Increase Potential Glitch in FIFA 18

In FIFA 18 career mode potential is one of the most important aspects of the game. Like most career mode players, you’ll be trying to sign high potential players that will eventually grow into world beaters. But what about the other players in your squad? The ones that have some potential but perhaps aren’t quite worthy of ‘Has Potential to be Special’ or ‘An Exciting Prospect’. What if there was a way to increase potential in these young players? Perhaps you’d be able to hold onto the real world players a bit longer rather than resorting to youth scouting. Follow the steps below to increase potential in your players.

1. Identify Suitable Players

The only criteria for this trick is that it can only be used on young players. I’ve successfully used it to increase potential on players up to the age of 24. Feel free to try it on slightly older players but it’s unlikely to work, even with players under the age of 24 it isn’t 100% successful.

This does mean that you can use it to boost Youth Academy players. While most players only promote ultra high potential players, this trick could be useful if you’ve got a lower potential player that has other desirable attributes such as five star weak foot or skill moves.

2. Add to Loan List

Once you’ve got a list of players you’re hoping to boost, go into your squad hub and add all of these players to the loan list.

3. Save the Game

As with a lot of things in career mode, this is just good practice. Save the game and proceed to step 3.

4. Wait for Offers

Getting players out on loan can be tricky in FIFA 18 (and some of its predecessors). You’ve probably noticed it before when trying to loan out your youth prospects to slim your squad down. Loan offers can be unpredictable, inconsistent and most of all frustrating.

My advice is to advance a few days (less than a week), if you haven’t received any loan offers in that time, reload the game and try again. It helps to be patient throughout this process.

5. Negotiate and Accept

Once you’ve received an offer to loan one of your players, select the Negotiate option.

First of all, edit the length of the loan to ‘Short Term‘. This type of loan means the player would ordinarily return to your club during the next transfer window. We do this to minimise the amount of compensation or cancellation fee we have to pay later.

Secondly, edit the wage split as you see fit. If you’re a wealthy club, don’t be stingy. I’ve already mentioned how difficult it can be to get loan deals agreed, just give the other club what they want.

Once this is done, the loan deal will be agreed and the player will join the other club (temporarily).

6. Save the Game

Saving the game after hitting a milestone is important here in case other offers come in.

7. Advance

The plan is to recall the player from loan within a short time frame, but I tend to wait a few days first. Advance the game by 2-3 days.

8. Save the Game

Sorry for the repetition but this is the most important point to save the game at.

9. Recall from Loan

We’re now at the final part of the process. It’s not complicated here but I’ve included a few screenshots so that you know what you’re looking for.

First of all, go into your squad hub and find the player that you loaned out a few days ago.

Now use the shoulder buttons to open the ‘Financial‘ tab of the squad hub. We’re looking for the Player Value. This is displayed in both the list of players and the individual player’s information card. Write this number down or make a mental note of it, this is how we will know if the glitch has been successful.

Select the player and hit the ‘Recall from Loan‘ option.

Select ‘Yes’ to confirm this. At this stage you’ll see the amount of compensation you’ll be forced to pay to the other club for terminating the loan early. This is why we negotiate short term loan deals.

Now you’re back in the financial tab and the player in question is back at your club (and wearing your kit again).

10. Review

Now you need to take a look at his value and compare it to what it was before. It will either have stayed the same, gone up or gone down. If it has stayed the same or gone down, exit career mode and reload your save.

You might have to repeat this process many times to get it to work. You can also try advancing a few more days and try it again, this has worked for me on players that hadn’t increased after 20 reloads.

If the player’s value has increased, it has been successful. It might be a small increase of say 3-5%, but it could be much higher, 50% or more. Player value is directly tied to a player’s overall rating and their potential. Therefore if their value increases without their overall rating going up, you know their potential has increased.

Now save the game and continue to do this with your other players if you wish. You can even repeat it with the same players! Enjoy your newly boosted players.

It’s not foolproof and does require a bit of patience but this is the only way we know of to increase potential at will.