FIFA Post-Season Review

Early this morning (cough 3am cough), I finally completed the 3rd season of being a manager in FIFA. This time, I won the local cup, the Euro cup, and the local league. This was after doing much more team management than I typically do. Shifting players around, scheduling squads, looking at the calendar real close, managing fatigue, looking at player rating, etc. If only FIFA's interface wasn't so clunky.

Post-season transfer options

This morning, after completing the season, I was presented the following choices:

• Move to Real Madrid (2nd in Spanish league, the game's god-mode team)
• Stay with Sevilla (1st in Spanish league, current team, beat Real Madrid obviously)
• Move to FC Ingolstadt (2nd in German league, small budget, weak players)
• Move to Bayer 04 (15th in German league, bigger budget, stronger players)

Each of these have their pros and cons.

Staying with Sevilla means I get to stay with the team that I built, played, and won the league and cups with. I also get to keep all the hard-earned budget I accumulated during the season. Would be a waste to transfer to another team after doing all that effort. But then staying would mean same team, same league, same opponents, possibly the same result. Boring.

Moving to Real Madrid means I get to wield god-tier players. Their budget is through the roof, twice as much as what I have accumulated in Sevilla. They might also have a powerful reserve pool, which is good for fatigue management. But the season goal is to both win the local league and cup, high pressure. Also, being a god in game and knowing you can't lose is boring.

Now onto the two Bundesliga squads. They're neither as powerful or as rich as the previous two. But the idea of transferring leagues is something I've always wanted to do. Having a low season goal puts less pressure on the team and my sanity. And it always feels nice to carry an underdog team. My only fear is that I will definitely lose firepower against god-tier teams.

Becoming more manager-y

In the third season, I've already got some sense of how to buy/sell players, schedule squads for matches, look closely at the calendar, manage fatigue, and stay away from injuries. I had the occasional red card or two, usually caused by badly-timed goalkeeper charges. But hey, that's why you have reserve keepers.

Right now, my inner curiosity is telling me to look into the player growth system. This is right after observing that a handful of primary squad players had negative growth, with one degrading by at least 4 points within one season. Information is scarce regarding this topic, lots of superstition and subjective opinion. I'll have to do more research.

Another system I've started to look into is news and scouting information, to get every drop of advantage I can. This includes looking at opponent formation, their strength based on previous results, their ranking in the league, suspended and injured players. For instance, when I read that Casillas was out injured meant Real Madrid will not be playing with a god-tier keeper in our upcoming game. This also means that I can do as many cheese shots as I want and one will eventually get through.

I haven't gotten fully into player trade. Good players are expensive, bargain players are hard to find, and there are a bajillion players from different teams, leagues, and countries. I haven't been following the soccer scene for decades, so I don't really know who's who anymore. I just rely on player ratings for most of my decisions. Player age also matters apparently.

Conclusion

Still haven't yet decided where I'd like to be in the upcoming season. A part of me says stay. A part of me says go for Real Madrid. And yet another part of me says go for the underdog this time. I do have save games, no worries there. It's just that once I dump effort into one choice, it's almost always never an option to go back.

Well, at least I'm having a little bit if fun in this crazy world.