How to Choose the Best FIFA 15 Players for Your Squad

How to choose the best FIFA 15 players

 

To choose players by their ratings is a huge mistake

Ultimate Team differs itself from the other game modes by allowing each one of us to build a preferred dream team. One that we’re identified with, that we feel like it’s ours. What makes this such a unique thing is the fact that we all have different tastes.

In order for us to build our team, it doesn’t matter if we know who are the best FIFA 15 players or not because this matter is quite subjective. What matters is knowing which players will fit better in our playing style, our formation, budget and squad. This isn’t always an easy task, after all new player cards keep coming along through the season, but we’ll give you all the tools needed to build better. Find out who’s your team.

First Criteria: Chemistry

It’s unavoidable. When we want to start a squad from scratch, the first criteria for selecting the players is always the chemistry. It forces us to plan how we’re going to spend the coins with antecedence and makes us base it all in one league or nationality. If you have experience you might as well choose to build a hybrid squad but you’ll always be subject to the laws of Chemistry.

For people who don’t know, the chemistry affects a player’s performance on the pitch. A player with low chemistry tends, for example, to fail at passing and shooting more easily. In order for you to build good chemistry, besides having your players play in their preferred position, you should put them alongside others that have an element in common: same club, same league and/or nationality. The easiest way to do so is to create teams full of players exclusively from one league or of one nationality.

Leagues and Nationalities

If you want to want to go with the flow and use one league or nationality for a team but you still don’t know which one to choose, get to know the strong and weak spots within the most popular choices:

Barclays Premier League

The main football league in England works as basis for most FIFA 15 Ultimate Team squads out there. Why does that happen? The main reason has to do with most FUT 15 players’ origins being linked to it, the league is considered the most spectacular professional football league in the world. But there are more reasons. Actually this is one of the best leagues to choose for a squad because although it’s not the one with the best players in the game, it’s got more quality players than any other. You have too many choices and potential variations to exercise, it means you can easily find a great team according to your taste. The fact that the best players in the world are from other leagues is probably not a disadvantage because they’re so expensive that few people are able to buy them. The BPL still has got one more advantage: the fact that it has many players from other countries makes it easier for hybrid teams to be built based on it.

Basically, you can say the only big disadvantage of building a squad based on Premier League players is their high price. No other league has average prices as high as this one. Since the demand is bigger than the supply, the players’ prices raise and surpass what you’d pay for equivalent players from other leagues.

 

Liga BBVA

La Liga is also one of the top leagues, but not just because it’s got elite players such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Neymar, Gareth Bale and Luis Suárez. This is the mandatory squad league for people with an unlimited budget on FUT 15. Just the five players mentioned above will form almost half a team with a quality level you won’t find anywhere else. However there are few game players who can afford such players when building a squad. Even for a somewhat limited budget, the Spanish league comes out as a good option mainly because you can build a squad as good as a BPL by spending way less coins. One of the good things about this league is that all positions are occupied by players that offer guaranteed quality.

Whoever decides to build a team based on this league will surely find a big variety of choices, much quality and relatively high prices. In our opinion, it’s more appropriate for people who want to build a squad with no cost restrictions, but it’s also a great alternative to the BPL whilst being more accessible. The league is also a great one for hybrid teams since there are many Spanish players out there playing in the best European leagues.

Bundesliga

Thanks to all the success of German clubs in the European competitions, most notably FC Bayern, the Bundesliga has climbed to a remarkable spot, player quality wise, in the last few years. This is obviously not the only reason why the main German football league is, at the moment, the third most used league in FIFA 15 Ultimate Team. It always has good solutions for every – or almost every – position, with a more accessible price than the BPL. In previous years this price difference was even more notorious, but the league’s popularity rose and its players got a bit more expensive. Still, it’s possible for you to build an excellent squad based on the Bundesliga with less than 1 million coins. Even for those with superior budget there’s always the possibility of improvement, calling on players such as Robben and Ribery, for example. If these numbers are too big for you, we advise you to move on to another league.

