FC27 Powercurve + Are Female Players OP!? | FUT in Review #745

[00:00:00] 1.5 million views, one clip and the whole FC community at each other's throats. Are Women's Cards and Ultimate Team overpowered or are we just arguing with a ratings spreadsheet? Tonight we look at the real science and what the game engine actually does with it.

[00:00:27] Hi folks and welcome to FUT in Review episode 745. It's Friday, it's just after 6pm, we have the new Destined to Glory Team 2 in PAX. But is the bigger story Powercurve? Is EA slowing things down? Let's see whatever that, let's see if it holds up. But who better to have on the show than the maestro himself, the legend, the man, the myth. As I said, a legend is my good friend John. How you doing my friend?

[00:00:57] Well thanks for that introduction my friend. Who else to have on the show? I know about a dozen other people you could have on the show. But thank you for having me on this beautiful Friday. No problem mate. The winter is starting to draw in, it's getting dark outside isn't it? Stop it, please stop. I was giving football practice today with my shades on. Wow. And then the last practice started and I actually had to put them off because it's already getting dark.

[00:01:28] Exactly mate. I hate this time of year. Mate, the only thing is, this is European football season isn't it? This is under the lights at the Dirkkaip, you know what I mean? It's true. I mean October and November are the busiest for all football clubs I guess, right? No, it's, you know, I know it's international breaking. How are the Netherlands doing very quickly? Reasonable. First match against Germany, I think we should have won. Xavi's debut of course as a manager.

[00:01:56] So the first match, not much interesting choices. But definitely a fun team to watch. Second match, very good. I think hard team Serbia is a good, like not a very good team, but they are very much defensive. So it's always a hard match, especially at home. Won. And yesterday they started absolutely horrific versus Greek. Of course, shout out to my Greek friends, but 2-0 halftime and they equalized in this.

[00:02:25] The first half, Greek was so much better. The second half, Netherlands was so much better. So I think a draw was deserved. Honestly, it was the worst first half I've ever seen in international football. So yeah, it was pretty horrific. But I mean, in the end, it's just Nation League. Do you, Chris, the three weeks of no club football, it's absolutely destroying my soul. It's weird, mate, because I asked my brother, I says, right, okay, where are we playing this weekend? And he's like, no, nowhere.

[00:02:54] It's Scotland again. It feels super long, John. It does feel super long and Scotland's not playing particularly great either. The new managers come in and I don't think anything's changed greatly at the moment. But who knows? On the up and up. But you know what has changed, John? It is Destiny for Glory Team 2. So let's get into it. You know what I mean? And I have to say some strong cards in there. But at this stage of the game, are they too expensive?

[00:03:24] That's a thing we're going to talk about as well. Do you think in Haaland for 7.9 million is too expensive? If you've got 7.9 million at this stage of the game, then fair play, you deserve that Haaland card. But what I was looking at, John, was more like myself, who's maybe got 100,000 coins if he's really, really lucky.

[00:03:45] And I think I could stretch to maybe two players, two centre-backs, one from the Portuguese league in Key War, and Creswell as well, who looks like it's Ligue 1. I mean, I know they've, sorry, and Mazza as well, I take it back, Mazza as well, Algerian player, plays in the Bundesliga. I know what they've done is they've shrunk the teams, which is great, no problem at all. Yeah, appreciate that.

[00:04:14] But have they made it even harder now for people to get promo cards? Probably, yeah. I think it's harder to get a promo card. I've not seen one this week, actually, to be fair, at all. Like, you can buy some, of course, some more discount price, but on the other hand, there aren't, I know what we're talking about, power curve, but these cards aren't that much better. Yeah. At least most of them aren't.

[00:04:45] And I don't think this is the time where you spend a million on, even if you had it, you spend a million on players. So, it is, it's even, I think, I saw people complaining, right, about promos. But then again, we were always, oh, it's not free to play. It is free, you have to pay to win, and you have to put in money, and the promo card's too strong. Well, I don't think, how many cards do we have? About 15? 15, I think.

