FC 26 - How to Form The Best Squads and Formations

With the release of FC 26 and its various amazing gameplay features and game modes for players to participate and enjoy the experience of building and managing different football teams to your heart's content. In this guide, we will go over all how players can best build the best teams and formations in order to challenge the different game modes in FC 26 and achieve the easiest career success.

FC 26 Squad & Formation Guide - Everything You Need To Know

To build a good squad in FC 26, there are several considerations players will need to take into consideration and balance out the different factors in order to build the best squad to face the different game modes in FC 26

Players Rating & Stats

To form a squad, players will need to assemble a set amount of players in a team to deploy them onto the field, with up to 10 players and 1 goalkeeper being allowed on the field at the same time

Each player card in FC 26 has a set amount of player rating and stats that will be displayed directly on each of their cards, signifying their overall performances and the stats that they have when they are on field, with each stat influencing the players’ capabilities in different categories on the field.

The stats that each player card have displayed includes:

- Pace: The overall speed of the player in every situation on the field.

- Shooting: The ability to shoot a goal, the higher the stat, the better accuracy of their shots.

- Passing: The ability to pass the ball between players, the higher the stat, the better the supporting ability of the player when on field.

- Bribbling: The ability of the player to maintain the ball while running, the higher the stat, the longer they can maintain the ball.

- Defending: The ability to intercept the opponents’ shots and attacks and counterplay, the higher the stat, the better the player can defend against opponents’ moves.

- Physicality: The overall stamina of the players, the higher the stat, the longer they can stay on the field and perform at their peak performance.

Generally speaking, when forming a squad, the higher the rating and stat, the better the player. However, depending on different positions of the players in a squad and formation, a balanced overall stat should be considered instead.

Players Roles

Just like in real life football, to form a good squad to challenge the different opponents in the game and win tournaments, players will need to deploy the team in different types of on field formation depending on your strategy.

There are many different roles the players on the field could fill, with many players can take up 2 or more positions on the field depending on their roles:

- Goalkeepers: These players are the essential last defense line against an opponents’ goal, with different stat line and different roles than other players on the field.

- Defenders: Consist of the 3 different position of Left Back (LB), Central Back (CB) and Right Back (RB), Defenders forms a line of defense before the goal, allowing players to intercept opponents’ movements and advances and take back to the ball in order to pass to other players on the field to initiate a counterattack. A good defense line can turn the tide of the match easily.

- Midfielders: The Midfielders are ones that bridge the gap between attackering roles and defending roles on the field, with their ability to either the support the attacking roles in maintaining and passing the balls or helping to follow a counterattack with the help of the defenders when they take back the ball from the opponent. The midfielders are essential as they span the majority of the field, with players that have high passing, dribbling and physicality stats being recommended. Midfielders are divided into 5 different positions: Centre Attacking Mid (CAM) focusing on helping Attacking Roles, Centre Mid (CM) supporting the entire field, Centre Defending Mid (CDM) helping the defenders, Right Mid (RM) and Left Mid (LM) focusing on supporting the rear and maintaining the ball within the field.

- Attackers: Attackers are the offensive players that are furthest away from the team’s goal, with high shooting stat and pace to help them quickly obtain the ball with the help of midfielders to score goals as quickly as possible. The Attackers are divided into 3 different positions: Strikers (ST) are the essential attackers and the ones that will mainly score goals, Left Wing (LW) and Right Wing (RW) are attacking positions that helps the strikers to score goals with high passing capability while also being able to score goals themselves when the opportunity arise with their high shooting stat.

Depending on the team’s strategy, there can be multiple different players of the same position on the field to help either maintain an offensive playstyle or a defensive playstyle.

Team Formation, Build Up Styles & Defensive Approach

With the different players' roles and positions on the field and the ability to assign 10 different players on the field in various different roles, a team formation on field is extremely crucial.

Depending on the team’s overall strategy, the formations the squad can take can generally be divided into the 3 different types of formations, with different styles and positions:

- Offensive Formations: Offensive formations mostly focus on bringing 2-3 players of the attacker role in front, with either 2 Wings and 1 Striker or just straight up 2 Strikers and 1 Central Attacking Mid to support them. The midfielders will also be filled with at least 4 players to help support the strikers while maintaining the ball position in the opponent’s side of the field as much as possible. This formation will only have 2-3 defenders however, making it more likely for the line of defense to be breached.

- Defensive Formations: Defensive Formation trades the offensive ability of the team by only running 2 Attackers, 4 midfielders and up to 4 defenders to protect the backline with the help of defending midfielders. The defensive formation is focused on making counterplay against opponents’ offensive play, with an emphasis on maintaining the defensive line as much as possible to create an opportunity for counterattack with the best attackers when the defenders take back the ball.

- Balanced Formations: Balanced Formations can take many different forms, but generally the Balance Formation will have a balanced number of Attackers and Defenders at 3, and 4 different midfielders at different positions to support the team. The positions of the attackers, defenders and midfielders can be adjusted quickly and fluidly, allowing for a more flexible playstyle against different opponent formations during a match.

Generally speaking, if you know in advance the formation of the opponent, you can counter them by utilizing the different formations in the game, with the offensive formation countering the defensive formations and vice versa. However, generally speaking, maintaining a balanced formation is the most recommended for the most versatility during a match.

Chemistry Styles & Evolutions

The last bit of considerations players need to make when forming a squad in FC 26 are the different Players' Chemistry Styles and the Players’ Evolutions.

Chemistry Styles are special effects that can provide the players in the squad with massive stat boost the more players of the same country, league and club are in the same squad and on the field, making it highly recommended that players build squads with these synergies in mind to provide your players the highest possible stat boost.

Different players can be equipped with 3 different Chemistry Styles that boost their various stats, so choosing the correct Chemistry Styles for the different players in the different positions are also crucial to make the perfect team.

Another type of boost the players can receive are the special evolution effects that can be applied to the different players’ cards. The evolution effects can apply a special modifier to the different players, boosting their overall capabilities in certain scenarios and providing them with various stat boosts that can benefit them in the long term. Different players can have different types of evolutions applied to them, diversifying the players’ roles and stats even more and help to diversify the players’ formation and squad building strategy even more.

Team Cost

Of course, the final consideration players will run into when building a squad is of course, the overall cost of building the squad in the first place. Generally speaking, a good team will require players to spend a lot of coins to make, with a lot of the high rating players costing a lot.

The best advice in terms of cost when building a squad is that players should focus on having 1 to 2 high rating players as their main building block and overall MVP of the team, then build the entire squad around these players as supporting players. Generally speaking, having lower rating players that can fulfill the different chemistry styles are highly recommended to boost the MVP players’ stats to the maximum while lowering the overall cost requirement of the squad.

Conclusion

And with that, we have gone over everything players need to know about building a squad and how to form team formations on the field when challenging the different game modes in FC 26. We hope that with our insightful guide and recommendations, players will be able to form the best squad to help them achieve victories with their matches.