NOTE: This post is a short and sweet summary of scouting tips that you may find helpful. Be sure to read our full guide for a much more in depth look at youth scouting. It’s a longer read but even experienced career mode players can learn something from it.
Scouting Tips for FIFA 19
1. Ignore Nationality
When it comes to hiring a youth scout, don’t assume or believe that their nationality is relevant. Certain countries don’t produce better scouts and scouts aren’t more effective when scouting their home nation.
2. Experience vs Judgement
More Experience means more players per scouting report and ability to find a specific player type. More Judgement means higher chance of finding the highest quality players. Judgement tends to be favoured more but both are important.
3. Countries
When you’re setting up a scouting network, prioritise Central Europe, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Argentina. These regions produce higher quality players more frequently.
4. Player Types
Player types don’t always make sense, so don’t assume that ‘Defensive Minded’ will bring you centre backs for example. Our full guide explains the differences between them.
5. What to Look For
When assessing players on a monthly scouting report, sign players that are above 60 overall or worth more than £250,000. Newer players often make the mistake of thinking every youth player will be a great prospect.
6. Position
Once you’ve signed a player to your youth academy, their position will be shown. This is useful as a guide but you don’t have to stick to it religiously. Take a good look at the player’s attributes profile and make a decision as to where they would suit playing.
7. Be Generous
When the time comes and you want to offer a player a professional contract, it’s important to be generous. Their demands are usually insignificant and failing to meet them can result in you losing the player forever.
8. Beware U16s
Because you can only offer a player a professional contract when they reach 16 years of age, any players you sign that are 15 have to wait. This can be a problem if you take up too many of your finite youth academy spots with 15 year olds. If your academy is full, you won’t be able to sign any more players and you might miss out. Of all of our scouting tips, this was was learnt the hard way.
9. Training
Maybe not what you think. It’s probably not worth training youth players while they’re still in the academy and we’ve seen that too much training can be a bad thing. However, the training menu is useful as it tells you which players are considered ‘High Growth’ with a handy green arrow symbol.
10. Save and Reload
We’ll admit it’s a grey area but save and reload can be an invaluable tool and it had to be included in our list of scouting tips. Given that you’re only going to see a maximum of 36 scouting reports in a year, the chances of finding has potential to be special players are low. Save the day before a report is due and you can always reload if you don’t like the players.
Signing top players is expensive. If you need more money but don’t want to use up your financial takeovers, we can show you how to increase transfer budget to approximately £1 million.
Step by Step Instructions: How to Increase Transfer Budget
Read this through before starting the process and be sure to save regularly.
1. Pick Team
Start a new career mode and choose a team that already has a starting transfer budget of at least £20 million.
2. Sim First Season
Using the calendar, advance to two weeks before the end of the season.
3. Alter Budget
Go into your club finances and find your budget. Use the slider to adjust this so that 99% of our budget is wages.
4. Offer contract
Pick a player in your squad that you don’t mind losing, but other clubs wouldn’t mind having. Offer him a new contract with a huge salary. You should be able to afford to offer at least £17 million.
5. Check Budget
Go back and check your budget and make a note of it, wages and transfers.
6. End Season
Proceed to the end of the season and activate the ‘End Season’ option.
7. Shortlist Player
In the second season, find a player you’d like to sign. It’s important that his club are likely to want the player you offered a new contract to. Shortlist him in your transfer hub.
8. Approach to Sign
Approach the club to sign that player. When asked about the type of deal, choose player swap and offer the player with the huge wages.
9. Negotiate Contract
If the offer is successful, offer the new player a regular contract. Completing this step will mean you gain the new player and the player on huge wages transfers to the other team.
10. Adjust Budget
Go and check your budget. The numbers should be much larger now, but the slider will still be set to 99% wages. Change this so that the majority is on transfers and you should have around £1 billion in transfer budget. This is our method to increase transfer budget. If it didn’t work for you, try again.
The popularity of our youth scouting guide among other things proves that players love scouting youth players. However, a question we often see is ‘Should I Train Youth Players?‘. There is plenty of ‘common knowledge and anecdotal evidence out in the world, but we wanted to take a scientific approach. If you train youth players, will it have a positive or negative effect? Does training stunt physical stats? Read on to find out.