[00:05:15] It doesn't quite feel as it's very much pay to win, because even if you pack Haaland, this Haaland's good, but is it that much better than a gold card? I don't know. And are people spending points on opening these packs to hope for one of these cards? I sincerely doubt it as well. So, I don't mind having them in the game, but, like, having them in packs, but I won't, it doesn't entice me to buy any packs either. No, I mean, it would be nice.

[00:05:45] I mean, let's be honest, I think we all fell in love with Cuccarello over the summer, the way he played for Spain. Well, I said that, and you guys were just complaining about his hair, to be completely fair. Yeah, but then you realise the story of his hair, and you actually realise that he's actually, you know, a super, super genuine, nice guy. Definitely. And it's hard not to fall in love with a play like him. But the reason I was asking about the price of the coins, John, is everyone knows you're a massive Juve fan. You've got Weston McKennie there at 85, central midfielder.

[00:06:13] Almost 200,000 coins at this stage of the game for an 85 rated CM. As we get, let's move on to that as well as on to the discussion about the power curve. If you spent 200,000 for this card, he's 85 CM. I'll let you talk about it as well. But will he get easily obsolete as the power curve moves on as we expect? Or is the power curve going to be dampened down and he's going to be in your team for a while? I think the biggest issue is that we'd have no idea how this power curve will evolve, right?

[00:06:44] And if we don't know a trend, if you can't predict the trend, don't write the trend, I'd say. Right, okay. So I would never spend them on these cards. That won't be my completely fair answer. The Pac-Man is pretty nice. On the other hand, if you look at this card, it's a decent card, right? Don't get me wrong. But do we care too much about...

[00:07:10] If I wasn't a Juve fan, do we care too much about the Serie A player that's from the US? Where are you going to fit him in most teams anyways? Right, so... I think it's cool. I think it's a cool card. The design, absolutely. I didn't get a chance to talk about it last week, but I absolutely love the design and at least it's not blue. So that's pretty good. And the golden letters on the green card. It's really solid.

[00:07:41] You pack him. I think it's cool. It's probably worth 200,000 to be fair. Right? But if I look and compare it to Frankie de Jong, I think Frankie de Jong is quite a little bit better and he's 100 to 10 or something. So it will probably dive a little bit. The thing is with promotions this early, Chris, I think it's much more efficient for team management to look at getting as much packs as you can from rewards, etc. To see if you can actually get...

[00:08:09] I mean, most teams aren't top tier anyhow yet, right? No, you're right. So, sure, in 85, this stage of the game, this card will definitely add some value. But I honestly would go for a better defender. Right? So, conclusion, nice cards. Don't care too much. If you pack them, that's really cool for you.

[00:08:36] Wouldn't spend to getting them and I would not buy any of these cards even if I had the coins. Okay. Sorry, that goes to hype. But I think... At this stage of the game, Chris, I think promotions are... You look at what SBCs are there, what events are there, which objective players can I unlock. And in the meanwhile, if you do pack one, that's really cool. But I would not go out of my way to get any because you don't know what the value will be. You don't know what the curve will be.

[00:09:07] And by the side, you're better off buying female players anyways. No. I just wanted to... It's just... EA have now implemented this new SBC system where you can put players into an SBC. So, look at the Rafinha Player of the Month. It is costing you, it looks like, gem-wise, 1.3 million gems. Yes. Please explain it for people that are new to the system.

[00:09:36] Well, I'm going to just say, what you do is every player has a gem rating. And so, as I say, Rafinha is 1.3 million. What does that mean in reality? So... No clue. I'm going to tell you, it is... The fastest way to do it is 2 times 90 players, 7 times 89, and 144 88 rated players. Yes.

[00:10:03] So, that would come up to a value of 1.2 and a half million coins if you would buy players. Yes. Which, honestly, I think it's not even a bad price. It comes too soon, but it is a really cool card, right? But what I was going to say is, John, you could also do 5.89s if you really want to, but you would then need 593 85 rated cards.

