It’s time to talk about the new Dribbling Techniques. FC 24 brings in three new major techniques, which could be very impactful and meter, especially at the beginning.

Defending is quite hard on FC 24 and using those techniques as the Attacker makes the life of the Defenders even harder. At the end of this guide, we will also give you a pro tip on how you can combine these new dribbling techniques. 

Controlled Sprint

The first technique that we want to have a closer look at is the Controlled Sprint.

As the name already gives away, it’s a way to sprint with a ball. But in contrast to the normal sprint, your player keeps a closer control over the ball. That’s a revolution because dribbling was always a balance of pace and ball control. The faster you are, the less control you have. Because you have fewer ball contacts.

This was the trade-off. Now, EA FC 24 comes around the corner and turns this upside down with this new dribbling technique. 

When you hold the R1 or RB button, your player accelerates but keeps tight control over the ball. The better the dribbling attributes and pace, the faster your player will be and also reacts differently, more direct to your input with the left stick. So, if you have enough FUT 24 Coins, please upgrade your players' dribbling attributes as much as possible so that you can better use this technique.

You don’t need to press the R2 or RT button to be that fast. This is only with the R1/RB button.

Tip 1: go on the practice pitch and try the Controlled Sprint with a couple of different players to get a feel for it. 

This dribbling is completely new and the way you can turn and change direction is very different from other dribbling techniques. Since you get fast very easily, it’s crucial that you develop an idea of what you can get away with.

Now, it’s time to make use of it in a real match. We already identified different situations when this dribbling is very useful. One is in the Midfield and you have some space. By using Controlled Sprint, you pick up pace and put immediate pressure on the defensive line without losing too much ball control.

Tip 2: make sure you have enough space in front of you to get started with a Controlled Sprint.

Then, it’s important to observe the movement of the opponent’s Defenders. You want to weave around the Defenders and bait them a bit, so go a bit on one side, for example, to the left to provoke some reaction from the Defender since he has to cover the left side.

Now, just slightly change the direction to the other side and bang. All of a sudden, you’re weaving around the Defender and not only that, but through the whole defensive line, just like Prime Messi. Welcome to the magic of Controlled Sprint. 

But that’s only one aspect of it. We use Controlled Sprint to accelerate, but we can also use it to regain control from a full on sprint and slow down just a bit. So, you’re sprinting on the wing and you want to cut inside.

Now, you can use Controlled Sprint and slightly change the direction. 

Since you do everything with as much pace, you put a lot of pressure on the Defender to not do a single misstep. But you can still go left or right. This is a nightmare for every Defender. 

Once again, the Baiting Technique described earlier to switch from side to side in your dribbling works wonders.

Tip 3: be on the lookout for the technical playstyle and especially the playstyle +. 

Players with this playstyle are even faster and can turn sharper in the Controlled Sprint. They can do things that other players can’t. You thought that Controlled Sprint was already overpowered. Just see what you can do with players, like Messi and Musiala. 

Let me have one final remark. This looks super strong. I know some of you will also point out the bad defending of the opponents and that’s fair. But let’s see how you will do against Controlled Sprint when you see it for the first time. The thing is, this is completely new and so we all have to learn how to defend this properly. This makes it as strong right at the start of the season. 

Effort Dribble Touch

Now, we come to the second very impactful Dribbling Technique, which is new the Effort Dribble Touch.

To put it simply, this is a new way to flick the ball and change direction. The input is fairly simple. When you want to do an Effort Dribble Touch, you press the R1 or RB button and flick the right stick in the direction you want to flick the ball. You can do it in every direction, also out of a sprint. But obviously, this will influence how easy it is for your player to retrieve the ball right after.

For example, you will see that an Effort Dribble Touch with a huge direction change out of a sprint will end up in a heavier touch and harder for the player to get to the ball.

There is one key information about the Effort Dribble Touch. This feature is designed to be the fastest way that your player gets a contact to the ball. So, in theory, it’s the best way to get a contact to the ball before the opponent, for example, to get the ball away before he can tackle it.

But I think it’s quite hard to hit the perfect timing and require some practice and fast reactions.

Tip 4: you can use the Effort Dribble Touch to get a quick contact to the ball and suddenly change direction.