Serie A

Do you feel like you can’t gather the coins necessary to build a squad based on one of the three leagues we described previously? Don’t worry. The Serie A allows you to start from low or medium spending capacity while that doesn’t mean a significant quality loss. It is no doubt the best league regarding price vs quality for you to face any opponent head-to-head. Even with you not being able to reach an 85 squad rating, which you won’t, you definitely won’t fail to have a good squad, plus you’ll have that with the advantage of not carrying the responsibility of owning the most expensive teams. The prices are somewhat attractive in a way that all the league’s best players together cost less than Messi.

This year, Serie A is even better. Firstly because you can build a cheap but way more balanced squad. In previous years some elements would lack quality, such as for example the right back and left back position. This year there are way more options, plus it’s a league where you’ll find many fast players and that’s something important on FIFA 15. Another thing that’s changed as well is EA’s valorisation towards the league. They’re not the underdogs any more, at least now that we see many In Forms coming. This allows you to keep improving your squad with new cards even after it’s been set.

Ligue 1

Among the five leagues given as the most popular ones, the Ligue 1 is clearly the weakest. It’s relatively cheap, such as the Serie A, but it doesn’t offer quality solutions for all positions like the Italian league does. You just have to take a look at the centre backs to realise you’ll need to make a few adaptations in order to build a sufficiently competitive squad based on this league.

People who want to build a strong team based on the French league will be forced to use Paris Saint-Germain players. They fill the league’s tough core. Names like Thiago Silva, David Luiz or Ibrahimovic are an absolute choice for any team. However, especially Zlatans price is not affordable by most game players. There are alternatives but the truth is that they’re never as good as, for example, what you get in the Serie A.

Other Leagues

If your budget is low, there are leagues that can be quite useful to you. Here are the Portuguese, Russian and Turkish leagues. Having them as base, you’ll be able to build minimally competitive squads with just a portion of your coins. The biggest problem you might come to find is player choice as there are not many. Since there are less players in these leagues, some positions can’t be occupied by players of the same quality as the rest, there is a point where you might have to call on silver or even bronze players. This is particularly noticed when it comes to defenders. Unbalanced but yet interesting squads can be frequently seen.

Besides the low cost, these leagues have also the advantage of causing your opponent to underestimate you or have too much confidence. Although some of these teams can turn out to be very interesting, you’ll hardly be able to face the best teams effectively.

Nationality

Building a squad based on only one nationality is probably going to lead you to limited choices and, in most players’ opinions, this is less fun. However, these teams can easily be adapted to hybrids. Three nationalities are in the spotlight for they currently have quality players in all positions: Spanish, Brazilian and German.

The Spanish’s popularity has rose immensely in the last few years, mainly after their World Cup and European titles. Such exposition made many good players of this nationality play not only in the BBVA league but also in the BPL, Bundesliga and Serie A. This is something particularly good because it offers us the possibility of easily building hybrid teams with Spanish players.

After being world champions, the main German players have had their stats rise remarkably. Although that wasn’t enough for them to effectively reach the Spanish, their great performance led several people to build squads based on this nationality.

There’s a whole difference in this case, now: Brazilian players. They’re internationally known as the ones who revealed the biggest number of great players. Although the Brazilian league’s been excluded from the game you still have an immense variety of choices, after all they’re the ones present in all FIFA 15 Ultimate Team leagues. Which is good. This nationality is particularly good for building teams of any category: gold, silver or bronze.

Besides these nationalities, there are a few others that can offer you an at least interesting squad: Argentinian, Colombian and French.

 

Positions

When you build a squad you’ll obviously be conditioned to the players’ positions. You must choose 18 players and at least one should be a goalkeeper. Then, if you don’t want to have chemistry negatively affected, you’ll have to buy players for the positions you need, according to your formation. They won’t always have to rigorously match since you can use position modifiers, but surely you’ll understand you can’t have all 18 players of the same position.

