FIFA 23 will always try to have you play matches on your best game data center when playing online. Although that is often the nearest one, this is not always the case.
Internet service providers (ISP) generally don’t send data from Point A to Point B directly. They route this data across locations, sometimes even the whole world. This can be a physical networking infrastructure limitation of some ISPs or part of their business model. These types of decisions are ultimately handled by individual ISPs based on their unique needs and situations.
So in some cases, your connection to a game data center that’s not your nearest one is the best connection available at the moment. It is also possible for your connection to be routed elsewhere if there are internet issues impacting the route that your network traffic would normally take or if one of our game data centers is experiencing technical problems.