FIFA Producer Reveals Some Must Know Tips for Becoming a FIFA Pro

Goran "drpoplove" Popovic, an assistant producer on the FIFA franchise at EA’s Vancouver studio, has been educating fans via a Twitter thread on how to get the most out of their time on the pitch in FIFA 20.

Insights include tactical tweaks, ways to improve your dribbling, and subtle control tweaks that could add a little spice to your Ultimate Team squads - or your next local multiplayer game.

For those looking to complete the latest Future Stars objectives, you'll want to listen to these handy tips and tricks. The full tweet can be found below, but we’ve also plucked these pearls of virtual footballing wisdom and put them below for you to enjoy.

1) “Hug Sideline” only works on wide players

The “hug sideline” command will only keep your full-backs and wingers wide - not your central midfielders.

While it’s possible to get players to head wider to find space, this command isn’t the way to do it.

2) You can sprint out of a strafe dribble

The strafe dribble allows an attacker to size up a defender before using trickery or pace to get away - but that doesn’t mean it needs to slow you right down.

By using the average of your Agility, Balance and Dribbling stats, you can make a speedy getaway - and the pace of exiting this type of dribble was recently increased via a title update.

That means if your player is equipped for it, you can burst past players just like Raheem Sterling to open up a goalscoring opportunity.

3) Team Press

Despite popular belief, the “Team Press” instruction is essentially analogous to setting your defensive style to constant-pressure.

That means you may end up with your forward players exhausted from winning the ball back - so it’s worth using sparingly unless you’ve got incredibly fit players.

4) The double RS tap

If you’ve ever knocked the ball past a defender, you’ll know just how good it feels. That is unless you don’t knock it far enough.

You can help avoid that particular ignominy by nudging the right stick twice in a direction to put a little more pace on it. It’ll help you power past players, provided you’ve got the pace for it.

5) Controller Settings

If you head into the settings menu and change the pass receiver lock to “Late” (a new feature in FIFA 20), you’ll be able to adjust the pass direction later in the animation.

That means if your striker makes a different run behind the defence to the one you were anticipating, you can adjust as necessary.

6) Moving Goalkeeper during free kicks

Want your keeper to shuffle across the line before a free kick is taken? Using X and B on Xbox One or Square and Circle on PS4, you can position your keeper along the goal line.

It’ll only work until the kick taker has started their run-up, and you can use the right stick to control your keeper during corners, too.

7) Clearing headers

When clearing a cross, the shoot button offers a more powerful header away. Presumably, that makes it a little bit less controlled, so be prepared to repel another attack.

8) Instructing Player Runs

You can send players on runs with a tap of LB (Xbox) or L1 (PS4), by holding the left stick in their direction. While this is fairly common knowledge, you can send multiple players on their way in the same way.

You can also call for support with a tap of RB or R1 to change the angle of an attack as well. Combining the two could let you lay it off short to a teammate for them to sweep it over the defence to a running forward.

9) Ground Pass Trick

This one was news to us, but you can tap the ground pass button (A on Xbox, X on PS4) after the initial press to send it slightly off the ground.

This could fool a defender, help it over an outstretched foot, or allow a teammate with a high degree of control to turn it into a fresh dribbling opening.

Which of these nine tips will you be using? We’re eager to get on the pitch and show off our new moves.