A lot of us take FIFA very seriously,whether it is playing with the boys at someone’s home or playing online,we all want to win.That is what makes FIFA such an addictive and fun game.

If someone wants to get better at FIFA they are usually pointed in the direction of FUT(FIFA Ultimate Team)-which is FIFA’s primary competitive game mode.But every year, regardless of whether you are a new UT player or a FUT founder,FUT can seem pretty daunting in the beginning because of the lack of coins and lower playerbase which leads to a low supply of cards to buy or sell.

We all have a dream squad whenever the new edition of FIFA is released, we all dream of owning Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi (or sometimes even both!) and get excited to relive our childhood by taking charge of our heroes and idols like Henry or Ronaldo in the form of Icons on FIFA.

Sadly for us, a lot of people have the same idea.And considering the fact that players like Cristiano Ronaldo,Lionel Messi,Thierry Henry and Ronaldo ‘O Fenômeno’ Nazario are some of the games highest rated players and are naturally amongst the rarest. So there is a huge demand for these players and a very limited supply.Points and packs are not the best idea if you want players of similar calibre as some people have spent over 5000$ and haven’t even had a single 90+ player to show for.

Building your FIFA Ultimate Team

To be able to afford an amazing team full of Icons and high caliber cards, many people opt to trade for their coins.Trading involves analysing the market for price trends and being able to predict what kind of cards will go up in price and then ‘investing’ in those cards.There are many different types of trading ,most of which include predicting in-game events on the basis of past FIFA games.You might wonder why do people go through so much just to be able to afford some cards?After all, everyone wants to be the best at  they can at the game.But, to be the best ,one must beat the best and the only way to do that is to level the playing field by having the best possible team to suit your playstyle.

At the start of the game it is very difficult to trade for your coins because there simply aren’t enough coins in the market.So people usually take the easy route of buying FIFA points.While this may seem tempting, many people do not endorse this simply because it is a waste of your money and there is very little to show for it.Others, instead of FIFA Points ,buy FIFA Coins from third party websites .However you must keep in mind that this is against EA’s Terms of Service(ToS), in extremely rare cases accounts have been suspended by EA.So.what should you do?Buy coins and try your luck with packs?Or get coins from a website and simply buy outright players you need?We have the answer to your questions and will help you choose the best option to make your life easier and make sure you can obtain a truly ‘ultimate’ team.

Opening packs with FIFA Coins

The ‘best value’ point bundle that EA offer is 12000 FIFA Points for £99.99.It should be noted that the game itself costs £60.12000 FIFA Points will be enough to buy you almost 5 Ultimate Packs which are the best value packs in the game containing 30 Rare Gold Player Cards.Considering that you have above average luck you might be able to pack 150 players without any duplicates.Based on this comprehensive report you are likely to receive somewhere around 243,125 coins back.This number was calculated based on the median return of coins.In the aforementioned research it was calculated that a pack has a median return value of 38.9% to its actual cost in coins. Buying 5 packs would cost 625000 coins and 38.9% of 625,000 is 243,125.Considering that 12000 points were spent ,the return is very poor and is around 20 coins per point or a meagre 2,400 coins per £ spent. This too ,before the 5% tax that EA cuts from all sales.

All in all, unless you have a 12-leaf clover in your wallet and consider yourself extremely lucky and think you can pack Messi and Ronaldo in the same pack it would not be advisable to open packs by buying FIFA Points at all.The return on your investment is very small, consiering the fact that with the coin boosts available in the beginning of the game you could get to 20,000 coins with little effort of simply playing the game.

Advantages-

• Completely ethical,no risk of getting banned.

Disadvantages-

• Very expensive.
• No guarantee of getting good players.
• Points can only be used to open packs and play draft.
• Return to investment is very low. 2400 coins per £ spent.

Buying coins from third-party websites

        In the beginning of FIFA’s cycle the cost of coins that can be bought will be very high. It is not advisable to buy coins in the beginning because as more and more players join, the coins in circulation exponentially increases and the cost of coins will drastically fall.

