EA Sports FC 25, for all of its positives, can be overwhelming for new players. Having to create a team from scratch, combined with competing with gamers who have played the franchise for years, isn’t easy, especially if you are not familiar with sports games.
Ultimate Team is the most popular mode on EAFC 25 — and it sees gamers from around the world compete in Division Rivals and Champions. There are also offline modes, most notably Squad Battles, but Champions is the pinnacle of the game. It’s the most competitive, thus offering the best rewards. The journey to competing in Champions is not straightforward, though.
We have decided to outline all the details you need to know when starting a new Ultimate Team in EAFC 25. While the basics are easy to complete, there are other steps which will take far longer. All of this will help you acquire the highest-rated players in the game as you strive for glory in Champions. Let the journey commence.
First Steps in Ultimate Team
Choosing your Starter Pack
If you have never made an Ultimate Team before, you have a key decision to make right at the beginning – team name. It represents your club and value forever, although it can be changed, so you need to choose wisely. Do you go for something inspired by an icon? What about your favourite player growing up? Or even a twist on a classic pun? The choices are endless, and it should be up to you to come up with something quirky, creative and unique.
Once that mountain is overcome, the real journey begins. When you first start Ultimate Team, you have to select a starter pack – based on one nation. You can choose from the nine major nations in the game, including the likes of England, Italy and Brazil. The best nation to choose is up for interpretation, but France or Spain normally work well, with cheap players from those nations readily available all the time.
With your starter squad selected, you can also choose a loan player to join for a handful of matches. Select the position you want to have the most. So, if you want a striker, replace the striker in your team with a loan player. The same applies if you want a centre-back or a central midfielder. Another step ticked off, another step closer to completion.
You can then decide which kits you want to wear during the early stages of the game. Naturally, you can change these whenever you want, but it can be an opportunity to look fashionable in front of the world. You will be able to choose from nine kits for your home jersey and the same for the away strip. Coupled with choosing your badge, the starting process is complete and you can step into the world of Ultimate Team.
Foundation Objectives
You can earn coins and packs
The first moments of an Ultimate Team journey can be daunting. “What should I do first,” beginners think, and we believe completing the basic foundation objectives is the perfect way. You’re not going to pack one of the best players in the world, but you will get some much-needed coins and packs.
There are seven sets of foundation objectives which can be completed, stretching from simple challenges such as ‘buy one player’ to others such as ‘play a Rivals match’. They are incredibly easy, just slightly tedious, but they will help you earn XP, packs and coins. For example, if you complete every challenge in the ‘Squad Maintenance’ group, you will receive a 75+x2 Rare Gold Players Pack, 600 coins, a Silver Pack and a chemistry style. It’s not the true jackpot, but it’s a start.
Foundation SBCs
There’s easy SBCs to complete quickly
Similarly, Foundation Squad Building Challenges (SBCs) are also easy to complete. Also dubbed as ‘foundations’, you can earn packs, coins and players from completing them. Naturally, some of them are incredibly hard to complete, but they can be ignored when you first start the game.
The first SBC you have to do – to unlock everything – is ‘Foundations I’. There’s four challenges where you have to submit any bronze player and you earn a few bronze packs and an ‘x2 Players Pack’. Naturally, this is not going to make you excited, but it kickstarts your SBC obsession.
Following on from that, you should complete every ‘Foundations’ SBC possible without spending unnecessary money. For example, for ‘Foundations II’, you can earn a premium loan player, whilst for the following SBC, you can earn a ‘x2 Rare Gold Players Pack’. Your chances of ever packing anything good are slim, but dreaming is free. This eventually leads to the ‘Hybrid’ SBCs, which are complicated and even slightly painful to complete, but you can earn several exciting packs.
Squad Battles
EA’s best offline mode
However, EAFC is a football game. The most important part of the game is, unsurprisingly, playing football. Once you have completed as many objectives and SBCs as possible, you have to start thinking about your first team. Barring any remarkable pack pulls, it will be incredibly cheap – less than 10k – and lacking quality across the pitch.
Therefore, you should start in the best offline mode, Squad Battles, before going into Division Rivals and Champions Qualification. In Squad Battles, you can choose any difficulty from beginner to Ultimate, providing opportunities for everyone of every age. We recommend starting with the easier difficulties, but you do get more points if you win more challenging tasks.
Squad Battles rewards are released every Sunday and it’s normally easy to finish in at least Gold III, if not higher. At Gold III, you receive a ‘Jumbo Premium Gold Pack’, a ’75+ x5 Rare Gold Players Pack’ and 3,000 coins. This is, once again, not going to fundamentally change your club, unless you get lucky with your packs, but it will act as a bonus as your journey begins.
Rush
You can earn rewards from EA’s newest mode
Another mode you should rush into – no pun intended – is Rush. It’s EA’s newest addition to their franchise, and it sees you play in a five versus five smaller pitch. You can either play with friends or with random people and it is drastically different to the traditional footballing experience.
However, the most important thing with Rush on Ultimate Team is the rewards. During each Season on EAFC 25, you can earn rewards through SP. This can be completed on any mode which has Rush, with most of the rewards for Ultimate Team. At the time of writing, if you earn 5,000 SP, you get an untradeable Ryan Gauld, 84-rated, whilst the rewards improve with the more SP you earn. It should be prioritised early on.
Evolutions
You can upgrade lower-rated players
It was a major inclusion in EAFC 24 — and Evolutions is back for EAFC 25. In short, it allows you to upgrade lower-rated cards and make them ‘meta’, one of the most-used words in the community. They could essentially become some of the most overpowered players in the game. Some you have to pay for, but there are several free ones early on.
This includes ‘We Play Possession’, which allows you to upgrade any player that isn’t a striker, below 85 and has a maximum of 77 passing and dribbling. They can be upgraded via challenges, which – alongside Rush – should be prioritised. There are several other free Evolutions which should be analysed as soon as you get your hands on the game.
Custom Tactics
You should tweak formations until you find your favourite
Finally, we have already highlighted the best formations in EAFC 25. As part of this, we produced in-depth articles on the 4-1-2-1-2 Narrow and the 4-3-3 (4). That was only the beginning, leaving you with countless choices when you’re deciding how you want to play.
If you are new to the EA franchise, you should experiment with everything before you choose your favourite. It’s the only way to find out, with the online world of EAFC 25 always proving to be a strict punishment if you don’t have the perfect tactics. It’s one of the last steps, though, with smaller parts needing to be completed first before you become competitive online. The journey of EAFC never stops once you have done everything in this article. There is always room for improvement, especially if you play Division Rivals and Champions each week.