FIFA 22 tips with 7 things to know before you play

FIFA 22 tips are essential even if you're only just getting into this year's big footy sim. (PS Plus downloader, by any chance? Welcome.) Everyone knows about Ultimate Team, but FIFA 22 provides plenty else to get your studs into. Below we offer up handy hints for that supermassive card-collecting benemoth, along with other treats like the career mode option to create your own club. These are the seven essential FIFA 22 tips to know before you play.

1. You can skip the ‘Welcome to FIFA’ story

Spoilers! FIFA 22 kicks off with something bizarre: a self-contained story in which your created player crosses paths with David Beckham and Eric Cantona, partakes in a kickabout on the streets of Paris, and plays at the Parc Des Princes alongside Kylian Mbappe and Thierry Henry. It’s bizarre but harmless, although most will want to skip through in order to get started with FUT or career mode.

Alas, pause it during one of those cut-scenes and the story appears unskippable: you just aren’t given the option. But you can still skip it. The kickabout in the streets, and on PSG turf, can be paused like any regular FIFA 22 drill – and at this point you’re given the usual options, including quitting out to the main menu.

2. Create-a-club is brilliant

Career mode now offers the option to create your own club, and add them to any league in the game – replacing an existing team. It’s great! You choose your name, rival, crests and home and away kits. The latter alone is a brilliant time sink, with 80 designs to pick from, made by authentic manufacturers: Nike, Adidas, Umbro, Puma, Hummel, and New Balance. Cool.

The key part to get right during initial set-up is the ‘Your Squad’ tab. Experiment with the top two ‘overall rating’ and ‘squad age’ sliders until you’re happy with the line-up of regen players on the right – and note that you can flick the right stick to see a list of player ages. For my created side (Bath City) I went with ‘One Star/Very Young’ for a tough League Two challenge, but if you’re dropping Carshalton Athletic into the Premier League you need a minimum of Four Stars and Balanced from the outset.

3. Potential is everything

Fancy taking on an established side, rather than making your own club? Then long-term career mode success is all about building for the future. We’ll have a more detailed guide soon, but for now these are the ten players in career mode with the highest potential. The first score is their current rating, the second their overall potential score.

1. Kylian Mbappe (PSG) – 91 > 95
2. Gianluigi Donnarumma (PSG) – 89 > 93
3. Erling Haaland (Dortmund) – 88 > 93
4. Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool) – 87 > 92
5. Phil Foden (Manchester City) – 84 > 92
6. Kai Havertz (Chelsea) – 84 > 92
7. Jadon Sancho (Manchester United) – 87 > 91
8. Matthijs de Ligt (Piemonte Calcio) – 85 > 91
9. Joao Felix (Atletico Madrid) – 83 > 91
10. Pedri (Barcelona) – 81 > 91

4. BPM is dead… long live BPM

Bronze Pack Method, AKA ‘BPM’, has been hampered by EA’s controversial decision to remove standard 400-coin bronze packs from Ultimate Team. Instead, you can only buy 750-coin premium packs. It’s naughty, and makes working the market harder, but it can still be effective – you just need patience.

After buying a pack, check the ‘Compare Price’ option for each individual player. Any currently selling for ‘discard’ price – 200 coins – should be stashed in your club for now. But those whose value is higher than 200 can go straight on the market, at a price comparable to other identical cards. [By cycling through your stashed players weekly, you can cherry pick the right time to list those, too.] Aim to make 1000 coins in sales per pack, and eventually big profits are assured.

5. Dump your 75-81 rated gold cards

While discard-price silver and bronze cards should be held onto until required for Squad Building Challenges (SBCs), 75-81 rated golds can be dumped on the transfer market immediately. They won’t bring in mega money – but you’re going to receive so many gold cards throughout this season, via rewards for Squad Battles and Division Rivals, that there’s just no point holding onto them.

Apply a different rule to items rated 82 or above. These will intermittently go for premium amounts due to Icon SBCs – so you’re better off storing them for now, in order to rake in maximum coinage later.

6. All La Liga is a good way to go

One final Ultimate Team tip concerns the make-up of your team. Chemistry is imperative, and the easiest way to max it out is by assembling a starting line-up comprising players from a single division. The temptation is to go with an all Premier League squad for this – but millions of other players are doing the same, ramping up the value of cards assigned to that competition (ENG 1).

Instead I advise building competitive squads around the other big leagues, at a fraction of the all-EPL cost. My La Liga XI is winning games online and off, yet cost under 150,000 coins to assemble. It’s listed below. Take a look for yourself, then consider building your own for that league, or the Bundesliga (which is particularly great for bargain defenders).

GK: Jan Oblak (91) – 40,000 coins
RB: Jesus Navas (84) – 5,900
CB: Clement Lenglet (82) – packed
CB: Gerard Pique (84) – 7,800
LB: Gaya (83) – packed
RM: Gareth Bale (82) – 2,000
CM: Casemiro (89) – 27,750
CM: Toni Kroos (88) – 22,000
LM: Eden Hazard (85) – 10,000
ST: Alexander Isak (82) – packed
ST: Luis Suarez (88) – 23,000

7. Finesse shots from distance are the meta

Improved keepers are a highly pleasing aspect of FIFA 22. You see fewer rebound goals, they’re adept in one-on-one situations, and behave more realistically in general, claiming crosses and tipping balls over or wide. It means that old goalscoring exploits have largely been nerfed, but that hasn’t stopped the community from searching for new ones.

Although its success rate has been reduced by patches, the most effective method to FIFA 22 shooting is the finesse shot from outside the box – side-footing a curler around the keeper, and into the top corner. To attempt this, work the ball around the edge of the D until you have a clear line at goal, then hold down shoot in conjunction with R1 (on PlayStation) or RB (on Xbox). Practice makes perfect, of course. Happy netbusting.