Experiment
We created a new career mode save and picked a team with enough resources to afford the best scouts. We also had to make sure the squad was strong enough as we would be simming six months at a time. Once we had hired three good scouts, we sent them to work. During that first season, we simply focused on scouting enough promising players. Towards the end of the season, we rejected the less promising players, leaving us with 12. As you’ll see in the next section, they all had good growth potential. We also made sure we had a good mix of positions and player types.
At the start of the next season, we forked the save. One we would sim through without training any players, the other we would train only these youth players on rotation. Although there are many different variables that could affect the outcomes of each, this is as close to a fair test we could get. This meant that in both saves, team selections were down to the ‘assistant manager’. Five training slots per week over 52 weeks is 260 slots, this means each player was getting around 21 sessions per season.
We recorded each player’s stats and attributes at the beginning of the first season and then every January and June after that. Stats and attributes were recorded over the following three seasons.
Players
Here are the twelve youth academy players we used for this experiment. For each one we’ve included all relevant high level information about them.
1. Fernando Monzon
17 year old Goalkeeper. Rated 62 when scouted, 66 at the start of this experiment. Potential range showed as 79-85, then ‘Showing Great Potential’.
2. Brahim Tagmaoui
17 year old Right Winger, Attacker player type. 52 rated when scouted, 55 at the start of this experiment. Potential range was broad at 76-94, later revealed to be ‘Showing Great Potential’.
3. Idris Selmi
17 year old Defensive-Minded Right Back. Rated at 62 when initially scouted, 65 by the time this experiment began. Impressive potential range of 83-94, soon revealed to be ‘Has Potential to be Special’.
4. Jamal Saber
17 year old Physically Strong Centre Back. 52 overall to start with, 55 overall at the start of the experiment. Reasonable potential range of 81-87, later became ‘Showing Great Potential’.
5. Johannes Matson
16 year old Right Winger, Winger player type. Rated 52 overall when first scouted, grew to 56 by the start of this experiment. Potential range was 80-86 and unsurprisingly ‘Showing Great Potential’.
6. Carlos Lins
16 year old Defensive-Minded Left Back. Initially rated at 56 but was 60 overall at the start of this experiment. Less encouraging potential range of 71-85 but thankfully turned out to be ‘Showing Great Potential’.
7. Tyler Williams
16 year old Right Midfielder, with Winger player type. Rated 62 in the beginning, 65 at the start of this experiment. Great potential range of 85-91 and classified as ‘An Exciting Prospect’.
8. Felipe Silvera
15 year old Technically Gifted Centre Forward. Only rated 59 overall initially and only grew to 60 for the start of this piece of analysis. Decent enough potential range of 83-89 which translated to a ‘An Exciting Prospect’ label.
9. Issam Klouchi
16 year old Physically Strong Centre Back. Initial low rating of 52, up to 55 by the time the new season began. Potential range displayed as 78-88 then ‘Showing Great Potential’.
10. Alexander Persson
16 year old Defensive Minded CDM. 52 rated to begin with, 55 overall at the start of the season. His potential range was displayed as 81-87 and later ‘Showing Great Potential’.
11. Evan Bliska
16 year old Technically Gifted CAM. 54 overall initially but 57 rated at the start of this experiment. Reasonable potential range of 78-86 which became ‘Showing Great Potential’.
12. Cong Huang
15 year old Technically Gifted Striker. Rated at 53 overall. Solid potential range of 85-91, which unsurprisingly became ‘An Exciting Prospect’.
Outcome
Here are the key findings after three seasons.
Fernando Monzon – 74 OVR (+8) without training, 81 OVR (+15) with training.
Brahim Tagmaoui – 69 OVR (+14) without training, 76 OVR (+21) with training.
Idris Selmi – 77 OVR (+12) without training, 80 OVR (+15) with training.
Jamal Saber – 66 OVR (+11) without training, 76 OVR (+21) with training.
Johannes Matson – 70 OVR (+14) without training, 77 OVR (+21) with training.
Carlos Lins – 68 OVR (+8) without training, 75 OVR (+15) with training.