The question here is how far you can go and disrespect the chemistry. For example, will my performance be that affected if I use a centre back as a left or a right back if I see there aren’t good options for those actual positions? Most people will respect chemistry rigorously but it doesn’t necessarily have to be like this. It’s true that we do advise you not to use a player with individual chemistry below 7, but it depends on the alternative. Although there’s no concrete indication, general rule, a Cristiano Ronaldo playing as ST will do better than Soldado, who is most frequently used for this position on BBVA squads.

If you want to use a player outside of his natural position, you first need to check if he’s got the necessary attributes to play in this new position. This adaptation only makes sense if there’s a notable quality difference between this and the best player you can get for the position, in a way that the change compensates the chemistry loss. Besides, it’s recommended that the positions have some relation to one another so that chemistry is not so roughly affected.

Sometimes it is preferable to pick a better player, even if he is out of position and has lower chemistry

If you try adapting players to new positions, you’ll certainly be surprised with the slight loss of performance the player will suffer, even considering high chemistry reductions. However, it’s important to mention that you should never abuse using these adaptations. If you do it with more than one player in the same team, you’ll start to affect not only the player’s individual chemistry but also the whole squad’s chemistry.

 

Second Criteria: Attributes

Let’s start by demystifying one thing: players are no more than numbers. Although EA Works hard to make us believe the players have unique identities, here’s the truth: they’re mere numbers and should be analysed as such. We do know this isn’t quite easy to accept for people who have experienced unique moments that once connected them emotionally to the players. Deep down it’s good to believe they’re something more than numbers, but doing that is just avoiding the truth, sadly. The player’s physique isn’t what affects his performance, not his traits or specialities (which simply don’t exist on Ultimate Team) either. It’s all on the attributes. They’re the ones responsible to make us feel like each player is different. And they’re the ones you should carefully analyse when planning your squad. Many times one player’s perception changes, according to the game’s difficulty, formation or for any of the dozens of other reasons there are. Still, attributes are the most accurate element that we have in order to compare players.

For pure laziness or lack of knowledge, many people make the terrible mistake of evaluating one player’s quality according to his rating. It just shows, in general, how popular the player is, so that makes them be compared to others. The rating is NOT an average or reflex of all the attributes. It reveals nothing about the player’s true technical, mental and physical attributes. It just represents his reputation. EA gives ratings according to the player’s league, club, individual performances and retribution for their team. Sometimes, FIFA 15 Ultimate Team players with lower ratings can be better choices.

On FIFA 15 Ultimate Team there are 28 attributes which can only be viewed in game, in the squad management menu, or else in a database. You’re the only one who knows for sure about the attributes your players need because that’s according to your playing style. If, for example, you like to cross abuse, it’s preferred for you to have wingers with good crossing attributes and strikers with good heading. On the other hand, if you like playing on counter attacks, it’s important for you to have fast attackers and midfielders with good passing. All this is very intuitive, you need to look at your squad line and think about what you want to do with it. If you’re still having a hard time, we’ll help you.

 

IG FIFA 15 Ultimate Team attributes:

Acceleration
Agility
Agression
Composure
Tactical Awareness
Ball Control
Standing Tackle
Sliding Tackle
Crossing
Curve

Dribbling
Balance
Finishing
Strength
Marking
Short Passing
Long Passing
Penalties
Positioning
Shot Power

Heading Accuracy
Free Kick Accuracy
Reactions
Volleys
Long Shots
Resistance
Jumping
Sprint Speed
Vision

Like we said, the player choice should be based on his 28 attributes. Since they’re so many, when we play we get the feeling that it’s not possible to choose them only calling upon the numbers. However, we forget that the numbers are much more accurate than our playing experience, which is corrupted by many factors: our inspiration, the opponent’s quality, changes in our team, several events during the game, etc… We’re not saying you shouldn’t choose players basing yourself on the experience you’ve had with them, but you should form an opinion only after a minimum number of 10 to 15 matches. Besides, most of the time we can’t experiment with all the players we want to come up with the best team, so a good analysis of the players’ attributes first will surely be of great use.