[00:10:29] And I'm sorry for laughing, because it is a great card and it would be amazing to have, but he is going to be as rare as unicorn droppings, I think. Yes, and I think it's a good thing, basically, as well. So, man of the match, player of the month, as we should say, is something that they have to push, right?

[00:10:55] If there's a player of the month, like they have in a Premier League, I think it was Gross, who's a player of the month, who has an 84 rated card. They can make it so everyone would do it. I think Gross is 18,750 gems. Yes. So, about 18,000 coins as well, which is basically just to him, right? Just get him in your team. Make sure you get him.

[00:11:23] Then you have players in La Liga who picked Rafinha, and Rafinha is already a very good card. You don't want everyone at this stage of the game to be able to get this card anyways. And I think then you price him very high, which is nice. The good thing about this system, though, is that it will allow dupes to be selected, right? So, I can see this happening.

[00:11:47] When a Hullet SBC hits in February, you just toss in all your 18,900 duplicate players, which you have in your SBC storage. So, it does sort of make sense. There was one thing I think people are forgetting, though, Chris. I've not heard anyone saying that yet. What's that mean? You don't get any packs back with this system. No. You don't. The squad system has disappeared, doesn't it? Yeah, which is cool because I like this system way more because you can just build towards it. You can see where you're at.

[00:12:17] And you cannot, like, you can use your dupes and you can see how much you spend before putting it in, right? Which the squad system sort of sucks because you had to do it squat for squat for squat. And then you're like, oh, shit, I'm 189 squat rated too low. Now you can see that it's a vault, which is good. But you usually get a little bit of packs back. And now you don't get the packs back. Yeah.

[00:12:43] I mean, I'm looking at the Alicia Carder game, player of the month, 700,000 gems. There is, I'm looking at X just now. There's a couple of big streamers there that have got them. So, you know, if you really want to go and check these guys out. Because unfortunately, I don't think John and I will be doing a review on him anytime soon for 700,000 gems. I don't think I've even got 700 gems at the moment, John, in my club.

[00:13:07] I think, to be fair as well, John, I think what we've done is we've come from an 89 rated Nirvana, haven't we? Yeah. Just a few months ago, even a month ago, we were all playing with 89 rated cards. And I think to move now to this, it's difficult to get your head around a little bit. And I think that's where I'm probably struggling a little bit. I don't know if you are or you've managed to wipe that memory clean. Well, I don't play at the end of the year, right? So pretty much, that's fine for me.

[00:13:35] I am very strict in looking at what my SPCs where I put everything in, though. Right. So if I'm in doubt, I'm just not going to do it. I think gross is definitely worth doing it. Yep. But I'm also not doing all the 79 plus rated players, et cetera, big upgrades. I'm just going to keep it a little bit. My cards literally into my club are a little bit more just to see how things evolve.

[00:14:02] So, John, I think what we can say is great if we pack a Destiny team too. It would be absolutely awesome. Don't get me wrong, eh? Put the highlight in my club. I won't mind. A hundred percent, John. I think everyone would do that. The Alisi and the Rafinha I think we're unlikely to see. But from your point of view, the gross one is probably a must-do. I think it's just the low rating. And as I say, it's just me getting my mindset out of that 899 rated team there. So, but what would...

[00:14:31] Here's my guideline, guys. If a card who was around 80 face stats, then I think it's a really solid card at this stage of the game. This card has almost like 76, 79, 88, 83, 77, 79. With a chemistry card, it's basically 80 already on all. And then if you look at the card and it's 18,000 gems, I think it's something everyone could do.

[00:15:01] So, yeah. No, definitely. I think you won't regret him at this stage of the game. It looks a solid card, though, to be fair. No, definitely. It looks a good card and I'm sure a lot of people are going to get them in there. Just again, people, thank you so much for listening. Hit us up on any of our socials, you know, and say, is the slower power curve good for FC 27? Yes, finally. No, it's boring. Or ask me after season one. Let us know.

