It is fair to say that a lot of fans have been disappointed with the improvements (or lack of) made to FIFA’s Career Mode in recent years.
FIFA 20 saw seeds of progress sewn in the form of a new player morale system, press conferences and more in-depth player discussions.
But the press conferences became repetitive quite quickly, and it seemed as if whatever answer you gave, it would have a positive effect on your squad.
Gameplay was encouraging for the first few months, but an update in early 2020 caused Ultimate difficulty, the game’s hardest difficulty level, to be almost unplayable. EA have announced an improvement in opposition AI for this year’s edition.
With fans crying out for new additions such as simulations, better transfer options and a more realistic calendar, EA have released the trailer and Pitch Notes for FIFA 21 Career Mode, and there are some notable changes.
The Interactive Match Sim feature allows you to simulate your matches in a more detailed way compared to the one button press system of FIFA 20. Crucially, you are now able to jump into matches at any point, so if your team is losing, or has a last-minute penalty, you can directly influence the end result instead of relying on the AI.
This is certainly a welcome addition to Career Mode, even if the feature was present in a less detailed form in previous FIFAs, only to be taken out.
The player can now complete either optional or mandatory loan to buy deals, another feature that was removed from previous FIFAs, but has been tweaked and re-added. AI managers can submit these deals themselves as well, resulting in more realistic transfer negotiations.
In addition, there is a new Authentic Transfers mode, which is aimed at providing more realistic player movements between clubs. Whilst the transfer of a League One player to somewhere like Argentina or Sweden has been known to have occurred in real-life, this mode should stop those transfers happening at least a dozen times per window in the game.
The stand-out addition to Career Mode has to be the ability to re-train players into different positions. A commonplace feature of the Football Manager series, you can now train your centre back to play as a defensive midfielder, your winger to play as a false nine, and many more options.
There is a limit, it seems, to what you can pull off in this regard. For instance, the chances of you training Lionel Messi or Mohamed Salah to become ball-playing centre backs is relatively low.
You can also now edit your schedule calendar to adjudge the best days to train between games. This should not only help solve the problem of low fitness before those big matches, but also signal an end to those bizarre (but hilarious) fixture pileups that some players can suffer, which involve playing twice in one day.
Whilst EA haven’t released an all-action Career Mode that perhaps some hardcore fans were hoping for, there is no doubt that they have at least brought back some valuable parts of previous FIFAs, and included new ones which should serve as a base to improve the mode in the future. It is certainly a step in the right direction.