But how is this analysis made? First of all it’s important to know what each attribute means and you can do this here. Then it’s also important to realise that the players with the highest attributes are not necessarily the best. Our interest here is to find the right players for our squad, and this is done once we identify the characteristics they should have according to what we can afford, of course. Imagine, for example, that you’re looking for a centre back to play between two other centre backs and his main role is to defend. Tackles, Interception, Marking, Jumping, Strength and Heading Acc are the main characteristics he should have. If you wanted to find the ideal player you’d just have to find the one with the highest sum of these attributes. Obviously it would be good having the other attributes high, but these are the ones you should focus on for this example. However, things aren’t so simple like this (you already find it complicated?). It’s just that among these attributes, some are more important than others and you should pay attention to this. You should give weights for each one of the attributes so that you can find a weight average to reflect the perfection of the player you’re looking for. For this example, you could define Tackle worth 35%, Interception 10%, Marking 20%, Jumping 15%, Strength 15% and Heading Acc just 5%.

Even more rigorously, you could create a formula based on your playing style and formation, coefficients that would reflect the importance of the other attributes, work rates, star skills and weak foot. The ideal thing would be to create one weight for each attribute in order to get an absolute final value that wouldn’t depend on anything else. However, besides this being way too painful to do, making all these weights up would be hard for people who don’t perfectly dominate the game. This is why there are other simpler strategies in order to determine how good a player is for our squad, and still that would allow us to come to sufficiently good conclusions.

For people that want to keep things as simple as they possibly can, we recommend that you analyse the basic attributes instead of the IG attributes. This is their role, and this is how most people select their players. The basic attributes are the six attributes shown on the player’s card: pace, shooting, passing, dribbling, defending and physicality. They’re no more than an average between the 28 attributes we called the In Game attributes for they can only be seen during the match. In order to choose a player, you should focus on the basic attributes and casually on one or other IG attribute that you think is crucial for the situation. For example, continuing the case we presented above with the centre back, all IG stats could be substituted by only one, defending, which doesn’t only reflect all these attributes but also weighs each one’s importance for the final stat. So you’d just need to put that analysis along strength, which isn’t included for defending, but physicality. For that reason, it’s important that we know what each of the six basic attributes corresponds to. Only this way we’ll be able to simplify everything, reducing our analysis to these attributes and then taking a peek at the IG stats we consider important. This knowledge also gives us the possibility to adjust the weights according to our preferences. Now that you’re aware of the importance of the basic attributes, let’s see what they’re made of:

PACE
Sprint Speed 55%
Acceleration 45%
SHOOTING
Finishing 45%
Long Shots 20%
Shot Power 20%
Volleys 5%
Att. Positioning 5%
Penalties 5%

PASSING
Short Pass 35%
Crossing 20%
Vision 20%
Long Pass 15%
Curve 5%
FK Acc 5%
DRIBBLING
Dribbling 50%
Ball Control 35%
Agility 10%
Balance 5%

DEFENDING
Stand Tackle 30%
Marking 30%
Interceptions 20%
Heading Acc 10%
Slide Tackle 10%
PHYSICAL
Strength 50%
Stamina 25%
Agression 20%
Jumping 5%

 

If you’re not very experienced, probably you’ll have a hard time identifying which attributes to give more attention to when choosing a player. We don’t know what’s your playing style, but according to your formation and player position, we can suggest the ones that seem like the most important ones. This information can be seen here, along with the work rates we judge ideal for each one of these situations.

In general, these are the attributes we value the most according to the positions:

CB: Defending, Physicality and Pace for at least one of the centre backs
RB / LB: Defending, Pace and eventually Dribbling for RWB’s and LWB’s
CDM: Defending, Passing and Physicality
CM / CAM: Passing and Dribbling
Alas: Pace, Dribbling and Passing
CF / ST: Shooting, Physicality and Pace

Obviously, this is a very simplified analysis. With a deeper knowledge inside the game we’ll be able to add strength to the list of attributes to carefully control and, for determined situations, resistance (stamina). The first one is frequently ignored but it contributes the most for the game’s evolution. The second started being important on FIFA 15, because in the previous years it had no practical effects. It’s more important for players in positions that require frequent running who usually have got aggressive work rates. These are the ones you should care to see if their stamina levels are high or low.