Tyler Williams – 76 OVR (+11) without training, 78 OVR (+12) with training.
Felipe Silvera – 69 OVR (+9) without training, 77 OVR (+17) with training.
Issam Klouchi – 67 OVR (+12) without training, 79 OVR (+24) with training.
Alexander Persson – 68 OVR (+13) without training, 76 OVR (+21) with training.
Evan Bliska – 68 OVR (+11) without training, 75 OVR (+18) with training.
Cong Huang – 67 OVR (+14) without training, 76 OVR (+23) with training.
This means that the average untrained player would grow their overall rating by over 11 points in three seasons, almost 4 points per season. Compared to the average trained player that would grow by over 20 points, or almost 7 per season.
Even after three seasons this is quite a difference. If you were to train youth players over a longer period of time, the gap would be even wider.
Growth
We did notice that certain players were growing faster than others, across both saves. This was interesting, but we came to a fairly obvious hypothesis. The larger the gap between current overall rating and potential, the faster that player will have to grow. Assuming that most youth players are around 18, they have lets say 10 years to hit their peak. A player with 55 overall and 85 potential will likely grow faster than a player with 68 overall and 88 potential, 3 points per season compared to only 2.
To try and prove this, we made a custom calculation and plotted the results on a graph. Firstly, we worked out each player’s average attribute growth points for a half season, with no training.
Then we gave each player a custom value. Firstly we worked out the difference between their initial overall and their predicted potential. Then we divided this by the number of years left before they reach a predicted peak age.
These two values were plotted against one another on the following graph.
The data points on the graph (with the assistance of a trendline) show positive correlation between these two values. This seems to support the idea that faster growth will be seen in players that have a long way to achieve their potential.
Appearances
Another assumption we’ve always had is that giving youth players game time is a good way to help them grow. Because we also recorded the number of appearances each player made, we were able to plot these against the number of growth points. As this blog is about whether or not to train youth players, we separated the data from each save and created two graphs.
Because the players are lower rated, they’re unlikely to be picked to play very often. This meant players often only played one or even zero games in a period. Even still, we had enough data points to be confident we’d see a pattern if there was one. The graph doesn’t actually seem to suggest that more game time leads to higher growth in players.
This graph for players that were trained tells a similar story. If anything, the trend lines for both suggest negative correlation. More appearances somehow results in less growth in a given period.
While this is a little surprising, the mechanics behind this are probably a little more nuanced. Instead of appearances, it is likely that a player’s form can affect their growth.
Attributes
This was one of the key areas we were interested in. While FIFA career mode is a game based on numbers, it’s common to hear anecdotal evidence. You’ll often hear that when you train youth players, it negatively impacts their physical attributes. While we would agree with this anecdotally, we wan’t to see if the numbers supported that theory.
We pulled together the data for the outfield players only, and compared the average attributes of a trained player with an untrained player.
Unsurprisingly, the graph skews towards the positive. This was expected as trained youth players outgrew untrained players significantly. The attributes that were positively affected by training were things like Attack Positioning, Vision and the defensive attributes. These weren’t a huge surprise as they can be trained for directly via different drills. Stamina seemed to be positively affected, again because it can actually be trained. It was interesting that Agility and Strength are positively affected when you train youth players. Strength is a highly sought attribute, common knowledge suggested that strength would suffer from training.
Balance didn’t appear to be affected either way. Acceleration and especially Sprint Speed seem to be negatively impacted when you train youth players. This supports the assumption but will be disappointing to managers who rely on pacey players*. Reactions, Composure, Jumping and Aggression were also negatively impacted by training youth players. Strangely, Heading Accuracy, Curve and Long Shot seem to be stunted when you train youth players. These can all be trained so this is curious.
Conclusion
So, what did we learn from this? Most obvious and expected was that training helps youth players grow more quickly. Secondly, we learned that player growth is faster when there is a significant difference between their overall rating and potential, provided they have years left to ‘peak’. It was also apparent that game time alone cannot boost player growth, but it’s likely that player form would affect this. Players in good form seem to get bonus growth points at the start of each month. Finally, although trained players are better off overall, some of their attributes will suffer. These do include stats that are considered to be physical and mental, but also some that are technical.