This can be a very interesting inside the box where One Direction change can be enough to get you in a scoring position. From our experience, it’s best to go for rather small direction changes than big ones because the subtle direction changes are less likely to end up in a heavy touch so you can get to the ball faster.

But you have to understand: it’s always a gamble when it comes to direction changes. Is it surprising enough? Do you get a proper and clean execution? I think it will require some practice to get a really good feeling for the right spots to try it, without having the feeling too often that you just thrown away a promising chance. 

But practice makes perfect and I think you can benefit from experience and confident execution of this move to pull it off successfully.

It’s time for the pro tip that we mentioned at the beginning of the guide. The Effort Dribble Touch can be combined with a Controlled Sprint. Burst into the box with Controlled Sprint. Do a slight direction change with Controlled Sprint to bait the opponent and then bang. Use the Effort Dribble Touch to quickly change direction once again.

There are a lot of different and deadly ways you can use this to the advantage.

Controlled First Touch

You can also use the Effort Dribble Touch to control the ball. Then, it’s called a Controlled First Touch.

The input is the same as the Effort Dribble Touch. But now we are talking about situations when your player is about to receive the ball.

Based on speed and the direction where the ball is coming from and in which direction you flick the right stick, your player will control the ball in that direction with a certain animation, which can be really cool and effective. This works best when your opponent is really pushing for the ball, so he tries to get very close in the moment when you’re about to receive the ball. Because this opens up the possibility of punishing him for his eagerness to get to the ball.

Tip 5: some of the best situations for the Controlled First Touch come up when you play a pass to your Winger or Striker with the opponent’s Defender right in your back. When you see that they have the Defender selected and move out, this can be a good spot for the Controlled First Touch.

Identify from which side they are coming and flick you stick into the open space and you burst into the open space and leave the opponent in the dust.

Quite similar to the Effort Dribble Touch, the Controlled First Touch comes down to experience but also a little bit of luck that you get a proper animation. All the opponent behaves as anticipated. If not, this move can fail miserably as well.

This is a typical example for a move that you can pull off one or two times per game, but then it will lose its effectiveness since the opponent will adapt and defend more patiently. 

I’ll be telling you about 7 things you should really know before you even play a minute of EA Sports FC 24.

1. You No Longer Have To Play Training Every Week!

The first thing I think you should really know is about youth development and how player training has changed for this game.

Last year, the biggest change was that you didn’t have to play training every week if you wanted your players to develop and this year. The biggest change is that you can now invest FC 24 Coins in coaches. The better the coaches, the faster your players will improve.

Of course, most people never used to train every single week. But this change is going to make things a lot more realistic and honestly give you another little FUT 24 Coins sink. So, you’re not gonna get these massive budgets in Career Mode anymore.

You can also switch between sharpness and fitness for every single player, which means that your reserves and substitutes won’t be useless for three games every single time you want to bring them back into the starting 11.

Training plans can be assigned either individually, so that’s per player or you can do it to groups of players, which includes the starting elevens substitutes and reserves, which makes this a way better solution to player development. And it’s a really good way of keeping players sharp even when you aren’t using them.

I haven’t actually played enough seasons in the beta to tell you if player development is overpowered this year. But usually, with changes like this, that will be quite overpowered for at least the first 2 games.

2. Try To Avoid Improving Too Fast

So, this also helps with a second thing you should know, which is to try and avoid improving too fast at the start of your career mode saves.

A career mode can be up to 15 Seasons long and there’s no point signing that for 75 rated Mexican free agent while you’re still in League 2, just to go unbeaten and have the Mexican guy score 55 goals. You should really take your time and try and enjoy the process of rising up the leagues, slowly strengthening your squads, and maybe adding challenges if you think the game is too easy or going down in difficulty if it’s getting too hard.

While you’re at it, I’d also recommend that you limit the amount of free agents you’re signing as well. Both of these things can really help you avoid improving too fast. And that will make the game a lot more challenging, a lot more fun, and you’ll be able to spend more seasons enjoying the team that you’ve built.

3. AI Can’t Build

While you’re talking about building a team, the AI still is really bad at doing this. I’ve played the beta quite a bit and so have a lot of people on our Discord. And we’ll all agree that the AI is still making the same mistakes when it comes to signing players.

