Landon Donovan, Carlos Vela on North American FIFA 11 box

Last week, EA Sports announced Brazilian footballer Kaká as the global cover athlete for FIFA 11, and noted that 17 other soccer stars would join him in specific regions. Today, EA has revealed the North American cover athletes for the game: Carlos Vela (of Arsenal F.C. and the Mexico national football team), and Landon Donovan (of Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy and the US Men’s National Team). You can check out the full PS3 box art in the gallery below.

Donovan single-handedly awakened American interest in soccer with his stellar performance in this summer’s World Cup, including a thrilling, stoppage-time, Group-C-winning goal against Algeria that has gone down as the best moment in US men’s international soccer thus far. (Aside: Watch this video of the world’s reaction to Donovan’s goal. I dare you not to get chills or have tears well up in your eyes. It’s beautiful.) This marks Donovan’s third appearance on the cover of a FIFA Soccer game; he was also on the North American boxes of FIFA Soccer 2003 and FIFA Soccer 07.

Putting Donovan on the box is a smart move by EA — Americans have already stopped caring about soccer, but those who watched the World Cup won’t soon forget Donovan’s heroics, and they’ll hopefully be reminded of his goals when they see him on the box for FIFA 11 when it launches on September 28th in North America for PS3, 360, Wii, PC, PSP, PS2, DS, and mobile platforms. (The game will launch on October 1st in Europe and Asia.)