Earlier this week, my colleague Ben Sledge wrote about why he was giving up on FIFA as a series after being burnt out by grinding in FIFA 22. I sympathised, but I couldn’t quite relate. Ben, like most FIFA players, spends the majority of his time on Ultimate Team trying to build the best team possible. However, I mostly play Career Mode, and when I dabble online, I do online seasons and just pick an existing team I enjoy playing as. Despite the differences in our approach to the series though, there was one point Ben made which struck me: the lack of variation in the game’s AI.
This is the main reason Ben avoids Career Mode, and I hadn’t really thought about it before, but now that I have, I can’t say I blame him. I love Career Mode because I think it’s the purest form of FIFA, and the added Create A Team option in FIFA 22 pushed that definition even further. It allows you to tell your own stories, bringing in superstars or relative unknowns who tick all the right boxes. Some players who look the business on paper don’t work out for you, while others don’t have the best stats but still manage to turn a game on its head. Ultimate Team has this too, but for me players are too disposable in Ultimate Team. Literally, the game encourages you to chuck them away as part of challenge-based swaps for better stars. In Career Mode, just like Danny Drinkwater rotting on Chelsea’s bench, you’re stuck with them.
I love Career Mode because of what I make of it, but it’s true that the game doesn’t really help you out much. When you play online, you encounter all sorts of different tactics. Granted, you also play PSG over and over again, but at least in method it offers some variety. Career Mode is the opposite - you play a lot of different clubs, and while they all have their own formations, the AI isn’t sophisticated enough to make you feel like there’s a sense of variation. Better teams have better players, but that’s it.
Clubs adapt all the time. Liverpool’s biggest weakness has been their inability to overcome a low block, so less technical teams opt for containment football against the Reds and hope they can hold out for 90 minutes. Relegation dogfight teams tend to leave one on you, picking up tactical and tenacious fouls in an attempt to disrupt the flow of the game. Some clubs play tiki-taka, others burst on the break. Some teams want to narrow the play, others play with width. Do you defend in lines, pairs, or triangles? Does your double pivot rotate, drop deep, or stay fixed? When your right back pushes up, does the right mid or the centre mid drop back, or does the defence move into a back three temporarily? Is your forward on the shoulder or a trequartista?
These are just some of the different ways to play football, and yet FIFA AI teams mostly play the same. Defenders cover individually and the nearest player fills the gap. Attacks happen either via through balls or runs out wide and passes inside. Teams never show up to hurt you in FIFA, but if I’m taking Arsenal away to Stoke in the League Cup, shouldn’t they?
Career Mode will always be my go-to in FIFA, or as I’ll soon have to get used to calling it, EA Sports FC. And despite the fact it makes EA no money past the initial purchase, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see it receive significant improvements in the past couple of entries. But to keep building on those foundations, we need teams that think independently and realistically. FIFA needs to figure out its low block.