[00:15:28] On the other hand, Chris, we're one week in, eh, officially? Yeah, we're one week in. Two weeks if you're free release. Let's see how people feel about it. So, we'll move on, John, is, yeah, we're a couple of weeks in, but is the prep starting now for Weekend League One? Who better to ask than the foot coach, the maestro himself? What is the best way to prep up for Week 1 in Weekend League?

[00:15:55] Well, probably if you start talking about game modes, that would be rivals, eh? I think rivals is as diehard as it gets right now, especially when you're getting higher up. We're not going to talk about glitches and cheats and stuff like that for, let's see how that evolves. But I think usually that's the way to stress test your team. You set up your formation in your own coolness. Yep.

[00:16:19] So, if you're focusing on playing champs soon, then I think this is the time to just grind out rivals. What I did is I built my team, at least for the next couple of weeks. I think that should be fine. Sure, I can get any improvement left or right, right? But I think it's solid enough. Put all the chemistry, the rule plus plus on it.

[00:16:43] The 7,500 coins evolutions, just to make a little bit more versatile if I need them. And I'm just playing rivals, basically. Play rivals, learn what I'm seeing. Play rivals. Someone scores a neat goal and what they did there. Just to make sure you get in the actual mindset of high performing and have something to do. Because, I mean, you can still relegate on most rivals now as well.

[00:17:12] So, it's not riskless as well. I think rivals is the way to do. I think set your formation and get your team ready is one way to do. Check out the evolution at 7.5k to make sure the rules get plus plus wherever you need them. And I would put my hat down and grind. I would also recommend trying to sort of simulate a weekend leak if you're really hardcore into it. I've talked to some pros this week where I'm like, okay, this weekend just play rivals. But, hey, you need to play 15 matches next week.

[00:17:42] Do it the other way around. Play five on a Friday. Play five on a Saturday. Play five on a Sunday. And do those as if they were champs. Just make sure the schedule is the same. I think that's the way to do it. And then, John, also the fact is that we've got the tokens back again. So, I'll just quickly read out. I'll pick out. I'll not do all 15 games. I'll not do all 15 levels. So, if you win one out of 15, you get 15 champions tokens.

[00:18:11] And that slowly steadily grows up until you get to five wins, which is 50. Six is 60. Eight is 90. There's all gaps in between here, of course. Ten wins. 135 tokens plus 35,000 coins. So, the coins start at seven wins. If you'd get that magical 15 out of 15, you get 450 champions tokens and a cool quarter million in coins. And there is various things that you can put them in as well.

[00:18:39] The highest rated, it looks like, is three times 88 for 200 tokens. And the lowest one starting is two times 77, which is only for five tokens. So, John, I don't play weekend league very much. Didn't play much last year. Would you recommend for me week one, if I've got enough rival points, the thousand championship points, sorry, having a go and not worrying about results? Yeah.

[00:19:09] Yeah. Yeah, I would. To be fair, it's five matches a day. Start Friday morning, if I'm not mistaken. You can probably schedule five matches a day if you want, right? Somewhere. Most of us can. I think if you don't care about results, you just put in three sittings, five games a day. You just sit down, go at it.

[00:19:36] If you don't tilt, which, I mean, can be difficult in week one, but try not to tilt. You'll get, like most people would. I think the average will be like six wins, right? Probably. Six, seven wins is the average of people playing, sort of. If you're above that, you've done well. If you're below that, there's still many weeks left. And if you hit the target, I mean, how many points were that? I don't even know. Seven. 60 tokens, John.

[00:20:03] So you could get yourself a team of the week player pick. Yeah. A couple of them. You get two of them if you want. 60, you'll get one times foot champions team of the week. Player three pick for 50 tokens. So yeah, five wins, you would get a decent reward. Yeah. So basically, if you win one in three games, you could. So it sounds reasonable enough. And I think if you start Friday, it's probably a little bit harder, right?

[00:20:32] But it will level out over the weekend. And I don't care too much about weekend league, to be fair, normally. But I intend to play the first couple because it's pretty good rewards, pretty decent rewards. And I'm also curious what the level is like. Can I just ask then, John? No, you can't ask anything anymore. In the podcast, we're just done. We are going to extract as much information as possible. Trust me on that.

