FIFA 23

and it feels surprisingly different from FIFA 22, for example when cover star Mbappé flicks the ball up with his studs, then heels the leather just above his head and volleys it away. Everything is a shade more individual.

Not revolutionary, FIFA is still FIFA, and soccer isn’t Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, it doesn’t reinvent itself every year. But we really like how spritely Mbappé feels. His drive, how he pulls off sprints and rows his arms. Or even how he pulls off his nasty feints – leaning to the right, pulling through on the left. Or even tunneling the defender, giving the ball just enough spin that it bounces off the studs and the opponent accidentally gives us the deadly pass.

Then there are completely new sprint mechanics. Players are now differentiated into three categories: explosive sprint, controlled, and long-term sprinter. That’s interesting because these types of players can often dominate a team’s strategy. For example, in the German national team, we had a defensive leader in Philipp Lahm who provided an enormous number of set pieces for goals because, although he wasn’t the fastest, he was an absolute endurance runner. He permanently ran the whole distance from back to front, which made the German game very unpredictable. FC Bayern still uses this tactic today to keep an incredible amount of pressure on the opponent’s goal for almost the entire match, a true German virtue. Borussia Dortmund also drives this hard pressing.

Excellent FIFA 23 analysis from FIFA pro DICO

Many teams have midfielders who are explosive up front, Paris Saint Germain has just the right mix. They can be explosive, but they also score a lot of goals with long sprints down the flanks. It sounds like a small thing, but it ties in the characteristics of each team much more. We have to pay attention to whether a player is more the explosive type who always wins the ball on the short side, but then tends to play off to one who can do the long run more. We can now control this much more intuitively and tactically, so for example full power in the first few meters, take the ball, leave the opponent behind. Then we slow down a bit, run along the line, when the defender comes up to us, jump up, control the ball, and gradually turbo the ball in.

There are players like Cristiano Ronaldo who can always add another 15, maybe even 20 percent during sprints, which is often the difference between professional and world class in the end. So we need to pay much more attention to data and stats in FIFA 23, because there are athletes who can combine explosive speed with long sprints. But much more often you’ll have the situation where your athlete is explosively power sprinting for a short distance, but then slows down, because very few soccer players can hold full speed for a long time. And then there are guys like Van Dijk, who is very massive but well-trained – he’s not a lightweight who goes off like a rocket, but after initial teething problems he really pulls through and can overtake explosive sprint guys, which is an exciting nuance.

With the new power shot you drive high risk in FIFA 23, but when it sits, it sits

We really like the power shot. There are also experts in real soccer for shots on goal from 25 or even 30 meters, such as a Toni Kroos. But we have to create the exact right situation for it, because the Powershot only works when we have space and a bit more time. If we press L1 and R1 simultaneously on the Playstation 5, this special shot charges up. The player then takes a very long swing with his foot, which of course makes him vulnerable to tackles and straddles – this is where that famous “nothing ventured, nothing gained” plays into it. This is also very cool staged, with the camera literally zooming in on the ball and celebrating the animation. We can influence the intensity of this powershot, i.e. put the ball into the net with a full-span shot. Or give it real force, but also a certain spin to the left or right.

A lot of this depends on a player’s stats, a Haaland or Toni Kroos who have very high stats in shooting technique is more likely to succeed with such a bomb than a less accomplished athlete. Of course, only time will tell how the whole thing is received by the community and how it performs in the actual match in the long run, but it replicates quite nicely that difficult situation a pro faces when pulling the trigger from 30 yards. Anyone who’s played soccer knows that you can’t just turn the leather in from that distance – the ball loses momentum in the air, it comes in with too little pressure and the trajectory is too easy for the goalkeeper to anticipate. As a rule, you can’t shoot with full tension, because if the angle from the instep to the ball isn’t 100 percent, the ball goes into the clouds.

In that sense, we think it’s an exciting mechanic because even in real soccer, there are very few world-class players who can bang in a situation like that at 30 yards. That will definitely be a pro mechanic because charging needs to be practiced. If you charge to about 40 percent, definitely below 50, you can shoot the ball flat, with a lot of power. In addition, FIFA pros can use the whole thing very tactically: For example, we can charge up our striker’s power shot in the 16th box before he receives the ball, and he’ll slam the ball into the box unstoppable. As I said, we’ll have to wait and see how well this can be countered. In addition, EA Sports always has the problem of patches that make launch versions unnecessarily worse because you’d rather take the Dulli with you instead of using the Pro.

The standards can be turned in FIFA 23 much more precise and data based

The standards are going to be very different in FIFA 23 because we’re getting a lot more data at our fingertips. To take the example of Toni Kroos. It says: Shot power 89, Curve (Andrehen) 86. Distance to goal: 21.5 meters and depending on how we now draw this yellow shot line and its angle of rotation, the game calculates the probability of the goal, which is wild. This can be really decisive when it comes to the last minutes of a game and we have to sink the standard. You could also say that it goes a bit in the direction of PES, i.e. standards become more tactical. For example, we see a virtual circle around the real soccer ball in front of us and can now use the stick to specify exactly where we want to hit the pill, i.e. with which area of the foot and instep, which ultimately dictates how much spin the leather develops.

Very detailed professional analysis of the new standards

Footballers yawn now, for everyone else briefly explained: if you take the ball at the lowest point and push your leg fully through, you pull off full-span. If, on the other hand, you take the leather at the side, you can give a lot of spin, which makes the ball spin a lot in the air and makes it hard for the goalkeeper to anticipate where it will land. One of the reasons why soccer teams spend an incredible amount of time on standards, because that’s the easiest type of goal to score if you know how to spin the ball as far to the right or left as possible at the top. That’s because the keeper can’t get there, depending on his height and jumping ability. A small detail: In FIFA 23 we can now move the fingers of goalkeepers while jumping, i.e. we can stretch out completely and deflect the ball at the last second.

Also funny and inspired by real soccer: Also in FIFA 23 we can now put a player behind our wall during standards, so the shooter can’t take a low shot. These used to be quite popular, because the goalkeeper can see and judge them much worse than high balls. We are a bit surprised that this brilliant standard mechanic does not carry over to penalty kicks. There, there’s just a virtual circle that turns red, yellow, or green, and the closer rather is around the ball, the more optimal the shot intensity. This circle stands for the point of calmness, i.e. how concentrated the soccer player is when finishing, which is an important attribute in FIFA 23. We know this from real soccer: World Cup, final, the veteran puts the ball in cool, the newcomer puts it into the clouds because he is too excited. Let us know on Facebook if you’d like to see a second part: There’s still so much to tell – about technical dribbling, new types of passes via outward, heel, volley, fresh corner variations where we turn the ball in hard, put it in via full-stretch, lobs, arcing lights etc..

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