But you’re still wondering…
Should I Train Youth Players?
Our answer is that it depends. If you only ever sim games, then the positives of training outweigh any negatives. Also you’re fine to train youth players if you only intend on raising their OVR and selling them for profit.
If however, you’re a purist and play every game, you might want to avoid it altogether or manage it very carefully. The findings in this blog do seem to support the theory that players have a growth allowance for a given time period. This means that if you use up (or exceed) this allowance by training certain attributes, others won’t be able to grow naturally. Therefore it’s easy to end up with a physically stunted striker if you over-train them and focus only on finishing.
One of the biggest criticism of youth players is that their attribute profiles are often skewed, making them difficult to handle in games. If this is a concern for you, spend time evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. Some occasional training to smooth over their rough spots might be a better investment than intensively training their strengths. Another easy diagnosis is that you might be playing them in the wrong position. Check out our position calculator, often youth players are better suited to a slightly different position.
*It’s worth pointing out that in FIFA 19, you are able to train a player’s sprint speed and acceleration.
Focused Training is an item that can be redeemed in the EA Sports FC Catalogue, for use in career mode. This grants you double growth for your next five training sessions. What a given player would normally earn for a set grade is doubled.
How to Get Focused Training in FIFA 19
Here’s a simple step-by-step guide on activating this feature. Be sure to read all the steps through before you begin.
1. Open an Existing Career Mode Save
Open up career mode and load the save you’d like to apply this item to.
2. EASFC Catalogue
Press the right stick on your controller to open the EASFC catalogue.
3. Career Tab
Move the same stick to the right so that you’re looking at just the career relevant items. You’ll also find items like financial takeover or scout a future star here.
4. Redeem Item
Scroll through the list and you’ll see ‘Focused Training’. Providing you have enough points, you’ll be able to redeem it then and there.
5. Training
At this point it’s a good idea to save your game. Then go into your next training session. You can of course choose to sim the sessions, but you’re likely to get poor grades on a few. You can reload the game and try again but I don’t think you’re ever going to get five As in one session. My suggestion would be to pick drills that you can comfortably get As in and play them manually. Again, you can reload if something goes really wrong. Save before each training session and repeat. It’s a good idea to keep a count of how many training sessions you have played since activating double growth. This way you won’t forget to put the effort in or redeem another one too soon and overlap.
How Many Times Can You Use Focused Training?
As this is an EASFC item, there are only a few available. Each one can be used only once, in total. I don’t mean per season or per save, you can only ever use each one once.
It’s a redeemable item in the EASFC catalogue that adds a random high growth player into your youth academy.
How to Scout a Future Star
Here are my step by step instructions for scouting a future star. Be sure to read them through before you begin.
1. Existing Career Mode
Make sure you’ve already started a career mode save that you want to redeem this item in.
2. Open Save File
Fire up the game, go into career mode and open your chosen save file.
3. EASFC Catalogue
Press the right stick to open the EASFC Catalogue.
4. Career Tab
Move the right stick to the right to only see career mode related items. Here you’ll see lots of different redeemable items like financial takeover or focused training.
5. Redeem Item
Scroll down and find ‘Scout a Future Star’. There are a few available, providing you’ve been playing the game the last few years to unlock the levels. Hit ‘Redeem Item’ and make sure you see the confirmation message.
6. Save Game
Be sure to save your game, you might thank me later.
7. Advance
Go and check your messages, there should be one saying that a scout has been dispatched. It doesn’t specify where the scout has gone, just that he will return in a few weeks with a talented youngster. After this you can progress in the game by playing games or simming ahead.
8. Check
After enough days or weeks go by, you’ll receive another message. It will say that your scout has returned with a promising player. Go and check your youth academy. If your academy wasn’t empty before, hopefully you recognise all the existing players and can spot the new player. Another way of figuring it out is to look at their nationalities, it helps if the player is from a country you haven’t scouted in.
What Will I Get When I Scout a Future Star?
‘Future Star’ is perhaps a bit generous, but you will receive a player with high growth potential. This could manifest as a player who ‘Has Potential to Be Special’, but it could just as easily be a ‘Showing Great Potential’. Check out our guide on potential to understand this better.
