FIFA 22 Career Mode brings you more ways to customize your Manager Career experience and a long overdue revamp to the Player Career experience
FIFA 22 Career Mode Features
FIFA 22 Career Mode features several innovations, including in the way how you create your unique club and identity, as well in the redesigned player career progression.
Create Your Club
In FIFA 22, you now have the ability to create your own team in Manager Career, which is something I know a lot of you have been passionately requesting over the years.
Club Identity
You’ll start by picking your club’s name and the nickname which will be used by the commentary team.
Next, you’ll choose the league you want to play in, after which you’ll choose the team you want to replace. The number of teams participating in a league stays the same, while the team you replaced goes into the Rest of World teams. You can choose any league in the game, carving your path to glory from the bottom tier of a country’s league system or playing against the world’s biggest teams in the top leagues. You will then choose a Rival club from within your league. Matches against your rival will be treated with higher importance in our broadcast experience and benefit from additional news coverage & stories.
Kit, Crest & Stadium Customization
Kits, crests, and your base stadium can be changed at the beginning of every new season.
You can customize your team’s home and away kits, the club’s crest as well as your home stadium. There is plenty of variation to choose from and you don’t need to fear that your team is running out of style.
Stadium Customization is also an addition to Career Mode in FIFA 22. Pick from any of the base generic stadiums in the game and really make it your own. You can change its base color, seat color, and go deeper with changes such as the pitch pattern and the net shape. The atmosphere around your club can be changed as well, with a wide selection of goal songs, crowd chants and walkout anthems to capture your club’s identity and style. Stadium Customization is also available for existing clubs that don’t have a licensed stadium assigned in the game.
Squad Builder
A brand new team needs players, and that’s why my favorite part of Create Your Club is the squad builder. Here you’ll be able to populate your new team with a starting group of players. When generating these new players, you will have control over your squad’s star rating and the average age of players. Before you commit to your new squad, you can play around with the various settings until you find a squad that you want to start your journey with.
The nationality of the generated players in your squad is based on the nationality makeup of the players in the league of your choice. For example, let’s assume that 7% of the players in the English Premier League have French nationality. Each time a player is generated for your squad in the English Premier League, there’s a 7% chance that they could be French. This keeps squads feeling authentic no matter what league you choose to play in.
After setting up your squad, you can also choose your starting budget and either go from humble beginnings or create football’s next big spenders, as your transfer budget can start as high as 1 billion of your chosen currency. You can then use your budget to sign new players to strengthen key positions as soon as you begin playing.
Board Priorities
Last but not least, you will be able to change your club board’s priorities. These priorities can dictate the objectives you will receive in all categories. Note that domestic and regional priorities will be influenced by your team’s star rating as well. For example, if you start a career with a 3 star club in LaLiga and a High Priority Domestic objective, you will have an objective to avoid relegation in the first season, given that your team is one of the weakest rated teams in the league, and a long term objective for a top 4 finish in 4 years.
There are a variety of board priority presets built into the club creation flow to help you find the right philosophy for your club. If you want to experiment, you can also tweak each individual setting to hit your sweet spot and make each playthrough feel fresh.
Player Career
EA have made significant changes and updates to Player Career in FIFA 22 in order to refresh the mode and make your player journey more memorable.
Coming On As A Sub
A new addition to FIFA 22 Player Career is the ability to come into the match from the bench. Our aim was to deliver the experience of a young prospect climbing the ranks to the starting lineup. Once you’ve made your way to the subs bench, you’ll be able to jump into the next match from the moment in which your Manager decides to sub you in. This will be showcased in the pre-match launcher, where you can choose to either play the remainder of the match or sim past it.
Manager Rating
Manager Rating is the system that measures your manager’s belief in you as a member of the squad. You’ll start your career as a bench player, with the manager giving you reduced minutes to impress them. If you complete the objectives set for you, your Pro will start to see increased playing time, potentially breaking into the starting 11.
On the opposite side of things, if you fail your objectives constantly you will end up getting dropped. Performing well in Training will allow you to get back in for a chance at redemption but if you constantly fail to make the squad, you may ultimately end up transfer listed. Your Pro’s overall rating determines if they will be put up for a transfer or a loan. The requirements to make the starting 11 versus the bench are based on the quality of the squad. So you’ll have little room for failure in a top club as you’ll have to be at your best to hold on to your spot in the starting lineup, while for lower rated clubs you’re more likely to be forgiven for failing an objective occasionally.
The Manager Rating system is also in place for your relationship with your nation’s international manager. After you make the squad by becoming one of the best players in your position in the country, you will be called up to the national team. Just like at your club, you’ll need to train and complete Match Objectives to cement your starting lineup position and push your team forward to glory.
Match Objectives
You will consolidate your starting position by successfully completing all new Match Objectives. They will be revealed to you as you step on the pitch, and you also have the ability to enhance one of them and make it a personal goal for an extra Player Growth reward. The Match Objectives are generated based on a couple of factors: your playing position, the quality of your team compared to the opposition and the formation your team is using compared to the one of the opposition. All of these systems are working together to make sure that you have a varied set of challenges each time you step on the pitch.
Match Objectives and Coming On As A Sub are available for both Created Player and Real Player careers.
Player Growth (Created Players)
The FIFA 22 Player Career features an overhauled Player Growth system that puts the development of your created players in your hands. It’s all about earning experience points (XP) and leveling up your player as you progress through your career.
Leveling Up & Earning XP
Earning XP will level up your Pro and unlock Skill Points with each new level achieved. There are multiple ways for you to earn XP in Player Career: Match Rewards, Training and Enhanced Match Objectives.
Once you’ve earned your share of XP, it’s decision time. With each level up, you unlock a number of skill points to spend.
Skill Tree
Player Career Skill Tree are based on two pillars:
1. EA want to ensure that player growth is in your hands. Previously, there was a system that grew Attributes as you were playing matches. In this new approach, your Pro’s Attributes will only grow how you want them to grow.
2. Attribute increases are significant and offer a noticeable improvement in gameplay. The Attribute boosts you unlock with each Skill Point offer noticeable upgrades.
Perks
Another exciting addition to player growth for created players is the new Perks system. Perks unlock as you level up and you can equip up to three of them to take into a match. Perks provide an additional performance boost on top of your Attributes and trigger automatically when certain conditions are met.
Keep an eye out for the Perk activation icon that will appear in the overhead player indicator and in the performance widget in the top right corner of the screen. When the Perk icon appears, its effects are active.