[00:21:01] This weekend league is for our lovely listeners. You talked about squad prep. So are you, from your point of view, focusing on the meta? Or are you going with your own custom tactics? Yeah, this is where I plug in the bonus show, eh? So we did a bonus show on Tuesday, which is available for everyone on the Patreon tier two and three. So what we did there is we talked about, do you join the meta or do you beat the meta?

[00:21:31] I'm usually, unless it's utterly broken, I'm one of countering the meta. And the meta definitely is 4-2-1-3. I can just frankly put it out there. There's a little bit of deviations there, but let's say on a higher level, 90% of what you face, probably 4-2-1-3. Even on lower rivals currently, it is the way people play in 95 depth. Just try to swarm your books, right? So we talked about Tuesday. Tuesday, we talked about how you can counter that easily.

[00:22:01] We put out information as well, by the way. That was available for all patrons. This sounds like a Patreon advertisement, but it's actually not. But just to show my thinking, I think if you run that formation, if you look at what people are doing, so people are pressing high, which means if you can cross their first line of attack towards you, you have plenty, plenty of space, right? And that can be very simple by using your goalkeeper, for example. I use Alisson. Alisson Becker, because he has great passing.

[00:22:31] So I just give Alisson the ball, wait till they come to swarm him, lob the ball over, their line charging in, and then the formation does the rest, because suddenly you have lots of space to go into. Fairly decent play, but many, many people just keep falling for it, because they tend to play the meta. So I go against the meta. I don't think there's anything wrong with joining the meta, because it does make life a little bit easier, right? Don't get me wrong, not judging anyone of doing that.

[00:22:59] I just said Tuesday as well, meta is most effective tactic available, and I don't think that the meta isn't most effective. I think it's the most played, because people are used to it, and it's fairly easy to play. I don't think it's the most effective thing, the 95 Vap4213. I think it's very much beatable, and I think I've been showing that. And John, just for people who are new listeners,

[00:23:28] and we do have a lot of them, thank you so much for them, and also our old listeners as well, so let's keep this going. Yeah, I want to thank our seven listeners from Malaysia, by the way. Thank you for that. Big shout out to those guys as well. One thing we always talk about on this show is mindset and routine, John. So is it things like taking a break after a couple of losses, don't try to cram? What kind of maybe three or four tips could you give people very quickly on mindset or routine? Okay.

[00:23:59] I think I will actually do a podcast about this with a performance coach. Another performance, I've been asking him, he will be coming on, not a performance coach that does like FIFA players or e-sporters, but he does like NASA astronauts, Formula One drivers, like high performance athletes. And he's been saying a couple of times,

[00:24:26] it's about mentality, it's about repetition, of course, but it's also, there's more to it. It's also by cognitive ability, right? So you can train all of those things. But basically, if you make it real simple for everyone, if you now start playing a certain formation, you know how that formation works.

[00:24:54] I always have a backward plan for that formation when things go south. If you start to keep practicing that, then I think that's second nature. You don't have to think about it. So thereby, it becomes routine. Quick example, the formation I've been giving out on the Patreon page. It starts with two defensive fullbacks. Why? Because people tend to play a lot of through balls and go over the wing. But if you put that to balance, once you're two goals behind, for example,

[00:25:22] or you need like apply a little bit of pressure, all you do is start setting, switch to the fullbacks, put them on balance, go again. If you keep doing that four times, you don't have to think about it. You know, oh, two goals behind. This is what I changed. Next one, go for it. And so then you build routine. So I would say, make a plan, stick to that for the next week, and make a backup plan, or just copy the tactics we put on the Patreon, of course. A hundred percent. That's one. The second thing is,

[00:25:51] make sure that whatever goes wrong, you focus on the next thing, which is more to do with mentality or mindset. But it's very much trainable, as they speak about with the Formula One drivers. If they go into a Shikang with 250 miles an hour, 200 miles an hour, right? It's left and right. If they steer in a little bit too far to the left the first time, and they try to overcompensate, they will go out, right? You always hit the next turn.