If you are left disappointed by what the scout brings you, the save and reload method is worth a try.
How Many Times Can I Scout a Future Star?
There’s only a limited number in the EASFC catalogue, I think around five. Once they are redeemed, they’re gone for good. Another restriction is that you can only redeem one of these per season.
Because they aren’t unlimited, I would suggest only using them in saves where you’re managing a smaller club. My assumptions here are that you’ll have limited funds and won’t be able to afford to hire good scouts, or any at all. A smaller club is also more likely to have a weaker squad, where even a ‘Showing Great Potential’ would be a massive boost.
If you’ve followed the wider world of football, you’ll be familiar with the idea of a financial takeover. Chelsea, Manchester City and PSG are good examples of clubs that have been taken bought by billionaire owners.
In essence, the club is sold to a new wealthy owner who is able to put more money into the club. Traditionally that would benefit the club from top to bottom, transforming its facilities and infrastructure. However, fans are usually just interested in an increased transfer budget. In the real world, the introduction of Financial Fair Play (FFP) by UEFA is an attempt to limit massive cash injections to football clubs.
An increased transfer budget is exactly how it applies in FIFA 19. You’re given an improved transfer budget but no other real changes happen. Most players will activate a takeover while managing a club with a small transfer budget,
How Do I Get a Financial Takeover?
Follow the step by step instructions below, be sure to read them through first.
1. Have an Existing Career Mode Save
Make sure you’ve already started a career mode and saved the game.
2. Open Career Mode
Go into career mode and open your chosen save file.
3. Check Budget
Go to the ‘Office’ tab and look at the ‘Finances’ tile. Make a note of your transfer budget and the split between transfers and wages. Sometimes the split gets changed which can make it hard to read how much extra budget you were given.
4. EASFC Catalogue
Press in the right stick on your controller to open up the EASFC Catalogue. If you’ve never seen it before, it’s the place where you can use points to unlock items such as Focused Training or Scout Future Star.
5. Career Tab
Use the right stick to move to the ‘Manager Career’ list. This ensures you’re only looking at items that will affect career mode.
6. Redeem Item
Scroll through the list and find one of the financial takeovers. There should be three in total, one each at level 10, 25 and 35. You’ll need to be a high enough level in EASFC to unlock these rewards, but it’s easy to climb the levels by playing the game regularly.
Once you find it, hit ‘Redeem Item’ and you should see a confirmation message.
7. Advance
Now go back to the ‘Central’ tab on the main menu. It can take a few days to come into effect so hit ‘Advance’ and allow a few days to pass.
8. Check
Go back to the Finances tile in the Office tab and check to see if your budget has increased. If not, repeat steps 7 and 8.
How Much Money Does a Financial Takeover Give You?
This tends to vary and is possibly based on the club you’re managing and/or your existing transfer budget. For example a Championship side might get given an additional £40m to spend. However a Premier League side might get an additional £90m. It’s not an exact science but this should at least give you some idea.
How Many Times Can You Activate a Financial Takeover?
I mentioned already that there are only three financial takeovers in the EASFC catalogue. Each one can only be redeemed once, and this won’t change if you delete your game saves or anything like that.
Another thing worth mentioning is that you can only redeem one per season. Please don’t try and redeem more than one in the same season. You won’t get anything extra and you’ll have wasted one of your three rewards.
It’s always great knowing that this site is useful for you guys. Usually this is inferred from the amount of people reading my content, but today I received an email from a reader who asked why he is unable to sell or loan players.
Question
‘I have started a career mode and I have purchased some players but I can’t sell or loan out players. When I got to my players selection list I can block transfer requests and negotiate contract but add to the transfer list or loan out is not an option.’
For clarification, this is when the ‘Add to Transfer List’ and ‘Add to Loan List’ options can’t be selected in the squad hub on a particular player. We’ve discussed issues with selling and loaning players out previously but this is a different problem altogether.
Thank you Joeri for your comments about the site and your question. I wish more people did this! Let’s get down to it.