You might have already decided which players you’re going to use, but don’t expect the game to adapt to yourself. You’re the one that needs to adapt to it. For that you may want to know which attributes are the most OP on FIFA 15. Outstandingly, pace is the most decisive one in this game. After an entire year, the pace abusers are back and, if you don’t want to stay behind, you might have to use the same weapons. Give priority to the fastest players even if you’re going to lose on other attributes. We’re not saying you should use Marvell Wynne instead of Thiago Silva, but between Miranda and Javier Mascherano go for the Brazilian. The other OP attributes on FIFA 15 are dribbling and physicality. Make sure to consider them when choosing a player.

All this hassle for us to find the ideal players for our squad may look a bit complex since there are so many attributes to take into account. However, it goes downhill when it comes to choosing a goalkeeper. They’ve got only 6 basic attributes. They don’t have IG stats, nor skill moves or work rates. Nothing. Your formation and playing style have no influence on this choice either. They’re simply formed by seven numbers (yes, besides the attributes there’s his height!). This is what makes goalkeepers seem different to each other. You can abdicate yourself from giving attention to feedback saying this is or that goalkeeper concedes easily frequently. This is no good. You’ve seen two or three people complaining about that goalkeeper but, if you look closely, you’ll find more people saying the opposite. The only way you know if a goalkeeper is good or not is through his stats. In our opinion, the descending order for the importance of goalkeeper attributes is: reflexes, diving, handling, positioning, speed and kicking. It’s up to you to weigh them. If you’re defensively passive when the opponent is roaming through the surroundings of your area, you should also give special attention to your goalkeeper’s height, because when they’re shorter the probability for a finesse strike to go in is higher.

 

Third Criteria: Work Rates, Skills and Weak Foot

Using a simple Excel page you’ll be able to find the perfect player for your squad. You just need to select the most important attributes and give each one a weight. But then, what if some of the player’s characteristics weren’t measurable? That would be complicated. The truth is that, besides the 28 attributes, you should also watch out for the five characteristics that define them:

Height
Although it isn’t decisive, you should pay attention to the player’s height, especially if he’s a striker or a centre back, although it’s also useful for the CDM position. A taller player that has good jumping will win more headers.

Preferred Foot
On FIFA 15 it started being more important for the player to use his preferred foot. Carefully verify if you’re using your players correctly for their position on the field, sometimes you should change their side in order to favour their preferred foot.

Weak Foot
This is the type of characteristic that should be decisive when choosing one between two players or more. It’s more important for the player to have good attributes than more weak foot stars, of course, but that’s still interesting for us. If you’re thinking of buying a finisher, don’t forget to check if he’s got a good weak foot. You’ll certainly notice the difference on the pitch between a player with low and high weak foot.

Skill Moves
Players with more skill moves stars will get past the opponents more easily, and this is more important than ever on FIFA 15. They can also execute more complex technical movements although this might be more of a show off than an actual contribution to the team. Most 3 stars skill moves are as effective as (or more than) 5 stars skill moves. Like it is for the Weak Foot, the Skills Moves should determine which player you’re choosing, unless you’re a natural skiller that doesn’t need the means to success.

Work Rates
Unlike the others, this is for us, with absolutely no doubt, a characteristic that you should never look away from when choosing a player. This isn’t where you should start the player selection, do this at the point where you already have a short list so this works as an effective eliminatory factor. Avoid low/low work rates, or high/high on players of low stamina. Low offensive work rates on attackers or defensive work rates on defenders are usually bad choices. According to your tactic, playing style and the players you already have you should manage work rates in order for one to compensate the other. For example: two centre backs with low defending work rates is unacceptable, but it’s okay to have just one.

 

Fourth Criteria: Price

The Ultimate Team market is one of the best tools you have to measure how good a player is

Well then, shouldn’t this be one of the first criteria? Good question, but we’re already counting that you left Ronaldo and Messi out because you know you don’t have enough coins for them. What we’re going to do now is the opposite. Instead of choosing the cheapest players, we’ll choose the most expensive ones. Are you confused? We’ll explain.

