I stupidly got into FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT) in one of the games from a cellphone couple years ago. I mistakenly assumed that your team from one annual release of FIFA would carry over to the next release, but I was shocked to find out that this isn't the case. EA basically deletes players FUT progress every year! Thankfully I didn't spend any money on it, so it was just time spent which was at least kind of fun, but I know some friends who have sunk a couple hundred bucks into it and they continue to buy and play the next game. I'm baffled that people put up with this. I will never touch FIFA again, until this changes. At least Fanatics can't delete your trading cards and you can resell them. Until there are similar guarantees for digital items, I don't think they will have nearly the same appeal. Valve has been the only company I know of that has done this decently with TF2, CSGO and Dota 2 skins.
I think the issue you have is real, but perhaps not quite in the way you think? if you have the full game on a console/PC, you can continue to play with your team from the previous year until maybe 3 or 4 years on when they turn off the servers, and all your work is lost forever. that's the thing I have an issue with. I'd love to go back and play with my teams from FIFA 13 or 15, but they're lost to the wind, or at least somewhere within EA's archives, at best
Your issue is an issue with the way they implement the app, which has always been a bit of an afterthought to the main game in general. Still a valid issue and must have been extremely annoying, but I suspect your case might be quite unusual in that you came into it via the app, rather than the main title. however admittedly I'm not as au fait with the FIFA world as I used to be, so that may be more common than I assume
