FIFA 16 career mode guide

Player Training

For years, FIFA players have been requesting a way to choose how to improve their players’ abilities through specific training drills, rather than through the random growth the game assigns to players every month. Well, finally EA listened, and FIFA 16 sees the introduction of this long-awaited - and quite brilliant - feature.

Here’s how it works. Every week you can assign five training drills to your squad. You can give them all to one player if you like, or divide them evenly. You then pick what to train - shooting, passing, crossing and so on - from a variety of mini games centred on that particular skill. Once the drill is completed, the player is rated from A to F, with A grades producing much more stat growth than F grades.

Just follow our five quick tips below to get the most from your training sessions and to ensure the maximum possible improvement from your team.

There are three ways to train your players - simulate each drill one by one, simulate all of the drills at once, or play the sessions yourself. If you want to maximise good grades for your players - and you feel confident you can do this - we’d recommend you play through the drills. It takes longer than simulating them, but you can retry three of the drills (whereas you can’t retry any drills if you simulate them) so stand a better chance of getting that valuable A grade. So unless you feel the drills are just too hard to attempt yourself, give them a go.

If you’re going to simulate the training sessions, we’d always recommend going for the gold ones. Despite the supposed increase in difficulty, players seem to be just as likely to get an A rating in a simmed gold drill as they are in a simmed bronze drill. So you may as well go for the ‘tougher’ drill because the rewards are much greater! Of course, there is an increase in difficulty if you decide to play the drills, so bear that in mind.

Player training isn’t just for first team players - you can also train any players in your academy. This is particularly useful if you have a player with high potential but whose OVR is too low to get much of a chance in the first team. All the drills for youth players are exactly the same as for promoted players, so it will all feel familiar. It’s a great way of ensuring each player’s transition from the youth squad to the first team is as smooth as possible.

However, just be aware that it is possible to over-train your players. Due to a peculiarity in how the game calculates a player’s ability, too much growth in their technical stats can lead to stunted physical growth, as the game doesn’t feel this physical growth is necessary. Try to stick to giving each player a maximum of two drills a week - giving one player all five slots and repeating this every week could lead to problems.

But on the plus side, you can disregard that last point when it comes to goalkeepers, because physical stats are far less important than they are with outfield players. The game only lets you give a goalkeeper a maximum of two drills per week, but if you do this - two drills per week for an entire season - you can get some seriously impressive growth. We’ve seen goalkeepers grow almost 20 OVR points in a single season just from doing this, when most outfield players only grow around 4-5 points a year!

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