FC 25 Career Mode guide to scouting, transfers and the best teams to use

There's still time for FC 25 Career Mode to act as a rewind button on everything your team did wrong season. Whether it's un-relegating Ipswich or leading Manchester City to yet another title, EA FC 25 enables you to spend this summer overriding the 2024-25 campaign – then continuing into an MCU-style alternate future. Learn how to master scouting mechanics, youth development, and all the other key elements in our FC 25 Career Mode guide.

Best teams to manage in FC 25 Career Mode

With the inclusion of women's squads, the team database in FC 25 Career Mode is now bigger than ever. That's exciting news, but means there's the potential to feel overwhelmed too. Hopefully you're going to be playing as one club for multiple seasons, across real-life weeks or months. So how do you make your choice blind? Well, you don't. Because GR has cherry picked five delicious options to kick off your managerial journey. Any one of this quintet will keep you engaged and challenged. Alright, the latter may not be true of PSG…

Championship contenders: Coventry City

One of the big surprises this year is that three Championship clubs have their grounds added to the FC 25 stadiums list. That turns Blackburn, Bristol City and Coventry into intriguing career mode options, and we highly recommend that latter if you want to push for the Prem. Their transfer budget of £9.6m is competitive at this level, and board expectations are low, meaning a play-off push in season one will go down a treat.

NWSL big timers: San Diego Wave

Women’s teams are available in career for the first time, and we’ve already bigged up San Diego Wave for having one of the FC 25 best kits. But their Career Mode appeal goes far deeper than being pretty in pink. Only Angel City FC have a higher transfer budget, giving you the option to bring in big names from the WSL or GPFBL. And they already have five players rated 80 or above, such as Canadian keeper Kailen Sheridan and Aussie CDM Emily van Egmond. There’s scope for immediate, sustained success here.

Triumphant returnees: Napoli

As mentioned in our FC 25 tips, two Italian sides return to being fully licensed this year after a couple of years being exclusive to eFootball, in Roma and Napoli. The latter are a very tempting Career Mode project. Their £71 million war chest is dwarfed by big timers Juventus, but still offers plenty of wiggle room to make a splash or two in the transfer market. Romelu Lukaku is a powerhouse up front, and they made some intriguing additional summer signings in Billy Gilmour and Scott McTominay. Potential Serie A glory awaits.

The easy ride: Paris St Germain

Just want to buy all your best players and win the league at a canter? PSG are the no-brainer choice. You start off with £187 million to spend on new signings – £80m more than Real Madrid, and an insane £159m more than the next richest French club, Lyon. The squad is already packed with talent such as Ousmane Dembele, Gigi Donnarumma and Marquinhos, while Warren Zaire-Emery features high on the FC 25 best young players list. For instant glory, Paris is your destination.

The long-term challenge: Bromley

England is the only country with four leagues in the game, meaning it will take you at least three seasons to reach the top flight if you start from the very bottom. Up for the ultimate challenge? Strap yourself into the Bromley hot seat for the foreseeable future. Their transfer budget is the lowest in League Two at £805,000, but board expectations are Very Low across the board – so you have a long leash to work with. Bring in some loans, gradually overhaul the squad, and see if can make it all the way to the top by 2027-28.

FC 25 Tactical Presets explained

After choosing your team, your first port of call on the managerial Tasks list is adopting a Tactical Preset. There are seven different templates, with each one offering subtle tweaks to your tactics from the outset.

Standard is a balanced approach – an all-rounder with no glaring strengths or weaknesses. Wing Play, obviously, focuses on your wingers, while Tiki Taka is all about possession-based short passing. Gegenpressing, meanwhile, revolves around the high press and direct attacking.

Park the Bus opts for a more defensive-minded approach, Counter Attack sees your team sitting back and ready to pounce on the attack, and Kick and Rush is more route-one, leaning on a team’s physical strengths.

Once you’ve picked your Tactical Preset, you can then hire coaches to implement your chosen philosophy. However, you only get a set amount and salary, so pick wisely.

Each coach is rated out of five stars in a chosen category: attacking, midfield, defending, and goalkeeper. The better they are, the more they can impact your players’ attributes throughout the season. Just make sure you pick coaches that are aligned with your Tactical Present, as well as placing them in the category where they can have the most effect. For example: if a coach has a two-star attacking rating but four-star in defending, keep them in your defending coach lineup.

FC 25 Youth Academy and Rush matches

It’s all change for your FC 25 Youth Academy. The countries list has been expanded to more than 160, and you can now scout up to four specific positions, and three distinct FC 25 Player Roles. Cool. The biggest game-changer of all in terms of developing wonderkids is being able to use Rush tournaments to try out youth prospects, and improve them along the way.

Rush is a five-on-five match type that plays just like the main game, but on a smaller pitch. Youth tournaments in career mode take place every two months, and you can choose to use players with their current ratings, or ultimate potential. After each match you have the option to view how Match XP has affected their ability, and how long it will take them to level up to the next OVR. It’s a lengthy process, but this is a mode build for extended play – which makes it all the more rewarding when players levelled up through Rush finally make it to your first team.

FC 25 Career Mode youth scouting

Looking for the next big thing? Hit the Academy tab then Youth Scouts. This process works similar to the one above, but with even more nations to search for talent.