Answer
First of all I should say this isn’t a bug, more of an imperfect feature. In FIFA 18 career mode, you’re unable to sell or loan players for the first year. You won’t even be able to add them to the transfer or loan list ahead of the transfer window when you can actually sell them.
This isn’t such a big deal with transfers as it’s unlikely you’ll want to buy a player and instantly sell him. Although if it were possible I can imagine lots of players gaming the system. Sign a highly rated player on a pre-contract agreement and sell him instantly, profit.
It does get quite frustrating with loans though. Quite often you’ll sign a promising young player but want to loan him out as he won’t get many matches at your club straight away. This ‘feature’ stops you doing that, you can’t even loan the player out after six months.
My advice, as with a lot of things on career mode is to plan ahead. Don’t sign lots of youngsters all at once as you won’t be able to loan them out. This cases what I call squad bloat and can really frustrate you. If you are stuck with a player you were hoping to loan out, use the time to train them, maybe play them occasionally if you can.
At the time of writing, FIFA 18 hasn’t even been around for six months yet. I had to check a few times on my calendar as that seemed ridiculous but it’s true. Still, I know that plenty of people (myself included) are already wondering what the next instalment of FIFA will bring and most importantly, when can we get our hands on it? This will only intensify over the coming months as more and more of the FIFA community start looking ahead.
I thought I’d start digging now to see what information could be uncovered. This article will be regularly updated as and when new information becomes available on the FIFA 19 release date.
If you’re still trying to get your money’s worth out of FIFA 18 and want to spice things up a bit, check out our challenges section.
Previous Releases
Off the top of my head, I knew FIFA is always released somewhere between two significant events; the start of the European football season and Christmas. Why? It’s released after the start of the season so that you’re already in the mood for more football. It’s released before Christmas to maximise sales, because capitalism.
Can we narrow down a potential release date though? Perhaps looking at release dates from years gone by can help us work out the FIFA 19 release date? The last ten releases of FIFA look like this:
FIFA 18 – 29th September 2017
FIFA 17 – 27th September 2016
FIFA 16 – 22nd September 2015
FIFA 15 – 23rd September 2014
FIFA 14 – 9th September 2013
FIFA 13 – 25th September 2012
FIFA 12 – 27th September 2011
FIFA 11 – 28th September 2010
FIFA 10 – 28th September 2009
FIFA 09 – 2nd October 2008
Even a quick glance at that list will tell you there’s a very clear pattern here. Nine out of the last ten FIFA games have been released in the month of September. The only exception was FIFA 09 which was release in early October, but that was a decade ago. We’ve had nine consecutive September releases. Of the nine September releases, eight fell in the second half of September.
Having a late September release gives EA more time to add summer transfers to the game. However, the amount of time taken to produce the physical games and distribute them globally explains why late transfers often don’t make it into the game until the first update.
The End of Annual Releases?
Just when we think we’ve been able to predict the FIFA 19 release date, someone throws a spanner in the works. Back in November of last year, the EA Sports CEO had a very interesting interview with Bloomberg. In it, he talks about the future of certain EA titles being subscription based. So instead of buying an annual release as you do currently, you’d have a rolling subscription and regular updates.
Discussing the greater industry trends he says “The greatest disruptor to the consumption of entertainment media in the last five years has been the combination of streaming plus subscription, It’s changed the way we watch television. It’s changed the way we listen to music. It’s changed the way I read books.”
The interview also discusses how they have already moved to this model for the mobile version of their Madden NFL game. While it does seem very likely that this is the future of FIFA, I don’t think it’s going to come into play just yet.
Expected FIFA 19 Release Date
Given the obvious pattern we’ve already discussed, I’m expecting the FIFA 19 release date to be late September 2018.
Features
News is very thin at the moment. My expectation is that The Journey will return for a third instalment. FUT continues to make lots of money for EA so it’s effectively the most important part of the game for them at this stage. Career mode has been light on big features or improvements in recent years. While we can hope that all the bugs are fixed and new features are added, it doesn’t seem to be a priority as it doesn’t make additional revenue for EA.
UPDATE: EA has since made changes that should fix this issue. However, it will only be ‘fixed’ if you have updated your version of FIFA 19 and start a career mode from scratch.Full patch notes at the bottom of this article.
