Installed from CD as "other application".
Unticked "EA update manager" and ended installation.
Installed DirectX 9 as extra component.
Changed wine configuration to use builtin, native on crypt32 and added the same settings for winhttp.
Copied crypt and winhttp* to /opt/cxgames/lib/wine/ from my PlayOnLinux installation (wine 1.3.27). This fixes the problem of not being able to connect to the registration server which is caused by a problem validating the certificate ("err:winhttp:netconn_secure_connect couldn't verify server certificate (12157)").
Changed wine configuration to launch inside a virtual desktop at 1024x768.
Launched game.
Can actually get into the gameplay!
Hope that helps for someone an may also provide useful info for devs on various SSL problems.