You can hire up to three youth scouts. They can then be sent away in increments of three months, six months, or nine months, and you can give them specific instructions, such as finding players with certain traits. Like with normal scouts, each has a Experience and Judgment rating, which will help you find more players and better players respectively.

During their time away, you will intermittently get reports back. Sift through the players to see a broad range revealing their current overall rating, their potential rating, their attributes, and their positions. From these menus, you can sign players for your academy.

FC 25 Career Mode scouting

The Global Transfer Network is your main hub for scouting players. If set up correctly, you should have a continual influx of talent to cast your eye over.

You can find the Global Transfer Network by heading to the Transfers tab, selecting the Scouts grid. Once there, you’ll see your current scouts on one tab, and an instructions menu on the other.

First, use Instructions to tell your scouts which players to identify. You can search for potential signings by position, age, contract length, overall condition (from backup to world class prospect), PlayStyle or – new for FC 25 – Player Role.

Once that’s done, it’s time to send your scouts out across the world. You can hire up to six scouts and each scout has a star rating out of five for two categories: Experience and Judgment. Experience will give you a larger selection of players to choose from, while those with higher Judgment will find higher quality players. Ideally, you want someone who is at least a three-star rating in both skills.

After a few in-game weeks, you can return to each instruction grid to find the list of players that your scout has found. If they’re having trouble finding players, be sure to widen your scout instruction parameters. You may want the dream player who is great at everything, but it’s rarely that simple.

From there, you’ll be given a rough snapshot of each player. You will then need to scout them further by clicking on the player’s report. We also recommend shortlisting them in the Transfer Hub so you can keep track of the needle-in-a-haystick finds among the dozens of players that will be highlighted. After a short period, your scouts deliver a full report including overall rating, market value, weekly wage, release clauses, and expected transfer fee.

FC 25 career mode transfers

Once you’ve scouted a player, you’ll then be able to add them to your shortlist and either approach to buy, approach to loan, or delegate the tasks to your assistant.

From there, it’s a cat-and-mouse game between what the selling club wants and how much you’re prepared to pay. Scouting a player fully will allow you to get a rough asking price, as well as the lowest offer that could realistically be accepted.

Once you’ve entered negotiations, you can offer an up-front fee that comes out your transfer budget, or sweeten the deal slightly with sell-on clauses and player swaps.

If your first bid isn’t received well, the tension meter will begin to rise. Fill that up – or table an unrealistic bid – and the selling club will walk away. We recommend starting just above a player’s market value and going from there.

If accepted, you’ll have to negotiate a wage with the player’s agent, as well as their squad role and contract length. If they sign on the dotted line, you’ll get a quick recap on how he compares to your current squad as well as what the best possible deal could have been.

Selling is much the same, though the ball is in your court. Make sure you get the best up-front fee for your players and offer young players our on loan (up to two years) to help them develop.

FC 25 Career Mode training

FC 25 Training Plans are another a way to balance the fitness of your squad, it’s something that seems like an extra unnecessary task but, if you take the time to learn it, adds an extra layer of depth to your man-management.

You have two stats to take care of when it comes to your squad: Fitness and Sharpness. The former is all about how fit your players currently are. If they play too many games, they will have less stamina and, in turn, they won’t be able to complete 90 minutes without gasping for air. High Sharpness, on the other hand, will lead to a boost in form and skill, leading to them playing better on the pitch.

Of course, you can rotate players to help balance the two, but you can also use Training Plans to create a tailor-made regimen for your squad.

For each player, you’re given five levels of training: All Out Performance and Performance-focused are all about Sharpness, Balanced is a middle ground, Energy-focused and All-Out Energy zero in on stamina and player recovery but come at the cost of decreased Sharpness – and vice-versa.

Don’t be scared to tinker here, though we’ve found success by keeping the entire squad on a slightly more fitness-heavy setup, instead letting our coaches take on the task of improving the players. Speaking of…

FC 25 Career Mode knowledge

While we’ve covered coaches in Tactical Presets above, there’s still a handful of tips to take in so you can get the most out of your boot room.

If you succeed in the first season, you’ll be able to increase your manager rating. That will allow you to bring on additional coaches in future seasons – exponentially increasing the impact of Tactical Presets.

Like your players, coaches don’t remain static in their ability. The more wins you get with a Tactical Preset enabled, the more XP you can put towards your backroom staff. So don’t worry about bringing in some three-star coaches to begin with.

Also pay attention to a coach’s Knowledge level. This boosts a player’s overall rating when they are on the pitch and, if you can afford it, you want to be aiming for no lower than Accomplished, though shelling out for Experts will help you get short-term success even if your wage budget will soon deplete. It’s also fine to chop and change your coaching staff to get the right balance. We recommend focusing on Attack and Midfield as they will provide the most tangible results (i.e. goals) in the early parts of the season.

One of our favourite new additions this year is that coaches can help raise the Role Familiarity of players set to key roles by one level. In order for this to occur, make sure that the coach’s tactical Knowledge is higher than the natural Role rating of the player you want to improve – and that they can play that position in the first place! Once he or she is thriving in that Role, be sure to bust out some big-time FC 25 celebrations.