As every year in our FIFA Pro Tips we start with the basics. Also in FIFA 22 it depends first of all on one thing: A stable defense. It’s not said for nothing: offense wins games, defense wins championships. If you implement these six tips, your opponents will have a hard time scoring goals.Pulling one of your center backs out of the back line is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. This creates large gaps that opposing players can mercilessly exploit for dangerous slant passes.In order to leave the center backs in the defensive line, but still be able to defend with a player far in front of your goal, you should run back with one of your midfielders. This way, you’ll also generate an outnumbered game and have another player with whom you can block your opponent’s attacks. This will make it more difficult for your opponent to find gaps in your defense.

With targeted pressing it is possible to force your opponents to lose the ball. To do this, use the R1 or RB key to constantly build up pressure on the player with the ball with another player. The more aggressive you are, the more you confuse the attacker. But be careful: At the same time, pressing the R1 or RB key aggressively opens up your defensive line for more strikers. So weigh up how often and how aggressively you want to press R1 or RB.

There was already a revolutionary innovation in FIFA 19. Meanwhile, you can see which additional player you’re building pressure with when you choose to press R1 or RB. While your selected player has a red icon above his head, you’ll see a gray icon above another of your players. This is the player you can use to build pressure with R1 or RB. Also, this is the player you get selected when you change players (L1 or LB). This innovation made defending in FIFA better a few years ago. It’s now less common to get a different player than you wanted when you switch players.What you can’t do without in FIFA 22 is defending with the L2 or LB key. If you don’t press L2 or LB when an attacker is running towards you, you won’t have enough grip in the duels and you’ll let the opponent pass too often. With L2 or LB you stand better, move in a smaller radius and can defend optimally in a small space through faster movements.

There was already an important innovation in FIFA 20: Sprinting is no longer disabled when pressing L2/LT. If you press L2/LT and R2/RT at the same time, you move faster and still have your eyes on the player with the ball. So even at high speed, you can now defend great with L2/LT. But there are still situations in which you should briefly dispense with L2/LT. For example, there is a sprint duel on the sidelines and you need your maximum speed to keep your opponent from running away. In order to stand up to him in terms of speed, you only press the R2/RT key. As soon as you don’t need that much speed anymore and you’re heading for a duel, don’t forget to press L2/LT again in addition to R2/RT.

In the last few years, many FIFA players liked to leave the defending to the CPU players. On the one hand, because they had problems with it themselves and on the other hand, because the CPU players behaved intelligently for the most part. The latter has been toned down significantly in the meantime. Back in FIFA 20, we advised you against relying solely on CPU defense. Our recommendation was to defend more manually, because it pays off more again. In FIFA 22 this development is confirmed. The CPU players don’t do much, so you have to defend actively more than ever. Only if you have absolute top players in the defense – like Virgil van Dijk for example – the CPU defense can be helpful now and then. Conclusion: Especially in high-level games, you will be better off with optimal manual defending than with a primarily CPU-controlled defense. Practice manual defending with our tips above and defend yourself!

Since FIFA 21, timing in duels is more important than ever. This is because if your tackle is made at the right moment, the ball won’t bounce right back to your opponent. This is also the case in FIFA 22. If you are in the best possible position with your defender and then tackle at the right moment, you will also get the ball. The “Ping Pong” from earlier years has (fortunately) come to an end. However, you can’t expect a player with an overall rating of 60 and a tackle value of 40 to win every duel – just because you’re standing correctly. The higher the tackle value, the greater the chance of success. The fact that you are also rewarded with more ball wins for optimal tackling also speaks in favor of taking care of your defense yourself and not just trusting the CPU.

Continuing with the basics, we now come to the game setup. For a safe build-up it is especially important that you stay calm – even if your opponent puts you under pressure. If you act restlessly and are too hectic, you run the risk of making the wrong pass, running into counterattacks and conceding unnecessary goals. Good ball control and a secure passing game are essential in the build-up to the game!

For good ball control, you first need to be calm. You must not get nervous when an opponent is just approaching. Have confidence in your abilities and stay calm. If you get hectic, you have often already lost. In addition to calmness, coolness and self-confidence, good ball control also requires effective dribbling. If you know how to dribble, you can better withstand your opponent’s pressing. In tight spaces, you’ll be able to hold the ball close to your foot and use lightning-fast movements to keep your opponent off the ball.

