FIFA 18 Ultimate Team tips | Your guide to earning more coins and building your squad

There’s no bigger gaming series in the world than FIFA. Yet its most popular mode, Ultimate Team, can appear overwhelming to the casual player, with social media lexicon as indecipherable as Ba-Shu scripts: “Packed SIF Messi from the Sivasspor SBC! Flip or hold?” 

The guide below is intended to change that. In addition to getting up to speed on the secret language of FIFA 18, you’ll be able to quickly compete with the elite, and rack up gold coins as swiftly as Craig Dawson does yellow cards.

FUT basics: Chemistry, cards, and special editions

Ultimate Team blends competitive matches, played online or off, with digital-card collecting. The difference from your Panini years is its player cards have attributes: you build a squad from them, then take them into those competitive matches. Cards can be acquired either through opening packs, or buying and selling from/to other human players in an auction market. As with real football, the better the player’s attributes, the more he’ll cost you. 

It’s not only attributes that matter, however. By placing players of the same club, league or nation next to one another in your team, you increase its ‘chemistry’ – a measure of how well players work together on the pitch in areas such as pass accuracy. 

As the real-life season progresses, special cards are released into the market for a limited time, which is where that ‘SIF’ term stems from: it means Messi’s ‘second in-form’. So while his standard card has an overall rating of 93, a strong weekend performance in real-life might earn him a 94-rated ‘in-form’ card in the Team Of The Week, released every Wednesday. Another impressive performance later in the season would then earn a 95-rated card – his second ‘in-form’, hence ‘SIF’. Yes, TIF and FIF cards exist too.

The current Team of the Week can be found online, you should be using it to find new players to add to your squad that might fit in, in the limited time they're available.

FUT short-term tactics: How to quickly boost your coin balance

The packs mentioned earlier, from which you acquire cards, come in three types: gold, silver, and bronze. Although the better players are found in gold packs, you should never buy them; because far more gold packs are opened than any other type, the cards found within are terrible value on the secondary market. Sustained play unlocks gold packs in other ways, such as Squad Building Challenges (which we’ll get to), and shrewd market work will eventually earn you enough coins to buy any player.

To expedite your coin making at the outset, click R3/RS and unlock all FUT bonuses available to you in the FIFA Catalogue. These can be worth up to 1000 extra coins per match. Then focus all your early coins on buying bronze packs – and, when you’re feeling a bit more wealthy, silver packs.

Place players from the Premier League, Ligue 1, Bundesliga, Calcio A and La Liga straight on the market – ensuring you hit the ‘Compare Price’ option for each before doing so, to guarantee you’re getting at least market value. Stash all other players in your club. Also transfer-list all Injury healing cards, Player Fitness cards, and Squad Fitness cards. The latter will eventually sell at a minimum Buy Now price of 1,400 coins; a profit of 930 (EA takes a small sales tax) from that 400-coin pack price.

FUT long-term tactics: SBCs and discard in-forms

The reason for stashing all players when you open bronze and silver packs is that eventually these cards have value far beyond the price paid for them. That’s a result of the other term referenced earlier: ‘SBCs’. Squad Building Challenges require the submission of sets of cards according to specific conditions, in order to earn attractive rewards. So a gold pack might be given in exchange for a team comprising two leagues and two nationalities, collectively rated 78 or over.

Every weekend, the focus of SBCs is Marquee Matchups. This is a set of challenges inspired by fixtures taking place that weekend: so Manchester City vs Manchester United would likely require submission of an all-Premier League team containing a player from each. 

What’s important is that many of these matches comprise teams with few gold players – a Melbourne derby, say – and as a result, the asking price for player cards within those squads skyrockets. It’s simple supply and demand. By having a stack of those suddenly-desirable players in your club, and placing them up for sale on a Friday night, it’s possible to make 200,000 coins in a single weekend.

Once you’re into six figures, consider expanding your investment technique to include those Team Of The Week players touched upon earlier. By purchasing them for 9,300 coins (their minimum price) and then flipping them straight back on the market for a minimum of 12,000 coins – as limited edition releases, they raise in value once unavailable through packs – you’ll constantly be making profits even as you begin to cherry pick favourite players for your squad(s). 

General gameplay tips: Crossing, free kicks, The Journey

Hopefully you’re now versed in coin-making; but what about improving your actual playing abilities? Two key improvements this year which you should immediately look to master are crossing and standing tackles. Players really whip the ball into the area now when deploying a standard cross (square/X), while low crosses are simplified to a double tap of the same button. The standing tackle, meanwhile, is actioned by holding that same button when in defence and close to opponent. Use it in tandem with the L2/LT shoulder charge to overpower opposition danger men.

If you’re in the old-school Vinny Jones business of playing without morals, you can sneakily affect FIFA 18 in a couple of underhand ways. One is to go into the settings menu and turn ‘Handballs’ on; because the AI can’t differentiate between accidental and deliberate, any ball to strike an arm or hand in the box will grant you a penalty. The other pertains specifically to new, excellent story mode The Journey: Hunter Returns, where specific objectives require main man Alex Hunter to attain a certain number of goals or assists. Go into Settings > User Gameplay Customisation, then increase Sprint Speed and Acceleration to 100, and you’ll have no problem meeting every on-pitch requirement.

Player tips: Top players to target in all key categories (Legends not included)

PACE

• Jonathan Biabiany (Sparta Prague) - 96

• 1Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Dortmund) - 96

• Hector Bellerin (Arsenal) - 95

• Jurgen Damm (UANL) - 95

• Mathis Bolly (Greuther Fürth) - 95

PHYSICALITY

• Jelle Van Damme (LA Galaxy) - 92

• Victor Wanyama (Tottenham) - 91

• Cheick N’Doye (Birmingham) - 90

• Anderson Esiti (Gent) - 90

• Callum Patterson (Cardiff) - 90

SHOOTING

• Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid) - 93

• Lionel Messi (Barcelona) - 90

• Luis Suarez (Barcelona) - 90

• Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Man Utd) - 88

• Sergio Aguero (Man City) - 88

• Robert Lewandowski (Bayern) - 88

DRIBBLING

• Thiago (Bayern) - 90

• Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid) - 90

• Andres Iniesta (Barcelona) - 90

• Mattia Perin (Genoa) - 90

• Arjen Robben (Bayern) - 90

PASSING

• Mesut Ozil (Arsenal) - 87

• David Silva (Man City) - 87

• Parejo (Valencia) - 87

• Eight players rated 86 [Koke, Messi, Pjanic, Ziyech, Sneijder, Modric, Payet, Rakitic]

POTENTIAL (Career Mode Only)

• Kylian Mbappe (Paris SG) - 94 max

• Gianluigi Donnarumma (AC Milan) - 94 max

•  Marco Asensio (Real Madrid) - 92 max

• Gabriel Jesus (Man City) - 92 max

• Thomas Lemar (Monaco) - 91 max

• Leroy Sane (Man City) - 91 max

Where to buy FIFA 18

FIFA 18 Where to Buy