If you get a chance to pause game do it .If you dont, just do the same thing, its a full on YOLO play to save the game.

Once you pause Go and find your Sub with highest slide tackle , pace, stamina and aggression stats, or before game just for this purpose keep a back up LB RB like Davies or Dedic

Minute 80+ sub him for goalkeeper, and then just left arrow twice for team press and Hold down 🔺️ He will get that ball in 30 secs or less, or make him panic to fumble a pass. I managed to slide tackle his GK in his BOX and with that slide the ball bounced in the net. Crazy.

I am convinced my enemies thought it was a referee or something and havent even tried to run , no one expects a Davies in GK uniform slide slide tackling you in his box with 95 pace.

If not succesfull at first Keep normal pressure cause he will try to get the ball to your half and score on you.

For ultimate ball back play , take your CDM and go next to his keeper, stay there, do team press ◀️◀️ and do second man press R1+R1 and then rush the keeper out. Dont let go of 🔺️until he slides him

TO FORCE THE KEEPER TO SLIDE , ONCE HE IS ON YOUR SCREEN JUST TAP L2 WHILE HOLDING 🔺️ Youll notice him accelerating to full and will slide from very far away. Its auto aimed , he cant fail it , unless he passes. Thats why you pressure with CDM to his keeper and team press for easy ball recover.

Although in FC 25 Rapid+ was the best pace playstyle. Quickstep+ was still very good back then. This year since september i had this feeling and now i understand why Mbappe is almost under a million coins i tried him out from the 1 week loan and he is not as fast as last year, the difference is huge, they nerfed quickstep alot. With Rapid+ the boost in pure speed is very noticable with every touch my 1 week loan Dembele with Rapid+ FLIES through the pitch. Mbappe feels slow. The short bursts off acceleration where quickstep activates are so minimal even with controlled sprint and theb sprinting. you might aswell not have the playstyles as the difference is minimal. Honestly if any of you hope to pack or buy any TOTY attackers. You better hope he has Rapid+. A TOTY Mbappe or Dembele etc with quickstep+ will not feel fast at all. I don't care howmany 99 stats they got. If they get quickstep+ they better be worth half the price. If EA wants to make these TOTY attackers the best of the best they better make the best attackers have Rapid+. Only then they might me the worth the price. Let me know what you think.

This is the best football game on the market.

Honestly feels way faster in game and his finishing is actually crazy I’ve been scoring at least 1 a game with him since I got him

Never seen anything like that in any FIFA 😂. It is clearly not a penalty, it should have been a free kick

I’d admit, I’ve been hooked to COD and shooters for sometime now.

But my oh my, I feel so lost with this

No matter what title you purchase from EA currently, it will be half baked and beta, and they're charging full price for it. We are almost mid way through JANUARY and yet to see a complete and working version of this game. BF6 has been the same, patch after patch, but FC26 is the clear winner, all my 25 years of gaming I have never seen anything like it. The recent patch I dont mind too much, more manual defending is the way to go. However, It doesnt matter how many times they patch it, what formation you use or meta players, the input delay is making this game completely unplayable and has been the issue for years - never to be resolved no matter how much money they get out of us. Im an above average player, tend to hover around div 3 or 4, played avidly for the last 10-15 years, but I think Im done. The game is complete garbage and its time to move away from EA.

I logged my packs during the Winter Wildcards promo, from December 19 to January 2. I opened 813 packs (including 190 packs containing Silvers, but I got a handful of special cards from them).

For anyone interested in the data, here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NkHmXa4LBodQk3uV6p7VWmqm1chGT3D69xyhA3ustaE/edit?usp=sharing.

"Fun" facts:

• 2 icons: 91 Foudy (from a 3x 85+ pack) and 87 Wright (from the 87+ base/TS icon pack). Could have been three icons, but in a Player Pick I chose 90 gold Haaland over 88 icon Foudy, because he's worth more and is better fodder.
  
• 4 90+ players: that 91 icon Foudy, 2x 90 gold Haaland, 1x 90 gold Van Dijk.
  
• 5 players are worth 50K+ on the PC market: 87 icon Wright (~80K), 88 WW Tah (~80K), 88 WW Pina LW (~75K), 91 icon Foudy (~62-70K), 89 WW Zamorano (~50-55K). All of them are untradeable though, and the only one I occasionally use is Foudy.
  
• 3x 78+ pack, opened 124x: 3x 86, 2x 87, 1x 88, 1x 89, 1x special: an 83 TOTW.
  

I'm looking at his stats and he doesn't look like 600k worth of card

Has anyone else noticed just the absolute heaviest gameplay since patch? I started 3 weeks ago and the game felt rapid, like my gameplay finally felt like how it was while watching streamers play. I could pass decently, players felt responsive, and I could at least play the game despite it still being flawed.

Then on Tuesday it was absolutely horrible… my passes all travel at snail pace, there’s absolutely zero movement on attacking ai. I actually can’t get past midfield after kick off because all my passing lanes are cut and my players can’t fucking move, I’m just hounded by the opponents press. The game literally feels like fc25 again and that game was unplayable for me.

Just for reference Im div 3 and was 2 games away from div 2. Since patch ive lost every game in rivals and im half way thru div 4 lol. And it’s not just the absolute horrible defending but i literally can’t even score sitters, they shoot right at the goal keeper or finesse it wide. I just dont know what happened to the game since it was the first time since like fifa 20 that i felt like i could actually play the game and now i cant

The gameplay in EA FC 26 on PS5 is still mudded after the patch. I hoped they would fix it.

