace? I don't know how he's got more pace than me but, EA sometimes, man, they're a bit crazy,” he said, half-laughing, half-bristling at the idea the game didn’t quite see him the way he sees himself.
Those numbers clearly cut a little deeper than a simple video game gripe. During Chelsea’s pre-season tour in Sydney, Palmer had already laid bare how badly last season’s injuries had gnawed at him.
“The first few months, with me being injured, I just wanted to go out and play, which I probably shouldn't have done,” he admitted. “Obviously, I couldn't play how I wanted to play. It was a bad season, personally, with injuries and stuff, but I feel good now. The seven weeks obviously helped. I'm ready to go again.”
He even revealed the lengths he went to in search of a solution.
“I went to Sweden or Denmark, one of those countries, to see a doctor,” he said. “We did speak about (surgery), but I didn't end up getting it.”
It’s the kind of behind-the-scenes slog that never shows up in a rating screen. Trips abroad. Consultations about surgery. The nagging fear that the body might not respond. Palmer rode all of that out, and now, with the new season under way, the picture looks very different.
His injury troubles appear to be parked, and his football is doing the talking again. Alongside Rogers, he has burst out of the blocks, both players already racking up four goal contributions each in the Premier League. Their partnership has injected tempo and incision into Chelsea’s attack and given Stamford Bridge a sense of early-season optimism that has been in short supply in recent years.
The numbers that matter most to Chelsea are not the ones on a virtual card but the ones on the scoreboard. In that arena, Palmer is trending sharply upwards. His form in the Premier League and the Carabao Cup has become central to the way this team moves, presses, and punishes.
For now, he will have to wait to discover whether Twitch offers him a reprieve and whether EA decides to loosen the handbrake on his virtual pace. The banter will roll on, the memes will keep coming.
What Chelsea care about is simpler: that the version of Cole Palmer tearing through real defences keeps looking a lot more like a 90-rated superstar than the 85 on the screen.