If you’re reading this post, I’m 99.99% sure it’s because you’ve had multiple ‘Transfer Talks Broken Down’ emails and you’re confused and or sick of it.
The Problem
In FIFA 18 Career Mode (and FIFA 19), selling or loaning out players is incredibly difficult. Once you have received and accepted an offer for loan or sale, you wait. Hopefully you’ll receive an email to say that personal terms have been agreed and the player has been loaned/sold (or will be). However, in FIFA 18 it’s more likely that you’ll receive an email like the one below, telling you that the player’s transfer talks have broken down.
Just like that, the transfer or loan deal collapses. Because the talks are on personal terms, you’re not involved and can’t negotiate in any way.
This wouldn’t be such a big deal but it happens again and again, restricting your ability to do two key things:
1. Loan out players that need to grow but aren’t ready to play for you just yet
2. Move on players that you no longer want at all
This makes it easier than ever in FIFA 18 to get what I call squad bloat. This is when your squad is almost or completely full of players, many of whom you no longer want. It restricts your ability to bring in new players because of both squad restrictions and wage budget.
Why Does This Happen?
Let’s try and run through the possible reasons why this could be happening.
Wages
This seems to be a common issue in real life so why not? Don’t forget wages are often a common sticking point when agreeing contracts with your own players or new transfers.
I also speculated that (just like in real life) there is a significant difference in what clubs pay their players. I looked into this in more detail in my wage analysis of the English leagues. This does seem to be the case, so it is understandable if a less wealthy club is attempting to sign a player from you.
Don’t forget that wages can only affect transfer deals, not loans. In loan deals, wage splits are agreed by the clubs themselves.
Performance Bonuses
Another factor that could possibly be affected transfer deals only is performance bonuses. I’ve previously talked about these in my contract negotiation guide. Together with wages, performance bonuses complete the financial package for a player. Players seem to view this package as one, so bonuses are less likely to be demanded if the wages offered are high.
Again, this could be a problem if you’re managing a wealthy club (European giants or Premier League) and trying to sell players to smaller clubs.
Squad Role
Perhaps squad role has something to do with it? Players often want to be reassured of their position within a club’s hierarchy and therefore how much game time they can expect to get. Loan players don’t agree a squad role so this should only apply to transfer deals, if at all.
Club Worth or Standing
Maybe the player you’re trying to loan out or sell thinks the prospective club is beneath him in some way? Again, this would be somewhat realistic. However, most of the time players will leave big clubs and big paychecks behind in favour of regular games.
Bug or Game Issue
Sorry EA, I had to put this in. I suspected it myself and there are plenty of others too. Before deciding to write this post I’d read plenty of posts on the FIFA Careers subreddit, most people seem to put it down to a bug or fault in the game.
The email itself is an intentional feature, it’s there for a reason. It’s the frequency of this message (more on this further down) that makes me think it’s not working properly.
Is It Realistic?
This is the point that seems to cause massive debate whenever this issue is brought up. As I’ve already mentioned, plenty of people will instantly say it’s a bug and/or the game is broken. However, other people will often counter that its realistic, and therefore a good thing. Let me try and break this down.
I do agree that transfer talks breaking down more often is realistic. One of my biggest gripes with career mode is how easy it is to strengthen a club by exploiting the transfer system. Ask any respectable football journalist and they’ll tell you that transfers are more complex than the rumour mills make out.
So my concluding opinion on this is that yes, this does make the game more realistic. However, the frequency that this happens has a negative effect on the game.
Frequency
This is the sticking point for me, and most people I’ve spoken to about the issue. We have no problem with it happening some of the time. But it’s the fact it’s happening 75% of the time or more. The image below is from the same career mode as the one above.
You’ll have seen this before on your own career mode. A player will reject move after move, leaving you none the wiser as to what the actual problem is. If it was just one player doing this I could accept, perhaps in a way similar to previous games where you occasionally had homesick players. Maybe then you’d be able to sit down with the player and agent (as you do in negotiations) and tell them that they aren’t in your plans this season so need to leave the club, go on loan, or rot on the bench.