[00:26:21] You go in, oh, you're too late, and it doesn't matter. Focus on the next one and correct yourself. Don't think about what went wrong. Think of the next thing you're going to do right. Or better, at least, right? Same goes for foot. You miss pass a ball, right? Or you miss a sitter. You can slam your controller on the desk missing that sitter, but that will also mean you take that stress with you into the next thing you do. You miss a sitter, that absolutely sucks, Chris. But you can't change that anymore.

[00:26:50] The next thing you got to do is make sure you take off the ball from the opponent and try again. And focus on the next pass, focus on the next shot. So there's time for evaluation afterwards, but not during. During a match, you only focus on what's coming next, right? Third tip would be this FIFA is pretty easy to score. I wouldn't focus. Like, if you're 2-3-0 behind, still very much able to win a match in this one if you change things around.

[00:27:20] So if you combine that with having a backup plan for start from option one, combine that with only focusing on the next thing, you're very much able to come back from a trio behind, for example. And if your opponent doesn't do these tricks, once you score that second goal, he or she will probably start tilting and being stressed. And you are able to come over. I've had it so often in rivals already that my opponent scores a 2-0.

[00:27:50] He starts pausing for me. I go back to my backup plan. I scored 2-1. I scored 2-2. He's getting stressed. Scored 2-3. And he probably quits himself. So focus on the next thing. And don't look too much at the score sheet, I'd say. Because crazy things, even if you're 3-0 in front, right? If you make one mistake, don't think about that one mistake. Think about getting the next pass right again. And think afterwards, what can we do better? Yeah.

[00:28:19] No, definitely. That's a crucial one. And the next thing is just about routine. If you set yourself a schedule that you play five matches a day, play five matches a day. Even if you're 5-0 on day one, don't go into the sixth match. Because if you lose that sixth match, you'll start getting frustrated. But you do want to get back into a good feeling and you start the seventh match. But you start the seventh match with being a little bit frustrated. Probably not very good for your optimization either.

[00:28:49] Therefore, you start your eighth match and suddenly you're going to bet with 5-3 on day one instead of 5-0, for example. Yeah. I understand that. Set your target. Go for that target. And there's a lot. I mean, there's so much we can teach. But that would be my four top tips. One, set a formation and make sure you've got a backup plan. Right? Practice that. Make sure you get focus on the next best thing whenever things go wrong. Don't sit down. Focus on the next best thing.

[00:29:20] I don't even know what I was talking about anymore. But make it a routine. Right? Make sure the routine is there. And I don't know the fourth. I probably covered the fourth somewhere. That should be fine. I didn't make any notes saying you actually caught me by surprise asking this. No, no. I think it's good to join. We've done this show for many, many years. And those principles don't change, do they? And it's interesting what you say about a Formula 1 driver

[00:29:49] because the Formula 1 is on this weekend. And those guys don't have the time to think about the last corner where they've made a mistake because otherwise they'll end up in a wall or end up in the gravel, won't they? Focus on the next one, please. Exactly. And it's quite a good thing to do that way. So no, absolutely perfect, John. And what we're going to do, John, just for a little bit of fun is we're going to ask you what is your target for Weekend League 1? Do you have one in terms of wins or are you just going to play for enjoyment?

[00:30:20] I'm not going to play for enjoyment. I'd be lying if I say so. Because I'm going to be completely honest, I hardly play foot for enjoyment. I enjoy playing foot, but I enjoy playing it competitive. Yes. We've made a time talked about gifting wins, haven't we? I don't do that. I only play when I know I'm focused and I will be in the zone. And I can, like this week, I didn't get my rivals winning yet because I was extremely busy.

[00:30:49] I sat down on a Wednesday night. I know I got to win. I don't know. I get 30 points in, right? I don't even know how many wins. So 10 wins, but you get some bonus points or something. And I won all my matches in a row to get up and get those 30 points. But I did that as if I were playing Weekend League. So I played three matches, took a little bit of a drink, took a little bit of a walk, went back, sit down, win three matches, go back. I think I actually used like eight matches and get bonus points. But don't correct me if I'm wrong.

