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Road to Glory: How to build the best FUT team without spending money
Approaching FUT as a free-to-play game without investing any real-world money can still be surprisingly rewarding.
FIFA 21 Ultimate Team is a much-improved beast this year, but it's still very much focused on driving you to buy FIFA Points and open packs. The best players cost hundreds of thousands and potentially millions of coins, and there are new promotions every other week introducing special cards that look great and could elevate your team to stardom.
There's nothing wrong with literally buying into that way of playing, but if you're keen to save money or just fancy a new challenge, we firmly recommend adopting a Road to Glory (RTG) approach, where the object is to build the best possible Ultimate Team without buying FIFA Points. Once you start, you may be surprised how satisfying it can be!
We've been running RTGs for a couple of years now, so here are six tips to get you started:
1. Choose a sensible league or nation
Paying attention to SBC markets is a smart thing to do
© EA
First things first, you should follow all the advice in our article about how to make coins in FIFA 21 Ultimate Team, especially the stuff about Division Rivals placements, Squad Battles and Foundation SBCs. That will get you up and running, and you'll probably find you have a couple of hundred thousand coins within a week or two. Not bad!
Next, you need to figure out what you're working towards. A lot of good RTG hygiene is about making efficient moves that don't flitter away your coins unnecessarily, so it's a good idea to identify a league or nation that allows you to assemble competitive players without breaking the bank. You won't build an English Premier League team on a shoestring budget, but there are much better players available elsewhere for less if you look for them.
Italian Serie A is a great example. A team featuring Samir Handanovich (88 rating) in goal, Alex Sandro (85), Chiellini (87), De Ligt (85) and Cuadrado (81) as a back four, with Naingolan (83), Eriksen (85) and Rabiot (83) as the midfield three and Insigne (85), Mertens (85) and in-form Lozano (83) up top would be competitive in the current meta. It costs just over 200,000 coins at the time of writing. An equivalent EPL team would be many times that.
2. Understand how you want to play
Build a team based around how you play
© EA
Just because your favourite streamer likes to dribble past everyone in the box and dink it over the keeper, doesn't mean you can play that way. After putting together a cheap starter squad, play the game for a while to learn what works for you.
Maybe it's playing the ball to speedy wingers who can reach the byline for a cutback. Maybe it's a slow buildup and lots of manual "Creative Runs" from midfield. Whatever it is, knowing your strengths can help you prioritise how to build a squad.
Understanding the strengths of your formation and investing accordingly is critical here. If you like a cultured winger who can cut inside and unleash a finesse shot, it's no use spending all your coins on Bruno Fernandes in midfield. Buy someone cheaper there and pick up someone like Riyad Mahrez who helps you maximise your areas of strength.
3. Know the meta
Knowing how to play FIFA 21 at a base level is essential
© EA
Of course, some styles of play simply won't correspond to FIFA 21, especially as players get more familiar with the gameplay balance, and competitive activities calcify into a "meta". It's important to get a handle on what these meta tactics are so that whatever squad you build can take advantage of them and also defend against them.
This year's game emphasises manual defending, for example, usually spearheaded by a powerful and mobile CDM ahead of tall, bulky central defenders. We're also seeing a lot of goals fired across the keeper into the top corner, so shot power is a key stat. And strikers are more comfortable on their weak foot than last year, bringing players with three-star weak foot ratings back into the meta, like Mohamed Salah.
Knowing how you want to play will help you build your RTG team efficiently, then, but knowing how the game is best played will help you refine those decisions further.
4. Go after Objective players, not SBC players
Objective players are worth more of your effort in the long run
© EA
Everyone loves Squad-Building Challenges. They're always so tempting. At the time of writing, we're straining to resist the Rulebreaker Anderson Talisca card that was added earlier in the week. It's only an 85-rated squad requirement! What a card! But the truth is that every time you complete a player SBC, you're taking value out of your club permanently in exchange for a single player, of whom you will inevitably tire. If you can resist the lure of these SBCs, you will have more coins to play with, full stop.
On the other hand, we strongly recommend playing to unlock Objective players. Rulebreaker Mukiele (from RB Leipzig) came out around the same time as Talisca and you can unlock him in a morning's play with a fair wind at your back. He's a fast, powerful right-back who would be perfect as the outside CB in a back three formation. Even if you somehow don't like using him, you gained an 84-rated player without losing any value from your club.
5. Learn to love Live FUT Friendlies
Take advantage of Live FUT Friendlies – they're a useful asset
© EA
Live FUT Friendlies are one of the best new things about FIFA 21 Ultimate Team. It might not seem that special -- every Live FUT Friendly has a certain squad restriction, like a mix of Bundesliga and French players, with skill-based matchmaking so you can play other people in the same situation. But each new competition also has corresponding Objective challenges, usually issuing player and pack rewards.
What's even better is that friendlies do not use up a contract for your players. This means that those loan items you've been saving -- the loan Mbappe earned from Season Rewards, the loan Icon from Team Objectives, and so on -- can be used over and over again without reducing their contracts. Some of those players are worth millions of coins, and now there is a way to play with them to your heart's content, while earning stuff that has real value. For an RTG player, this is a goldmine.
It's a lot of fun too – the Silver Lounge, where you battle other silver squads and earn weekly Silver Team of the Week players like in-form Moise Kean, is some of the best entertainment we've had in FIFA since the much-missed Daily Knockout Tournament.
6. Don't chop and change your team
Keep your team stable and you'll end up saving money
© EA
Sticking with the same players week after week is something that most FUT players find impossible. There's always something tempting that just landed in packs. There's always a potentially better option to deploy at right mid. Those coins are burning a hole in your pocket.
But the truth is that most FUT players lose tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of coins every cycle by buying and selling similar players over and over. Every transaction in FUT has a 5% "EA tax" applied, and this is where a lot of our money goes.
It takes discipline to do it, but sticking with your team, rather than making endless sideways changes to similar players, while using your coin pile to trade in the meantime, will give you a stronger, better Road to Glory team over the long term.
And if you figure out a good way to hold your nerve and do this, please tell us your secret!