What You Can Do About It
Now that I’ve speculated about what might be causing the issue, let’s discuss what you can actually do about it in your game.
Transfer List the Player
This appears to be the most effective way of moving players on. Players don’t seem to care that they are on the loan list for some reason but do react when placed on the transfer list.
Avoid Squad Bloat
Prevention is the best cure. Yes it will still happen, but it’s easier to get a few players sold/out on loan than trying to shift 15+. Avoid signing players until you need to and don’t abuse the youth scouting system.
Save & Reload
Save the game regularly, progress slowly and reload if you don’t get any desirable loan/transfer offers. Right after accepting an offer save the game and reload if you get the ‘Transfer Talks Broken Down’ message.
Negotiate Loan Wage Splits
If you’re a small club with a limited budget then I totally understand you having to be a little stubborn over wage splits for loan players. If however you’re a well established team with great finances, just offer to pay most of them. You’ll be paying 100% if you can’t get rid of them, and if you’re successful they won’t be constantly nagging you about game time.
Force the Player Out
This one is a bit more risky but you could try forcing the player to leave. Attempt to renegotiate their contract with ridiculously low wages, leave them in the reserves and don’t play them. This might make them more likely to accept a transfer/loan.
Release the Player
This is the last resort/give up option. Again, if you’re Manchester City and you can’t get rid of a player worth <£1,000,000, just release him.
Give EA Your Feedback
I’m not going to suggest that you wait and or pray for a fix to this. I would recommend that you try voicing your feedback though. Players need to be vocal about their opinions, to give EA the best chance to improve the game moving forward. This doesn’t mean they have to act on it, but you’ve done your part. The other thing I have to point out, is please do this with respect. I do think EA can do more to keep improving Career Mode each year. However, I don’t think lower level employees deserve to be insulted or told their work sucks, it’s not constructive. Use whatever channel you prefer (email, twitter, reddit etc) and ask them to look into the ‘Transfer Talks Broken Down’ issue.
Bug Fixed
EA has just (March 2019) released some patch notes for FIFA 19 that addresses this issue. The notes can be summarised by the points below.
Clubs won’t send a transfer/loan offer for a player that has zero chance of accepting a move to that club.
This stops situations where a player was placed on the transfer or loan list and the club receives a deluge of offers from teams that the player has zero interest in.
The transfer and loan system has been updated to consider more player and club nationalities as part of a player’s decision making process.
It has also been updated to take into account the player’s current role versus the one they would be offered.
Players that are loan listed will now take this into consideration when deciding whether to accept an offer. Previously they weren’t taking the hint that they were unwanted. This was considered when players were put on the transfer list, which is why it sometimes worked.
Ok, if you came here from one of the challenges, you’ll already have some idea what Scouting Ladders are about. If not, let me explain. Plenty of people keep asking for ways to make career mode more difficult or keep it interesting months after it’s released. In my opinion, youth scouting is too easy once you have half decent scouts. One of the things I’ve done in previous games is set restrictions on where I can setup a scouting network, so it made sense to share that with you.
If you’re an experienced player or if you’ve read any of my guides on youth scouting, you probably go straight for the ‘top’ countries. By that I mean the ones that have historically had a better chance of producing platinum players. Using scouting ladders in career mode forces you to scout countries in a certain order. This means you won’t be able to go for your favourite countries straight away. There’s also the added benefit of maybe scouting players from countries you don’t often scout.
How to Use Scouting Ladders
The general idea is to pick a coloured ladder and start at the bottom. So for example you could start by scouting New Zealand, then move on to Algeria and so on.
You can choose whatever ladder(s) you wish. I usually pick one with an end goal in mind (e.g. scouting Brazil).
Obviously if you have more than one available scout, you can ‘climb’ scouting ladders simultaneously.
A scout has to finish his scouting assignment in a country before you can dispatch a scout to the next country on the same ladder. This means you won’t be able to scout any countries at the top of a ladder until (at least) your third season.
Using this system it would take five seasons to complete all six ladders.
Scouting Ladders in Text
Just in case images aren’t being properly displayed on your device, here are the ladders written out in text format. I’ve written them out as numbered lists which should be easier to follow, you start at 1, finish at 9.
