Best 5 Big Changes In FIFA 21 Career Mode

FIFA 21 is here and it brings plenty of changes for fans of the series long neglected career mode. Great news for anyone like me, who isn’t keen on constantly getting pasted by a 12 year old supercharged and Mbappe on the ultimate team.

If you’re like me, you’re more keen on negotiating clever transfers, developing the next youth star or leading the mighty markum to champions league glory.

Here are five big changes to this year’s FIFA career mode and how much of a difference they actually make.

Transfer

First up, transfers have received an overhaul with the now commonplace loan to buy arrangement finally an option and the differences are immediately apparent when you start a new career the game now lets you choose between strict and loose rules for transfer negotiations.

Loose largely seems to be unchanged from previous editions of the game but strict adds a new set of rules for the game’s transfer market with the aim of adding realism and could make it a bit more difficult to get the stars into your team.

One of the more interesting effects is that players will no longer move between rival teams with clubs being completely apathetic towards accepting any kind of interest in their players from their direct competition, meaning you won’t see Mohamed Salah popping up at Manchester city or Harry Kane moving to arsenal.

Similarly, players can according to the developers at least hold grudges against certain clubs. So you’d better think twice about repeatedly clattering Neymar, if you’re hoping to sign him later down the line.

Plus if a player has the one club player trait, they’ll be inclined to stick around although the only player I could find with that trait was well Leo Messi. EA might want to update the old database.

EA has someone who always tries to aim for realistic transfers in career mode, this is all a welcome addition although it’s not without some odd wrinkles Bournemouth wouldn’t even pick up the phone when I was playing as Southampton i mean i guess they’re rivals but their boiling hatred for me didn’t stop them coming cap in hand to try and loan my fourth choice striker pathetic.

Squad Training

Another huge change is the addition of more developed training schedules for your squad. Allowing you to mark individual days in the calendar as training, recovery or rest days.

The training exercises themselves will be familiar to long-term fans albeit with the option to train multiple players at once, with a difficult exercises offering a higher potential benefit but a higher penalty to a player’s fitness.

As with previous training systems you can simulate the sessions rather than play them yourself. But every-time I try to do this each player got a D grade presumably for don’t be so lazy.

But once you’ve played it at least once it defaults to your highest achieved grade from that point onward either way it’s hard to imagine i’ll still be interested in doing the same old training exercises.

Once I’m six seasons in by default the training works around your team’s schedule offering a balance of training rest and recovery days to ensure your players don’t burn out.

Before big matches but to test how much of a difference this really made i decided to take a team full of overpaid pre-madonas many are available and put them through my patented grind their bones into dust training regime two full weeks of drills with no rest or recovery days whatsoever the change in schedule did in fact have quite a significant impact as my exhausted team sad faces all round shipped seven goals and just about as many injuries in their first two matches but honestly if Raheem Sterling isn’t interested in running up and down the right wing until his hamstrings literally explode does he even deserve a place in my team he simply must not want it enough.

Match Sharpness

Rejig training system also ties into the new match sharpness modifier which indicates how ready a player is to perform in any given match as a number out of 100 anything above 50 will give the player a boost in certain key attributes and anything below 50 will see a reduction in attributes in turn adding a nice risk reward dynamic that could make all the difference when it comes to a big match.

This creates a pretty interesting balancing act and could lead to some tough decisions when it comes to picking your team do you stick with a rusty stalwart or swap them out for a younger player who’s raring to go oh dear still it should add some much needed variety to your lineups as the season progresses.

Player Growth

Perhaps the most exciting addition is the surprisingly thorough player development system, which gives you many more opportunities to develop and specialize your squad.

Each player can now be assigned a custom development plan which redistributes their XP towards certain focused attributes with a surprising amount of possibilities, maybe your style of play focuses on aerial bombardment.

Why not develop your favorite striker into a target man want your hulking seven foot central midfielder to stay back and shield your defense funnel his XP into defensive attributes, you can even go as far as retraining a player to play in a completely different position giving the opportunity to make the most of your players absurd crossing abilities by transforming him into a right midfielder.

For Example:- There doesn’t seem to be any limit on what you can ask your players to trainers but obviously how long it takes and how successful it will be is determined by their stats and their age with younger players being much easier to convert to your desired position, meaning you can take that promising youth team striker and develop him into an all-action poacher.

Simulation

Yes, simulation because after you’ve spent hours carefully cultivating your squad honing your training regime and developing the next youth team sensation, what better way to celebrate than by letting the AI take over and play the game for you.

Honestly having a football manager style simulation is not something that I ever really wanted from FIFA but it’s certainly a nice option to have particularly for those money-making friendlies and the early round cup games .

Plus if you’re a real glory hunter you can wait until your player is clean through on goal and then jump into the match and take control that was all me that goal however there’s one very specific thing, I hate about the new simulation option and that’s the fact that they’ve put it where team management used to be on the bloody match menu meaning I've had to unlearn years of muscle memory to stop myself from accidentally starting the match before I've had a chance to tweet my lineup nightmare.

It’s very easy to be cynical about FIFA EA’s flagship sports title has long been fairly criticized for ignoring basically every mode, that isn’t the money spinning ultimate team but for once it feels like career mode has been given some much needed attention.

It may be a few bells and whistles rather than the ground up redevelopment some fans are after but it might be just enough to hold your attention for another season particularly with the 10 hour EA play trial soon being packaged in with Xbox game pass ultimate in a year where FIFA overall feels more like a cross gen hold over than ever it’s nice to see that for career mode at least it’s headed in the right direction oh oh did you see that what a header get off the bar oh you’d love to see it you.