You often have more space when you play through the outsides than when you play through the middle. That’s positive at first. However, you’ll be further away from the opponent’s goal and will have to decide at some point how to get the ball back into the middle. There are several options for this. Either you choose the easiest solution and hit a high cross into the middle from far outside. However, with high crosses you often have to cover a long distance and therefore the accuracy sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. So if one of your players isn’t completely blank in the penalty area, you should think twice about passing the ball with a cross or keeping it on your foot.Another possibility is to move from the outside back into the middle – either with quick, targeted short passes as well as powerful passes into the penalty area (X/A + R1/RB) or a skillful solo run – peppered with Skillmoves. Often your opponent doesn’t expect it, is overwhelmed and the defense is unsorted. Moving from the inside to the outside and then from the outside to the inside again can therefore be effective.

However, we would like to talk about high crosses once again. Crossing is more worthwhile in FIFA 22 than before! Especially if you have strong headed players in the attacking center, we recommend you to use high crosses more often again. There was an interesting innovation with headers in FIFA 21: With manual headers you can take complete control and decide better than ever where exactly you want to head. This applies to both goal attempts and passes that you play with your head.

Extra Tip: You should also use high balls into the middle for corners from time to time. In FIFA 20 we recommended you to take short corners, because corners hit high into the middle usually didn’t lead to anything. In FIFA 21 it was different – and in FIFA 22 high corners can lead to success again.We’ve been preaching it for years and we still do it in FIFA 22: Shoot more from distance and don’t always try to carry the ball into the goal! Shooting from outside the penalty area is more effective than many of you might think. In addition, it is more difficult to score a goal inside the penalty area in FIFA 22 because of the improved goalkeepers. Of course, you can’t shoot from every possible situation. If you shoot from a distance, you should have the right player and spot for it. You need enough space and the ball should be on your strong foot. Do you have both? Then pull the trigger!

Extra Tip: In FIFA 22, shots outside the penalty area work even better than in previous years. Especially finesse shots to the far corner are promising. In addition, Timed Finishing – a shooting technique introduced in FIFA 19 – makes its comeback! With the right use of Timed Finishing, long-range shots can be an effective tool for scoring goals in FIFA 22. By regularly interspersing long-distance shots, you’ll become even more variable in your goal scoring and you’ll create moments of surprise. This way, your opponents will have a hard time guessing what you’re going to do in your attacking game.For Red Bull athlete “Gaucho10”, offense is the key to success: “You have to be creative, spread the game out and keep playing through the wings. That’s the only way you can keep posing problems for the opposing defense.”

What is Timed Finishing and how does it work?

In real soccer, timing is the most important thing when it comes to scoring a goal. Since FIFA 19, this is now also true on the virtual pitch. With “Timed Finishing”, publisher EA has introduced a new shooting system. If you want to get a perfect shot, you now press the shoot button twice. The second press of the shoot button is particularly important. This decides whether the ball goes into the goal or far off/over. The second press should be made at the moment when the player has the ball right in front of his foot. By the way, for those who don’t feel like dealing with a new shooting system or just can’t get used to the novelty, we have good news: timed finishing is still OPTIONAL! You can also shoot normally by pressing the shoot button only once.

Still, our tip is to learn Timed Finishing and perfect it. After all, if you practice a lot and master the new shooting system, you’ll be rewarded with more accurate and better finishes! As described, the Timed Finishing in FIFA 22 is especially recommended for shots from a distance. When shooting from a distance or when you are free in front of the goal, it is better to shoot normally. The risk that the ball flies into the clouds if you don’t use the timed finishing is too high.It’s clear that it takes some time to perfect Timed Finishing – especially if you’ve never really used it in past FIFA years either. But patience is needed here: No master has fallen from the sky yet!

If you want to succeed in FIFA 22, you should master dribbling better than ever before. Not only will it make you harder to defend, but it will also help you get out of pressure situations when your opponent is pressing hard. For dribbling, FIFA 22 offers two other options besides the classic dribbling with the left stick:Already known from FIFA 20 is the penalty dribbling, which is basically the previously introduced skilled dribbling. You can get into the penalty dribbling with the L1/LB key and the left stick. The difference to the normal dribbling is that you move in a tighter space, touch the ball in shorter time intervals and thus perform faster movements.

