Custom Tactics in FIFA 23 are just as important as they have been in the previous few years. They can be the difference between your team playing exactly as you want it to, and them running out of position or making questionable decisions on the pitch for seemingly no reason. In this guide, we’ll run you through how to change custom tactics in FIFA 23, so you can get your team playing beautiful football.
Changing Custom Tactics in FIFA 23
To access Custom Tactics, you’ll first need to go to the ‘Squad’ screen from the ‘Club’ tab in Ultimate Team. This can be accessed by pressing down on the left analog stick from the main FUT menu.
When you’re here, press LT on Xbox One/ Xbox Series X|S or L2 on PS4/ PS5 to open the ‘Squad Actions’ menu. Now select ‘Custom Tactics’ from the dropdown menu that appears on the left side of the screen.
On the first screen, you’re able to change the team’s attacking and defensive styles. These settings will change your team’s positioning on the pitch, and how they’ll move off-the-ball both in and out of possession.
The second screen allows you to change your formation from what your team will initially start out in. For example, you can change your formation to something more defensive when changing to your ‘Defensive’ game plan (read more about game plans below).
This screen also allows you to change players’ positions in your team within whatever formation you choose. For example, if you’d rather have your left winger (LW) playing as a striker (ST), you can choose to switch the two players around.
The third tab is ‘Instructions,’ and this allows you to assign instructions to each of your players. Support Runs, Attacking Runs, Defensive Support, Interceptions, Supporting Crosses, Positioning Freedom, Defensive Position and more can all be tweaked for each and every player here.
A great option to consider on the Instructions tab is having your fastest striker’s attacking runs set to ‘Get in Behind.’ That way, they’ll always look to be on the break and run behind the defenders, which makes them a great target for through balls from your other attacking players.
Finally, you’ve got the ‘Player Roles’ tab. This is where you can choose to change your team captain, free kick, corner, and penalty takers.
Changing your custom tactics is incredibly important as it really does change how your team plays on the pitch. To really maximize the benefits you get out of it, though, you’ll want to have separate custom tactics assigned to your team’s various ‘Game Plans,’ so you can change how they play quickly mid-match depending on the scoreline.
Editing Game Plans
At the very top of the FIFA 23 Custom Tactics screen, you’ll notice ‘Edit Game Plans — Balanced’ just above the four tab names.
By pressing LT/L2, you can change between the different game plans — Ultra Defensive, Defensive, Balanced, Attacking and Ultra Attacking — to set up different custom tactics depending on what position you find yourself in during a match.
For example, if you’re only just winning 2-1, you might want to change to Ultra Defensive in-game, where your custom tactics for this game plan see your defenders sit much deeper and your wingers play more as wing-backs. If you’re drawing 2-2 with five minutes left and you’ve been dominating possession, on the other hand, you may want to change to an Ultra Attacking game plan which sees your formation change to something more attacking where your wing backs are making overlapping runs to give you additional width.
Once you’re done editing a game plan, press B/ Circle twice and confirm you want to save your changes.
That’s everything you need to know on how to change custom tactics in FIFA 23. Looking for more tips and tricks? We’ve got you covered with a FIFA 23 FUT Moments explained guide, how chemistry works in FIFA 23 and how to play all FIFA 23 game modes with friends.
