Beginners Guide to EA Sports FC 25 Career Mode

Ultimate Team is the most popular mode in EA Sports FC 25, but career mode – which sees you choose a team from around the world and try to take them to the top – is in a close second. It’s for good reason as well; although not as detailed as its rival, Football Manager, taking a team from ‘ranks to riches’ is exciting.

However, with new features being added every year, it can be hard to keep up with what is ‘overpowered’ in Career Mode. Finding a way to secure the best youngster in the world, or how to develop your current stars is crucial, but it doesn’t bring guaranteed success.

Due to this, we have decided to create a beginner’s guide for you when you start a new career mode. From tactical presets and scouting to developing youngsters and training, it’s an in-depth article which will allow you to win the hardest competitions, including the Premier League, as quickly as possible.

Tactical Presets

One of the most important things to choose is your tactical preset. Whatever team you pick – at any level – you need to feel comfortable with a specific style of play. Your players will do different things depending on what you select, and we have outlined all seven options below.

• Standard
• Wing Play
• Tiki Taka
• Gegenpressing
• Park the Bus
• Counter Attack
• Kick and Rush

While some are more obvious, like gegenpressing, where your team presses high, others are not as clear. For example, ‘Kick and Rush’ may sound like an NFL system, but in football, it is a route-one system, playing on your team’s physical strengths. Meanwhile, ‘Wing Play’ focuses on your wingers, unsurprisingly, so if you use the best widemen in the world, you will excel.

To go alongside this, once you’ve picked your tactical preset, you can then hire coaches to implement your philosophy. Each coach is ranked out of five stars in every category: attacking, midfield, defending, and goalkeeper. The higher-rated they are, the more they can impact your players’ attributes throughout the campaign. Coaches are all aligned to specific philosophies as well, so make sure you only pick ones who match your style. You also need to place them in the category where they can have the most impact. A coach with a one-star attacking rating but four-star defending should be in your defending coach lineup.

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Youth Academy and Rush Matches

There were some major changes to the ‘Youth Academy’ in EAFC 25, with the pool of countries expanded to more than 160. You can now scout up to four specific positions and three clear player roles. However, the most notable thing to know is that you can develop wonderkids in ‘Rush Tournaments’.

A new five vs five mode in EAFC, Rush is just like a typical football match, but on a smaller pitch with a few rule changes. In Career Mode, youth tournaments take place every two months, and you can choose to use players with their current ratings, or ultimate potential.

Every match will affect their ability via match XP, whilst it will outline how long it will take them to get to the next overall rating. Nurturing some of the best wonderkids in the game is not a quick process, though, so this is only worth doing if you want to stay at a club for years and bring in the next generation of talent.

Youth Scouting

While it’s great that you can progress talent in Rush matches, you can only do it by finding youngsters in the first place. What’s the point in buying the highest-rated players in EAFC 25 when you, for far cheaper, could find wonderkids instead? It sounds like a dream.

With youth scouting, you can choose/hire staff and make them scout specific areas of the world. You can hire up to three youth scouts, who then travel in spells of either three, six or nine months. They can find players with certain traits if you ask them to, whilst – unsurprisingly – the better scouts with more experience and judgement will find better stars. As they work away, they will send you consistent reports where you can choose to either sign or decline them.

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Player Scouting

Coupled with signing youngsters, you also need to bring in well-known names. They’re the stars who can, at any level, carry your team to victory, strutting around with confidence and cockiness that most can only dream about. In Career Mode, the global transfer network is your main hub for scouting players.

Within this, you have specific scouts who can analyse players shining around the world. You can make them search via position, age, contract length and player roles. You can hire up to six scouts and each member of staff has a star rating out of five for two categories — experience and judgement. Finding someone with at least a three-star rating in both will put you in the best position.

After a few weeks, they will give you a list of players who they think will fit into your team. They only provide a snapshot most of the time, though, so you will then need to scout them further by clicking on the player’s report. Once their full report is available, it’s then up to you if you want to sign them, either permanently or on loan. If you don’t fancy this, sites like Futwiz and SoFIFA also provide a list of every player in the game, where you can search for the stars with the best potential.

Transfers

Throughout both transfer windows, you always need to change up your squad. You can’t progress with the same squad every season, as the teams around you will bring in the best centre-backs or the finest strikers in the game. Knowing how to bring players in is crucial.

Once you’ve entered negotiations, you can offer an up-front fee that comes out of your transfer budget, or even try and lure the club into accepting a deal which is initially cheaper but includes sell-on clauses or player swaps. Your first bid is likely to be rejected, which will see the ‘tension meter’ rise. If that reaches the top, negotiations will end, so you do have to be careful.

Following the player’s market value is a rough way to have swift negotiations, but that’s only half of the story. If you have a bid accepted, you also need to agree to the player’s wages, contract length and squad role. It’s a similar idea to the initial transfer fee talks; you can’t upset them too much. While we have focused on buying here, the same can be expected if you ever want to offload stars as well.

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Training

Winning matches is the most important thing in any sport, and that’s the case in EAFC 25. If you don’t walk away with three points regularly, you’ll be sacked, so you need to make sure your players are fit and strong. This is possible through training them during the week.

You have two stats to consider when it comes to your squad – fitness and sharpness. The former is all about how fit your players currently are. If they play too many games, they will have less stamina, so they won’t be able to complete 90 minutes without needing a stint of oxygen. Meanwhile, high sharpness will lead to a boost in form and skill.

Finding a balance is the most important thing, so rotating your squad’s training is crucial. You can also use training plans to create a regimen for your squad. When doing this, you can choose from five levels of training — ‘all-out performance’ and ‘performance-focused’ improve sharpness, ‘balanced’ is the middle ground, whilst ‘energy-focused’ and ‘all-out energy’ are stamina’s best friend but decrease sharpness. Tinkering depending on your fixture list is the most important thing.

A legendary universe is finally unlocked. For the first time, you can now manage a women’s team in the EA football universe. The NWSL, WSL, Premiere Ligue, Frauen-Bundesliga, and Liga F are all available, whilst the Women’s Champions League – bringing together the best European sides – is also in the game.

The same things we have mentioned above apply to women’s football, but – as there are just five leagues – the talent pool is smaller. It’ll be harder to find the next great wonderkid, but you can still buy the highest-rated female footballers in the game if you want to.

Best teams to Manage

We have outlined a nine-strong list of the best teams to manage in EAFC 25. We’ve provided an in-depth analysis of every team and why they might be good to use, whilst also providing a snapshot for several teams here. Unsurprisingly, we’ve not chosen the greatest sides in the world, as that’s rarely entertaining.

Instead, ‘fallen giants’ are the best choices. Including the likes of Ipswich and Schalke, you can take a side that once excelled in Europe back to the top of the pyramid. Not only are they full of talented youngsters, but they also have their own stadiums in the game and passionate fanbases behind them.