To perform the penalty dribble in all directions – that is, not just in the direction of the opponent’s goal – you must use the Locked Angle penalty dribble. You can do this by pressing L1/LB and R1/RB at the same time. If you do this, your player will immediately enter the penalty dribble and will not have to turn towards the opponent’s goal to execute the penalty dribble.A valuable move before applying the penalty dribble can be pulling the ball back. This allows you to avoid a tackle from the opponent and change your direction. This works with L1/LB and pressing the left stick in the direction you want to run. Important: The main thing here is to anticipate your opponent’s behavior. So constantly keep an eye on your opponent and think about at what moment he will probably try to separate you from the ball.

The penalty dribble can also be used to buy time – for example, to wait for a teammate who is about to run free. You use the penalty dribble to keep the opponent away from you and wait for the right moment to make a pass.You can also use the penalty dribble for a very long time at a stretch to make several opponents look old. However, you should keep the following in mind: When you use the penalty dribble, you do not protect the ball from your opponent with your body. This means that as soon as you anticipate an opponent’s move incorrectly, the ball can quickly be gone. Our recommendation is to combine the normal and the penalty dribble and to include the ball back into your dribbles. This way you have the best chance to perform a successful dribble over a longer period of time.

Another way to get past your opponent with the penalty dribble is the Double Step. The Double Step is a fakemove where you pull the ball back, but then don’t run in another direction, but return to normal dribbling after only one contact with the ball and execute the exitmove in the same direction. In the best case for you, your opponent thinks that you will change direction after pulling the ball back. He tries to anticipate this and moves with his player already in that direction. With the exit move in the same direction, you then leave your opponent behind quite easily.

What you should always keep in mind when penalty dribbling: The more technically proficient your player is, the better the execution. The most important attributes are dribbling, agility and balance. In general, you should not use the penalty dribble with tall, stiff central defenders, for example. If you lose the ball, your opponent will have a clear path to your goal. And one last hint: after you have used the penalty dribble, the player may take a while to execute the next action. This depends on how the ball is positioned and with which foot your player will perform the next action.

FIFA 21 introduced another form of dribbling with Agile Dribbling. You use it with R1/RB and moving the left stick at the same time. As the name suggests, you are more agile in your dribbling moves, you move faster and more precise with the ball. The higher your dribbling value, agility value, reaction value and ball control value, the faster, more precise and better you will be able to control the ball on your foot.Also new is the contextual Agile Dribbling, which is optional but activated by default. If you have it enabled, your players will automatically perform Agile Dribbles in certain situations, such as when they are in a 1-on-1 against an opponent. You can turn off contextual agile dribbling in the controller settings.

Extra Tip: We can only recommend that you incorporate Agile Dribbling into your offensive game from time to time. However, you really need very good and technically skilled players to actually gain an advantage with Agile Dribbling. If you use it with weak or average players, Agile Dribbling won’t work as desired. Also, you should not use Agile Dribbling in an inflationary way. In other words, too much agile dribbling at a time can be counterproductive because the ball won’t be as close to your foot and you’ll create attacking areas for your opponents. So if you manage to pass opponents with agile dribbling, you should quickly switch back to normal dribbling to better secure the ball. So don’t be too playful and only use agile dribbling when it really makes sense!

That a safe passing game is crucial for your success, we have already emphasized above in our tips for the game setup. Basically, every FIFA player should be aware of this. Nevertheless, it is often neglected to play controlled passes. Instead, the X or A key is pressed frantically in order to get forward as quickly as possible. There were certainly FIFA offshoots in the past where this worked. But nowadays it doesn’t work anymore. You have to think about every pass. This is especially true in FIFA 22! Even after the first few hours of playing the new game, it was clear that the passing game is more challenging than ever.

If you lack accuracy, you will often miss passes. You play accurate passes by:

When it comes to skill moves, many players are still quick to shy away. Special moves are basically too complicated, require too much time to learn and ultimately lead to nothing. We have finally dispelled this myth in recent years! There are numerous moves that are not complicated at all. And the best thing about them is that they are extremely effective and improve your game enormously. We’ll introduce you to three simple special moves that can make all the difference in the world and that you should have in your repertoire in FIFA 22.

