Everything You Need to Know About FIFA 20: Ultimate Team

FIFA 20 arrived at the end of September bringing with it a host of new features and improvements.

Whilst the game has many modes and challenges, far and away the most popular is the FIFA Ultimate Team mode, known as ‘FUT’. An article by PlayStation Lifestyle reports that 42 million people played FIFA in 2017, with many of them attracted by the Ultimate team mode.

It allows you to take full control of your own club, trading players and choosing kits, ground and a badge. As you build your team you can buy players with coins that you’ve won, or invest real money in packs of cards. They’re randomised and could contain anybody from VfL Osnabrück’s right back to Lionel Messi himself.

The odds of getting Messi are slim, but each pack still contains plenty to add value to your team including cards to help with fitness and positioning. You get to pick the tactics and build chemistry, achieved by putting players of the same nationality together, or those from the same team or league.

You’ll need to keep an eye on the thriving transfer market to pick up the best bargains. bwin’s feature on ‘Fifa 20: How to Beat the Market in Ultimate Team’ shows how playing the market on the game can be as important as playing it right in real life. Player values fluctuate and if you time a purchase right, it can help you build a significantly better squad in the long run.

Once you’re happy with your team, it’s on to the serious business of competing. You can play in several different competitions against the computer as well as against friends or strangers. There’s even a ‘Team of the Week’ picked for you to compete against, with differing rewards depending on your skill level.

Each player picked in the Team of the Week gets his own ‘in form’ card too. The VfL Osnabrück right back we mentioned earlier might only be rated at 63, but if he bags a hat trick in real life and impresses enough to be recognised by EA, he might get a unique TOTW card worth much more to anyone lucky enough to find it in a pack.

The best players can find themselves entering the weekend league, where the serious business starts. This is a competition where the world’s best FIFA players come together looking to win big rewards. As well as coins to put together even better squads, the winners might unearth a legend card.

Games Radar confirms that amongst this year’s legends are Zinedine Zidane, Ronald Koeman and of course, German master Lothar Matthaus. It’s possible for you to add these to your squad, but only by winning tournaments, at great cost or with a huge slice of luck.

EA Sports keep the game fresh by adding different challenges as the season progresses. There are elements of the game which allow you to focus on building different types of squads with the lower-rated cards, which can temporarily boost the value of players you’ve never heard of.

It’s an addictive game mode that keeps you coming back time and again, always hoping to better yourself and your team. Whilst FIFA 20 has many exciting game modes, including a new five-a-side option, it’s FUT that keeps people coming back year after year.