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FIFA 22’s Create A Club Could Be The Best Thing To Happen To Career Mode In Years

The first thing I’m going to do in FIFA 22 is sign Jadon Sancho for Newcastle United. The English winger is a joy to watch, as many fans will discover firsthand with his arrival in the Premier League from Borussia Dortmund this summer. Sadly, in real life, he’ll be wearing the red of Man United rather than the fetching black and white of Newcastle, but in FIFA, that doesn’t matter. I can sign whoever I want, and I can lead my wing combo of Sancho and Allan Saint-Maximin to Premier League and European glory. FIFA is already a dream machine, yet the new ability to completely create a club is going to be huge.

While the squad you assemble in Ultimate Team is limited by which players you pull or buy, Career Mode is far more open. People still flock to Ultimate Team – hence its sickeningly high profit margin – but the open possibilities of Career Mode have always drawn me in. You still have to operate on a budget and need to balance the stars in your team, but there’s an option to have your club undergo a financial takeover at the start of your tenure, leaving you flush with cash the suits are eager to splash on new players.

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Last year, EA rejigged things a bit. This was no longer a bonus you could unlock through play, but instead a default option to anyone starting a career. This made initiating a takeover much easier, and is in keeping with many Career Mode adjustments recently. That is, it’s a small change with limited usefulness (takeovers could always be easily unlocked, after all), but shows that Career Mode hasn’t been entirely forgotten. Customisable managers, tweaked training, and realistic negotiations also add to this picture, even if AI transfers are still garbage and the mode fundamentally remains the same.

I've recently written about HyperMotion coming to FIFA 22, and how it sounds like it might be a next-gen game changer, even if it's a disgrace that it's not on PC. Now, I'm singing the create a club mechanic's praises, having previously suggested the rumoured Online Career Mode could be a big deal. You might think then that I'm a bit of a sucker, constantly distracted by EA's shallow promises that this time, more than any other time, the next FIFA is going to be the one to break the mould. I promise I'm not. Sure, I buy it every year, which is prime sucker behaviour, but I always know all I'm getting is a roster update, fresh online stats, and the biggest issues from last year being fixed. FIFA 21, for example, had massively improved crossing after FIFA 20's was rubbish. FIFA 22, HyperMotion or no, will likely have better standing tackles after FIFA 21 constantly awarded penalties for nothing challenges.

However, FIFA 22 does seem different. Maybe I'm on a high from Euro 2020 – I'm certainly not from another club season of Bruce Ball – but maybe times are changing, maybe this FIFA 22 is changing things. Create a club could make a big difference. Way back in FIFA 13, the game had the Creation Centre, which allowed you to completely build a new club. You could use a team from non-league, a league not in the game, or even add your own Sunday League team in. It was a little bit complicated, and earlier FIFAs had a less robust but more fun custom club option with kit creation, but had it remained in the game, it might look completely different now after eight yearly instalments of gradual improvements. Unfortunately, as a clunky and unprofitable mode, it went the journey, and since then Career Mode has felt a little impersonal, even if Pep Guardiola himself will fly in to your Serie B club to personally discuss loan terms for his fourth choice left-back.

Create a club restores the creation centre to its former glory, and will hopefully bring a range of upgrades with it. We don't know exactly what features it will include, or whether it will include options like stadium construction, league choice, kit design, and roster building. Perhaps it will work like Pro Evo's Master League, or maybe it will offer more options for business oversight as well as the usual managerial role. You might be able to create a squad of custom players, have to make do with FIFA's generic filler players, or be able to purchase a full squad of your own, either with a budget or with unlimited funds. I don't know exactly how it will work, and it's entirely possible it will have been phoned in while the devs were put to work on Ultimate Team, but FIFA 22 is shaping up to be one of the most interesting FIFAs yet. You know what they say – it's the hope that kills you.

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