EA SPORTS FC™ Career Mode guide

How to get started with Career Mode

Start out by selecting either Player Career or Manager Career from the main menu, under Career Mode. You’ll be prompted to download the Squad updates to get the latest transfers, Player ratings, and more. Select Download Latest in the window that appears on-screen.You can also download the latest updates by following these steps.

1
From the main menu, open Settings.
2
Go to Edit Teams.
3
Select Download Updates.
4
Select Yes.

Once you select your preferred career type, you can customize your career settings in Quick Settings or in any of the other tabs to fine-tune your career.In both the Manager and Player Career, you’ll see a Task List in the Central tab. Your tasks will appear in order of priority to lead you but it’s up to you to decide which career path is right for you.

How to select a career in Career Mode

Manager Career

In Manager Career, your main goal is to build a successful team, win trophies, and achieve your Club’s objectives.You can select between:

Create New Manager: customize your own manager.
Play As Real Manager: select an existing manager from the football world.

Player Career

In Player Career, your main goal is to represent your team and lead it to victory. Progress your career by completing training drills, match objectives, and specific events or activities during gameplay.You can choose between:

Create New Men’s Player: customize a male avatar and choose their Origin Story.
Create New Women’s Player: customize a female avatar and choose their Origin Story.
Play As Real Player: play as your favorite footballer.
Select Icon Player: step into the shoes of a football legend and lead your team to victory.

When creating a new Player, you can choose how they came to the team and how they’re perceived by their teammates, which will impact their career story and progression.Here are the Origin Stories you can choose from.

Great Expectations: your player comes from a family where being a football Legend is a natural career path.
Climb to the Top: your player had to fight against all odds to rise from their humble beginnings and follow their passion as a football player.
Return To Glory: after a career-threatening injury, your player is back, ready to fulfill their full potential.
Clean Slate: starting out at 18 years of age, your Player is new to the football world with no notable background, but you’ll see them grow into a football legend.
Custom: set up your own Starting Status and build your own story.

Live Start Points in Career Mode

In Manager Career and Player Career, Live Start Points let you manage some of the top men’s and women’s teams from any gameweek across the season, so you can play alongside real-world competitions and potentially change their outcomes, depending on your own goals and performance.Each Live Start Point will reflect the current points totals, goals scored, transfers, cup progress, player form, injuries, suspensions, and even any potential points deductions.EAS FC 25 will have Live Start Points for 10 leagues and 12 cup competitions, letting you follow along with real results and jump in during any gameweek of the season. On the men's side, you can take control of teams in the following leagues:

Premier League
EFL Championship
LALIGA EA SPORTS
Ligue 1 McDonald’s
Serie A Enilive
Bundesliga.

In women's football, you can play as teams from the following leagues:

Barclays Women’s Super League
Arkema Première Ligue
Google Pixel Frauen-Bundesliga
Liga F.

To learn more about Live Start Points and everything that’s new in Career Mode, check out the deep dive in our Pitch Notes.

How to set up your team in Career Mode

Tactical Presets are pre-configured tactical setups inspired by modern football strategies that help you quickly organize your team. You can use them if you’re new to the game or need a starting point for creating your own tactics.Here are the base Presets to choose from.

FC Preset: a direct approach that focuses on breaking down defenses with quick and incisive attacking runs.
Direct Play: front-footed tactics that are all about recovering possession, getting forward, and putting the ball in the back of the net.
Cautious: a cautious approach that asks the team to prioritize limiting the opposition's chances rather than creating their own.
Custom: changing any setting in a Preset will turn it into a Custom Preset. All Tactical Presets are compatible with all formations available, but Custom Presets may come with incompatibilities.

How to level up in Career Mode

In Manager Career, hire Coaches to level up your Players. This will help decrease the time Players need to develop in specific departments.

1
In the main Manager Career menu, go to the Squad tab.
2
Select the Tactical Preset tile.
3
Go to the Coach Management tab.
4
Select the department you want to improve.
5
Select Hire Coach, choose a coach from the Coach Market, and confirm your selection.

You can also transfer Coaches from this menu by choosing the Coach you want to transfer and selecting Transfer Coach. In Player Career, you can build up your Manager Rating by completing Training Drills and Match Objectives. These will boost your score and prevent you from getting sent out on loan or getting put up for transfer.

How to earn rewards with Season Pass

You can always access the Seasonal Track by going to the FC HUB at the bottom-right side of the screen.To earn rewards, including Season Pass rewards, complete gameplay objectives, like hiring coaches or specific players, match objectives, and other challenges. You can find these in the Central tab of Manager Career and Player Career.Check out our article to learn more about Season Pass in EA SPORTS FC™ 25.