By this part of the article we suppose you already have a pretty good idea of who you want for your squad. In the worst scenario you’re striving to choose one between two players. Which one should you choose? You probably have a favourite but you just need the final word. Something that will help you decide at a bigger consciousness. Have you searched for someone else’s personal opinion of experience hoping to know if he’s really what you’re looking for? That’s no good. This isn’t the right path. We have nothing against other people’s opinions, but basing your choice on two or three opinions is letting someone else decide for you, really. What you have to do is ask for thousands or millions of people’s opinions. And how do you do that? Well, exactly: it goes by the price. It’s in the title after all, isn’t it?

In a universe so big as the Ultimate Team player’s, there’s no room for mistakes. Bad decisions are easily absorbed by the immensity of good ones. The community isn’t stupid and puts a lot of time into a game that, excuse redundancy, learns to learn. There’s no better way to show how good a player is than setting a price as high as his quality. Nobody likes paying more for a player that they think isn’t worth anything, and only some manage to pay less than his average price. In other words: are you undecided between two players? Go for the one that costs more.

Before you present any arguments to contradict this strategy, let us list a few exceptions to this rule that you’re about to know of:

What about the rest?
So you just choose the most expensive one and it’s all settled? This isn’t what we said. For some reason this is the fourth criteria. Until you got here you’ve at least taken a look at the players’ attributes and selected those that best fit in your playing style a formation. This is just a tiebreaker factor that will certainly work for most people. The more similar the players are to each other, the higher will be this strategy’s success rate.

But don’t prices change?
Of course they do. Sometimes players who used to be more expensive become cheaper than their concurrent. If you look closely this happens only once in the game, except for rare situations in which a player will make the difference in real life. In the end, this is proof that the community is alert. What happens is that when the game is released, prices are according to people’s initial expectations. Only after some learning and experimenting time prices will be set for more or less, according to whether the player has been revealed worse or better than expected. For that reason, you should only look at the players’ prices as a choice factor after the first 15 days of the game. On FIFA 15 this was very notorious with the slowest players. Once the community realised pace was OP again the fastest players gained concurrence, hence the price increase.

And doesn’t supply affect the price?
Yes, this is also a factor to be taken into account. Prices are made by the community but are also defined by EA, which can put more or less cards of a player in circulation. If they put many cards the price drops. After all, whose fault do you think it is that you don’t have enough coins to buy Messi or Ronaldo? You can’t look at the price of very expensive players or IF versions as a reflection of quality. They are strongly inflated because of the poor supply. No matter how good Ronaldo might be, he’s not worth 500 Lukakus, right?

What about popularity?
All the calling of attention we did until here has quite an importance because hardly one of these advices will lead you to a mistake. However, you should intensify your attention when comparing two different popular players. The fact that one of them is in form or plays at a highlighted club is enough to make his price rise. Try, for example, comparing Godín with Piqué. Nothing justifies that one costs double the other’s price. They’re very similar to each other, the Uruguayan has even got better work rates, and just because he plays at a smaller club his price is strongly affected. The same happens between Miranda and Varane, for example. Facing two very similar players, if one of them plays at a top club, if the prices are close to each other and if this doesn’t affect your chemistry, always choose the least popular one and you’re good to go.
Due to the quick sell value difference between rare and non rare cards, the last ones tend to get devaluated even when it comes to interesting players. It goes the same way as the popularity factor we explained earlier. When comparing, for example, Kaboul and Skrtel, nothing concerning the Slovakian’s quality justifies his price being double the French’s. Kaboul is clearly a much better centre back but, since he plays at a slightly less popular club and is a low rated non rare, he suffers considerable devaluation. If you can identify all these things, you’ll be able to choose the best players at lower prices.

 

Along this guide we gave you all the tools you need to analyse what are the best choices for your squad. However, the intention wasn’t to depreciate the fun way of finding out if a player is good or not: testing him out. Play, have fun and if you’re having good results with someone, don’t change just because somebody else thinks different. After all, you don’t change a team that’s winning.