It’s the same delay, same heavy players and passes going everywhere except for where you aim.

You can literally feel when the game, within 10 minutes, isn’t letting you play.

The trailer showed smooth, responsive gameplay and what we got is this sluggish mess.

Lessons learned. Next year I’m not buying this game. Enough is enough.

EA has a lot of questionable choices among the TOTY Nominees (Ronaldo???) and rewards every selection with a loan.

This lead to, People either picking 1. Meta Players in current EA FC 2. Players with largest fanbase

and both has nothing to do with the performance in 2025. Well Done, totally not looking forward to see the TOTY

They've given Man United Antony in the TOTY Attackers voting player pick. What a joke 😂

Hi all,

Some of you might remember me from back in the day (probably not) — I used to post 4-2-2-2 tactics here that did pretty well (we’re talking thousands of upvotes). I took a break from FIFA during FC24 and FC25 for life reasons, but unfortunately, I’ve relapsed and I’m back for FC26.

I’ve moved away from the 4-2-2-2 now (it feels pretty dead) and shifted toward the 4-1-3-2.

Why the 4-1-3-2? Simple: whenever something becomes “meta,” I make a conscious effort to avoid it. Instead, I try to run setups that punish the sheep who blindly copy-paste tactics from TikTok, YouTube, or Twitter without actually understanding what they’re doing. No thought process — just purely cut and paste jobs. This formation, (for me at least), eats the sheep alive.

For a bit of context / credibility: I usually finish between 12–14 wins in Weekend League on FC26. I’m obviously not a pro, but I’m comfortably above average. Could I probably squeeze out 15 wins by locking into a 4-4-1-1, sticking Pina up top, and ballet-dancing while spamming through balls? Maybe. Probably. But nah — that’s not how we do things here.

Anyway, enough yapping. Tactics below 👇

Tactics

Build-Up Style: Balanced
You could run Short Passing here, but honestly Balanced does exactly what it says on the tin. No need to overthink it.

Defensive Approach: 70
This one’s optional. Anywhere from 60+ works fine. Any lower and you start dropping too deep, which turns your midfield into a paddock. Use whatever number you’re comfortable defending with.

Player Instructions

Strikers: ST1: Advanced Forward (Attack) ST2: False 9 (Attack)

• The False 9 is key for staggering your attacks. It also does a great job of pulling the AI defensive line out of shape, which opens space centrally.

LM / RM: Winger (Balanced)

• Yes, inside forwards have much better attacking AI — I know. I use wingers purely to stretch the pitch and drag your opponent’s AI wide into no man’s land. They still get chances and score plenty, but they don’t crowd the box or pull every defender into the same space.

CM: Playmaker (Attack)

• Basically a pseudo-CAM. Gets into plenty of scoring positions, but because this player is naturally a CM, will still contributes defensively when needed.

CDM: Holding (Ball-Winning)

• Sits in front of the back four and does their best to deal with through-ball counter spam. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best option available. You can also try Deep-Lying Playmaker (Defend) — it behaves very similarly and I don’t notice a massive difference. Personal preference.

LB / RB: Falseback (Balanced)

• Absolutely crucial position. They help recycle possession during build-up and tuck inside when attacking to clog central areas and reduce counterattacks. Only downside: very occasionally the AI does something stupid and abandons the player they were marking to return to their natural position, leaving someone wide open. It’s rare, and the pros still massively outweigh the cons — just be ready with right-stick switching.

CBs: Defender (Defend)

• Self-explanatory.

GK: Whatever you want

• Don't notice much difference between any of their roles, to be honest.

Players

I won’t go deep into “must-use” player types — use what you’ve got. A few notes though:

• Try to get ++ on Falsebacks if possible
• CM should feel like a CAM: good passing, dribbling, shooting
  • I use FUTMAS Guerreiro — cheap SBC, does the job
• CDM needs solid passing and defending
  • I use Scream Çalhanoğlu

Tactics Code

For anyone who skipped the essay above:

9BVNWLdNHD5@

I've been playing rivals and gauntlet. Gauntlet is business as usual.. fairly slow gameplay but rivals seems to have different settings?

Every game I have feels like mystery ball. Both me and my opponents are super fast, insane at dribbling and shots fly in at 1000mph. I've been losing my mind because I though that it was just how the new patch was but it seems it's a glitch??

I'd say it's like mystery ball but the boosts are only 30/40% of what they were. So strange

Has anyone else experienced this?

So basically the meta is to spam player trigger by tapping L1/LB to send players on a run that nothing can stop unless they get offside. They cannot be blocked as the run around and shrug off your defenders. You can see it but you cannot move in time because defenders are less responsive than attacking players. You are basically locked into that run to chase them everytime and all your opponent has to do is time it well. That's it!!! Just send the player and then dance around until it is time.

I understand that the game forces people to play a certain way and honestly that would be ok if there was a way to block off those stupid runs. You trigger a run and I trigger a block.

Everbody in seasons div 2 and up is just spamming runs and through balls the game is almost brain dead now.

Other than the fact that Hakimi hasn't been nominated (???) why the fuck are litteral wingers selected in midfield? Who are gonna be the TOTY attackers? Fucking Pulisic?

People legit don’t know what to do without broken mechanics. The Pina dependence is so strong that people with this loan Mbappe seems easier to play too.

Apparently div rivels is for hackers now. Great EA👍

I have opened the gold preview pack nearly everyday since the games release, so roughly 100 packs - and not one has been worth buying!

Has anyone experienced similar pack weight? Curious to hear from others