You’ll see squads where they either have absolutely no one in a certain position or they’ll go out and sign 10 left backs. You can kind of fix this if you have a second controller or a keyboard if you’re playing on PC. You can switch the keyboard to be on the AI side. You can fix their team before the start of the match and then you can have a bit more fun playing against a functional squad.

Tactical Styles are a new thing on EA Sports FC and they kind of help with this because the AI is actually able to sign players that fit into their chosen tactics. I’ve seen some bizarre things on Career Mode over the years. I’ve seen a team with Giroud running in behind Ben Yedder as the target man.

Hopefully, the changes to Tactical Styles and Scouting will actually help the AI to be a bit more of a threat long term and give you a bit more of a challenging and dynamic opponent.

4. Set Objectives

So while we talk about tactical plans, you should also know that everyone enjoys Career Mode in their own way. So, before you actually open EA Sports FC 24 or even if you before you buy it, have a think about what you’d like to do during your first save.

Set yourself some goals and objectives, so you always have a target in mind. Otherwise, your save can get old pretty fast. Some of my favorite cremos over the past couple of years have been based around doing certain objectives. I have always given myself a specific challenge to try and beat. This can make the game fun even into Season 8 or Season 9.

So, if you’re using these and also using the new Tactical Styles to create a Tactical, you can easily use Moneyball thanks to the new scouting filters as well. If you combine the Tactical Styles with giving yourself certain objectives, either playing in a certain league, a certain team, or a certain style, then I think you’ve got that instant start of a really good and fun Career Mode.

5. There Isn’t A Huge Amount Of Randomness In Career Mode

You should also know that there isn’t actually a huge amount of randomness in Career Mode. Of course, they have added some new features, such as player interactions. So, most of the time, you will be managing a stable club.

Storylines are a great way of adding a bit of unpredictability to the game and there are tons of them out there. You can look at Instagram, Twitter and Reddit. If you just search in FIFA storylines, you’ll get a ton of different mini challenges that you can do.

There can be things like dropping a certain player or signing someone making someone captain, or maybe not playing someone for a certain amount of games for a certain reason. These mini scenarios really can add a bit of randomness and predictability into your save, which I think is actually a really cool idea.

6. Winning Isn’t Everything!

You should also know that winning isn’t everything. Career Mode can be more fun when you’re fighting for points rather than crushing every opponent’s six nil.

I always recommend you go into competitive leagues where you’ll have multiple teams fighting for titles or continental competitions, whereas leagues, like Scotland, have really only two horse races.

You can still have lots of fun in these leagues if you’re playing someone like Hearts, Hibs or Dundee, but if you can accept not winning the title for the first couple of years. You will have sort of an end boss there with Rangers and Celtic.

There’s a lot of very interesting leagues out there, which unfortunately aren’t the most competitive. Of course, you have friends, which is fun if you’re playing as anyone other than PSG. You also have Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

I’m sure some people would even say that England is now in a situation with Manchester City where there’s just one team that isn’t fun to play, while any of the other teams are actually a lot more fun. This is just because you won’t be winning every single match.

I’ve had loads of fun saves with teams where I’ve tried to qualify for Europe with bad teams. Even a 7th placed finish can be fun if you pick the right team and the right challenge. I’d recommend doing something like turning the difficulty one level up, picking Luton, and seeing if you can actually manage to survive.

While some of the games at the start might be a bit of a blowout, you might be losing six or seven nil. If you do it throughout an entire season, the games where you do manage to fluke a one-nil win. They will mean a lot to you and it’ll just be a really satisfying career.

7. Try Create A Club

The last tip we have is that create a lub is probably one of the most underrated ways of giving career mode a breath of fresh air.

For sure, check out some real teams in your first few saves on the game. But the real fun comes from creating abandoned, forgotten, or now different teams that will never be on FIFA again.

Over the past couple of years, I recommended a team for every single league, using the FIFA 22 and FIFA 23 Create A Club system. While there are a few changes now, I think some of the kits now have sponsors and there’s maybe a few more stadiums first pick.

Once you start getting bored with career mode on EA Sports FC 24, I really do recommend you give Create A Club a go!