Poor AI Squad Management, and Way Too Many Free Agents

Product: EA SPORTS FC 25
Platform:Microsoft XBOX One
Please specify your platform model. Microsoft Xbox One X
What is your Gamertag/PSN ID/Switch ID? DTCP91
Which mode has this happened in? Career Mode
Which part of the mode? Manager Career
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Simulate a manager career mode to the start of the third season. In short (I'll go into detail below), the balance of AI squads is a mess, and has been since FIFA 23. Browse team sheets after a couple of seasons, and you'll find many squads that are badly short players in multiple positions, often to the point where you can't sign a centre-half you want because that's the only one that club has left. Next, search the free agents pool. You'll find that the number of unsigned players has grown enormously, with only a fraction of each season's new free agents being signed. Of course, these problems only get worse as your manager save goes on.
What happens when the bug occurs? Squads become way too small (with many clubs down to 20 players, or even 18). Despite desperately needing players, most clubs barely sign any of the hundreds of free agents who become available each season. These players simply sit there unused, fatally breaking the human player's immersion in the game mode.
What should be happening instead? AI squads should maintain a minimum number of players for each position. Ideally, players released as free agents need to find a new club within one season of their release, or else be retired from the career mode save. If this isn't considered a priority issue (though I really believe it should be!), please return to the system prior to FIFA 21, where AI players with expiring contracts who weren't signed on a pre-contract agreement would automatically renew with their current club. This helped to maintain a sense of balance to the squads of other clubs, which has sorely been lacking for several years now.

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Hi there,

Below are several examples of how these bugs diminish the player’s experience, along with some possible solutions. First, a quick look at how we got here.

On FIFA 21, it became possible for AI players’ contracts to expire - prior to that, any player down to the last six months would automatically renew if unsigned by another club. A good idea, and if clubs would let go of their brightest young prospects a bit too easily, at least it was an attempt to keep things fresh. This was followed by an overcorrection on FIFA 22, where it was rare for any player’s contract to even get down to the last six months, let alone expire. Since then, the player pool within career mode has frankly been a complete mess.

FIFA 23 saw most clubs releasing at least three players each season. Which would've been fine… except those players weren’t replaced by enough new signings, nor were the new free agents signed by other clubs. Going by the comments and Youtube videos of many career mode players, nothing has yet been done about this problem in either FC 24 or 25.

It’s especially problematic in the lower divisions (I mostly play career saves in England), where in-game transfer activity is low. As early as season 2, you’ll see a Championship club with just one centre half, or a League One club with no goalkeeper. The issue just gets worse the longer you go on.

In real life, the majority of League One & Two transfers are from one English club to another. In League Two especially, many are free agents. Why can’t this be worked into the game in some way? The young players released by Premier League clubs should mostly be signed by other English clubs, or perhaps the Bundesliga for some of the more promising ones. Likewise for the French, Spanish and German divisions. Instead, they - alongside scores of more highly rated players in the peak years of their careers - languish unsigned in the free agents pool, which, by season 3 on FIFA 23, is so bloated that a majority of clubs have barely any players beyond a matchday squad of 18. Opponents forfeiting games then become a blight on your save.

What you get is a transfer gridlock: no-one has any players, so no-one can sign any from each other either, and the majority of free agents - whether rated 55 or 88 - are ignored, and go to waste. For some career mode players this won’t matter too much. But what your club is able to achieve is informed by the competence of the clubs you’re competing against, and if their squad building is totally inept, then the game becomes far too easy, and gives you little incentive to continue.

Surely it couldn’t be too hard to code the game so that each team seeks to have at least X number of players in each position, and not more than Y? No-one’s asking for the FC franchise to be Football Manager. But if the AI transfer / squad management system isn’t meant to resemble real football, it does at least need to *feel* real; that is, to have a basic structural integrity which allows for rewarding long-form gaming experiences. 


A return to the previous system of auto-renewal for players whose contracts run out would be welcome. If not, please consider giving us an editor. Not to stack your team with the planet’s 20 best players, but for reversing unrealistic AI transfers, and more importantly, to make your own transfers so that the teams you’re up against can actually maintain a balanced squad beyond the first two seasons of a save.

The opposite problem has been an issue for even longer, going back as far as FIFA 14, and that is clubs stockpiling players in one particular position. On each year’s edition of career mode, certain clubs are assigned target areas for recruitment. A sound idea. The problem is that they never stop, meaning that by your third season, Brighton could field a starting 11 of centre mids, and Arsenal have more 21-year-old right backs than they know what to do with. I haven’t been able to establish whether any improvements have been made to this on FC 24 or 25 - if not, it needs to be worked on.

For me, career mode hasn’t been fun since the player pool ceased to work properly on FIFA 22 / 23. It held me back from buying those games until their prices were heavily discounted. I didn’t buy FC24 at all, and unless this facet of the game is given the care that it needs, I won’t be purchasing FC25 either, nor any future edition of the game.