At the time of writing this article, FIFA 19 coins (even though the hasn’t been released yet) can be bought at quite a premium.150,000 coins cost a whopping 100$ on some of the most popular websites.

In comparison, on FIFA 18, 100$ will get you more than 5,000,000 coins.It must be noted that FIFA 18 is almost at the end of its cycle and FIFA 19 is yet to come out,regardless there’s quite a difference in the prices and it would be better to simply play the game for a couple of weeks before deciding to buy coins.

Even then, there is a risk in buying coins because EA have known to ban accounts that promote coin selling and suspend accounts that have been suspected of coin selling.

Advantages-

• Great value after a few weeks.
• You get exactly what you pay for,not luck based(like packs).

Disadvantages-

• Not all websites are trustworthy.
• Very expensive in the beginning of the cycle.
• Against EAs Terms of Service(ToS).
• Account can be banned or suspended.

Trading

With the advent of websites like FUTBIN,Futhead and FUTwiz it has become much easier to identify price trends and play the market to yield immense profits.Certain cards go up in value because of certain SBCs, events ,etc.If one can successfully manage to identify these trends then it is very easy to profit from trading.

Cards such as OTWs,PTGs and Scream Cards are dynamic whose ratings change if a player is featured in TOTW(in case of PTG and OTW) or simply change during days like Friday 13th and Full Moons(in case of Scream Cards).Such events will cause the price of those cards to soar.This is just a simple example, there are many such cases of prices rising due to hype and there a variety of trading methods. One to Watch(OTW) cards were introduced in FIFA 17. These were special cards of those players who had transferred in the summer transfer window. So last year players like Salah and Morata had OTW cards. In the beginning, these cards had the same rating as that of the base cards, but over the course of the cycle these cards stood the chance to be upgraded if the players were included in TOTW, TOTS, MOTM or IMOTM squads. Basically, except for TOTS/TOTY for any tradable card that the player gets, the OTW card would also get the same rating. EG, Salah’s OTW card started off as an 83 rated card but ended up as a 93 rated card.

Because of this, OTW cards were highly sought after and certain trading methods evolved around them. Traders would typically wait for a match in which the player with the OTW card did not contribute in any manner(No assists or goals). After the match, most people who owned the OTW Card would list up their cards so they had immediate return to their coins and could invest somewhere else rather than let the coins sit and gather dust and lose value. This mass selling led to severe undercutting, and this is when traders would buy the OTW cards. Then once the next match comes around, they would simply list up the same OTW cards in hype and people who believed that the player could feature in the TOTW for good performance would buy the cards for a premium. However, this is not without risk- if you buy a player after a match and then the player proceeds to get injured there is a severe loss in demand and hence value. Or in case you sell before a match and the player proceeds to score a hattrick, you will face a prospective loss.

However, trading is a skill that has to be mastered over a number of FIFAs and can seem like a daunting task to newcomers who have just recently started playing the game. Also, even for experienced traders, there is a lot of risk,especially in the early stages when the market is volatile.It also demands a lot of research and takes time to see profit.Advantages-

• Completely risk-free.Part of the game.
• No money spent at all.
• Amount of profit depends on time spent trading.

Disadvantages-

• Needs time to perfect.
• No guaranteed profit in case of bad investment.
• Needs patience to see profit.
• No immediate results.

Conclusion

However, we would not personally advise anyone to buy FIFA Points, simply because it is not worth it and simply does not have enough value.

A much better thing to do would be to trade in the first few weeks of the games life and then buy FIFA coins from a website once the prices fall if your wallet(and wife) permit.If you don’t want to spend more money on the game, trading s for you.The only  drawback of trading is that it requires time and dedication.There are many methods that can be found on the internet or even channels on YouTube that specialise in trading methods that can easily be understood by everyone who has a basic understanding of how the game works. Expert traders make over 100k every day.