FIFA 21‘s competitive weekend league, known as FUT Champs, kicked off last weekend. FUT Champs sees players play 30 games of Ultimate Team online against other players. The more wins they get, the better the rewards they’ll get for competing. It’s incredibly competitive and a completely different style of Ultimate Team gameplay. Considering ourselves somewhat seasoned FIFA players, we dived in, grabbed ourselves as a semi-respectable 14 wins, and have returned to share our newfound knowledge with you all!
Space Out Your Games
If you want to give yourself the best chance of getting some excellent FUT Champs rewards in FIFA 21, you’ll want to play all 30 of your games. That’s a lot of FIFA to play over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, especially when you may have other plans. If you’ve got a busy weekend this may not be possible, but if your weekend’s relatively wide open, be sure to spread out those 30 games across all three days.
Some players, such as popular YouTuber FIFA Analyst, recommend breaking it down by playing 5 games on Friday, 10 on Saturday, and 15 on Sunday.
You’re free to swap that Saturday and Sunday around, but the main thing here is that you’re not sitting down and banging out 25 FUT Champs in one sitting.
Chances are if you do that, you’ll find your concentration starts to wane and you’ll start making silly mistakes. Given how quickly you can score in FIFA 21, all it takes is one small mistake for your opponent to capitalize and grab an equalizer, or even worse that winner in the 90th minute.
TL;DR – Make the most of the three days you’ve got to play those 30 games.
Know Your Team
I had a pretty horrific mid-section of my FUT Champs experience this weekend. Having got off to a great start of 8 wins from 12 games, I then suffered a humiliating nine losses in a row.
My hopes of Gold 3 seemed to be fading into the distance, but then I decided to sit down and take a proper look at my team. I found some of my forward players just weren’t finishing how I expected, and one of my central midfielders tasked with doing a lot of box-to-box work just seemed to struggle to keep up with the pace of the game.
Knowing your team’s strengths and weaknesses are crucial to playing well with it. If one of your forward’s has an awful weak foot, you’ll want to make sure you’re always turning onto their preferred foot so they can bang a chance into the back of the net.
For my central midfielder, it came down to their defensive work rate not being all that great. They’d perform well up to a point in the game, but when their stamina started to fade, so did their dominance in the middle of the park.
If a player just isn’t working for you, try swapping them out for another player and give them a few games in Squad Battles before seeing if they improve your FUT Champs fortunes.
This section works both ways, though. If you’ve got an incredibly fast player with great dribbling, you’ll want to get them on the ball in and around the box as often as possible. Similarly having a quick, solid center back you can rely on in those last ditch tackle situations will help you deal with those pesky, pacey forwards.
Custom Tactics Are Key
This one’s pretty self-explanatory, but if you haven’t already, you really need to get your Ultimate Team’s custom tactics set up.
Custom tactics allow you to change the defensive and offensive style of play that your team will adopt. For example, if you’d like your team to utilize a quick counter-attack, you can set this up. You can also change the width and depth of your team, individual player instructions, and even player positions within your formation.
I’ll confess, I didn’t think custom tactics would make much of a difference when I properly got into Ultimate Team last year, but the difference cannot be understated.
What is important to keep in mind here, however, is that custom tactics must be done correctly. If you go in blind and don’t know what you’re looking to achieve or how you want your team to play, you could make things worse for you.
We’ve seen a lot of success with using a 4-4-2 custom tactic shown off by The FIFA Analyst once again, so be sure to give this a try if you’re struggling to get those W’s.
Take a Break When You’re Losing
No matter how great your time and how perfect your custom tactics seem to be for your style of play, sometimes luck just isn’t on your side. Sometimes FIFA’s bullshittery comes out in full force to make you take that L. Sometimes you want to launch your controller out the window as your opponent shush’s you while celebrating.
Sometimes, it’s better to just take a break.
As silly as it sounds, an ‘endurance-style’ competitive mode like FIFA 21’s FUT Champs can be incredibly draining on your brain. It’s like real-life chess, but you’ve got 11 players and one of them isn’t a knight… and they’re trying to score goals rather than take a king. We’re not sure where we’re going with this analogy, but you get the point, it’s mentally taxing!
If you find yourself losing and losing and losing with no sign of things getting better, just turn the game off and do something else. Hydrate (it’s good for your brain!), do some chores, go for a walk, watch some TV, anything that’s not FIFA is going to give you a massive boost here.
Once you’re suitably settled and ready to dive back into the real-life hell that is FUT Champs, load it up and keep your cool.
I tend to adopt a rule of not playing any more FUT Champs games in a session after suffering multiple consecutive losses. For me, that’s three (yes my losing streak spanned three sessions), but if you’d rather make that more or less do so as you see fit. Stick to the rule, though, and you’ll find your getting more wins week-on-week.
Pace and Drop Back Is Very Common
One of the key takeaways both myself and resident FIFA expert Tom Hopkins noticed this weekend was that some things haven’t changed in FIFA 21’s Ultimate Team mode, notable FUT Champs from last year’s entry.
If you played this weekend, you might have noticed your opponent’s defensive line sits very deep. This makes it more difficult to slip a through ball in behind their defense, and just to make a chance on goal in general. They’ll then likely have had some pacey wingers or forwards that will stay on your last man ready to quickly counter and get a goal.
Pace is still king in FIFA 21’s FUT Champs, and the adoption of the ‘Drop Back’ custom tactic means you’ll often spend huge chunks of each match trying to break down your opponent’s defense to no avail, only for them to get one lucky break and getting the W.
Sadly, there’s not a whole lot you can do to counter this other than either adopt it for yourself, or push your team further forward and have them press your opponent in their own half.
It’s difficult to counter, it’s frustrating to play against, and it’s unlikely to change this year. If you want those top-tier rewards in FIFA 21’s FUT Champs, though, you’ll need to find your own way of coping with it.
Published: Oct 20, 2020 05:08 am