For years the drag back has been one of the most popular FIFA skill moves. And there are two good reasons for that: The execution is simple and you can eat up the opponent in some game situations.To perform the Drag Back, first press R1/RB and at the same time pull the left stick backwards, starting from the running direction of your player. So if you are running straight towards the right goal, press the left stick to the left, if you are running towards the left goal, press the stick to the right.This will first of all pull the ball back. Now comes the decisive move that makes the Drag Back so unpredictable and effective. You can execute the exit move of the drag back in any direction. This means that you can either keep the left stick pressed back, or you can press it to the right, left or front.

The beauty of drag back is that it’s a useful application in many game situations. The different possible exit move directions make it hard for your opponent to guess what exactly you’re trying to do with the Drag Back. To name just two examples of possible applications:

Often the fake shot is enough to make your opponent look old. Most of you know the classic shot deception, but the most important thing is the different versions.Basically, you first press the shot/flank key and then the pass key to execute the shot deception. At the same time, you use the left stick to determine in which direction you move after the shot deception. This way you also decide whether you keep the speed or take it out with a complete change of direction, for example. It is also possible not to touch the left stick at all. In this case, you execute a shooting deception in the standing position. There is also a shot deception followed by a speed boost. How does that work? It’s simple: You press L1/LB in addition to the normal shot deception. So if you want to execute a shot deception, for example, diagonally to the right or left and want to gain speed, definitely use the L1/LB key. If you can get past your opponent with it, it will be extremely difficult for him to catch up with you again.

The Fake Shot will help you in numerous situations. For example, you can use the shot deception to put yourself in promising finishing positions in the penalty area and around the sixteen. With the Fake Shot into the stand you can break off running duels with your opponents. If the opponent continues to run, you have space again for a short time and you get the opportunity to create new game situations. The shot deception with tempo boost is especially useful on the outer lanes, when you need additional speed for sprints with your wingers.The ball roll is also a useful special move that is extremely simple to execute.All you need for the ball roll is the right stick. You press the stick in the direction you want to perform the ball roll. Example: If you are running straight towards the right goal and you want to perform a ball roll to the right, press the right stick to the right. Important: In order for the ball roll to work, you have to keep the stick pressed in the respective direction for a short time. However, the longer you press the stick in this direction, the more ball rolls your player will perform.

For optimal use of the ball roll, it is especially important to choose the right moment. Example: You are running forward with your player and an opponent is running towards you. You anticipate that your opponent will tackle you to take the ball from you. Just before the tackle, the ball roll comes into play. With the ball roll you avoid the duel and let the opponent tackle into space. Without much effort you will pass your opponent and be a bit closer to the opponent’s goal. But as I said, it depends on the timing. If you use the ball roll too early or too late, it won’t bring the expected added value and in the worst case your opponent will take the ball from you.

Conclusion: If you’ve never used these three skill moves before and are just now integrating them into your game, you’ll quickly notice that you’re getting better results in FIFA 22. The Drag Back, Fake Shot and Ball Roll will make your game more creative and unpredictable.

Extra Tip: In FIFA 22 it’s more important than ever to use your skill moves specifically and with the right timing. If the timing is not right, it is now easier for your opponents to separate you from the ball. That means: In FIFA 22 it requires more skill and ability to get past your opponents with special moves. It’s no use just applying skill moves somehow. The timing has to be perfect to create the desired effect and to gain an advantage with the various special moves.

Our Tip: Practice TF shots on penalties and apply them. Even with extremely good players, there will be some scatter without TF. With a perfect TF penalty, you aim more accurately and the probability of the ball going in is very high.

Gameplay-wise, you are now well prepared for FIFA 22. But mastering the gameplay is not everything. You also need to be mentally up to speed. Be honest: You know this scenario: You dominate the game, but the ball just won’t go in. And then you concede an unfortunate goal. You boil with rage, freak out, leave the game and/or even destroy your controller. No question: Emotions – both positive and negative – are as much a part of FIFA as they are in real soccer. Everyone wants to win – and if that doesn’t work out, you’re just unhappy. But the freak-outs don’t get you anywhere! If you lose your cool, you lose the game.

Our Tip: Don’t just watch tutorials. Take the time to watch complete games of the Leipzig pros on YouTube or Twitch. For example, watch the livestream at their pro tournaments every now and then and try to analyze for yourself and figure out what makes the pros so strong. At best, you can learn defensive and offensive behavior, moves, standard variations, goal finishes, and much more, and integrate what you’ve learned into your own game.