[00:31:19] And it's not boasting that I can like win eight matches or nine matches in a row. But I think I would only play them. I could have played many, many, many more matches throughout the week. But if I would start tired, I would start focused and then I'm not playing it competitive as I want to. Therefore, I'm not enjoying it. Therefore, I'll probably not get the results. Therefore, I'll probably get tilted. I get frustrated by the game. So it's better to put it in there, like start it when I'm on my,

[00:31:49] in my A form, I think. And that's how I like to play this game. So I, Wicked League will be, I play five a day. I'll play them all optimized. I'll go a little bit further. Like I will analyze afterwards what I think I can change for tomorrow as if it was a tournament. So if I face suddenly, all four, four, one, ones, and I'm like, hmm, maybe my plan of thinking I saw all four, two, one, threes. It's actually coming out here. I might change something for a Saturday,

[00:32:18] but that would be it. Like I would play, hopefully get the best results for it. I would make sure I have everything there to get me the best results, get a drink, set all the rules we just spoke about and repeat that three days in a row. And then we'll see where we get. I mean, I'm 41 years old, Chris, currently, right? There's no way I'm getting those 15 wins, which I used like five years ago. That's not going, that's not going to happen. And that there's not, I mean, I haven't won last year,

[00:32:48] but I think it was more of a lucky break. Usually I'm like 12, 11, I mean, something like that. And it's, I mean, still for my age, I think it's pretty decent. That's really good, John. That's really good. I think you're, you know, you've been hard on yourself. No, but I used to be able to, I mean, we played Wicked League where we played 40 games. I went 40, you know, like four times. But those days are definitely, definitely fastest, thankfully. So I mean, that's, that's, that's done.

[00:33:18] And I mean, 15 games is a little bit different. You can hardly lose anything, but we'll see. I'm just going to make sure I'll get the optimum result at that stage for me. No, definitely not. Excellent, John. Thank you so much for that really interest in there, but very quickly, we'll move on now. Before we get into the biggest debate of the week, a quick shout out to our official season nine sponsor, NordVPN. With our first week in league a week away, every millisecond counts.

[00:33:46] NordVPN helps protect your connection and keeps your ping steady when it matters. Foot in Review listeners get a massive 75% discount, plus four extra three months on a two-year plan. So check us out at foot and review.com forward slash VPN. And please use promo code, promo code foot and review. The link will be in the description. And I have to say is exceptionally easy to use. I've managed to use it myself.

[00:34:12] I've got my extra four months and NordVPN has been absolutely great for me as well. Yeah. We wouldn't be recommending it if it wasn't something we were using. We're both a big fan of. And like you said, you even managed to get the code in. I did. I messaged you, John, and said, John, is this the right code? You went, yes. And I managed to get it sorted. So if people know about my trials and tribulations, if you listen to the show in terms of internet, so it is well known, but NordVPN,

[00:34:41] big massive thumbs up from us there. Definitely. We spent months getting your headset to be on the right ear. So, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, John, the furore around female players, reality versus virtuality. What did that miss, Chris? What did that miss? Oh, this one has blown up on people's timelines. So on the 29th of October, a clip from content creator, Nick, run the foot market went viral with over 1.5 million views,

[00:35:10] questioning why women players are an ultimate team at all. Let's look at what was said, what the real world science says, and what the game actually does. But most of all, we will keep it very respectful. So the quote that we've got is, I don't know who in the community is asking for women players to come into the game and be better than Messi, Ronaldo or Mbappe. So some people took that suggestion to be that there should be a, that he was suggesting that there's a women's ultimate team,

[00:35:40] you know, a dedicated mode as there was in older FIFA games, you know, but I think we need to be sort of look at it from a science point of view as well. You know what I mean? So if you were to look at it, the man's, the male, 100 meter world record is 9.58 seconds by Usain Bolt. The female one is 10.49 by Griffith Joyner way back in 1988. So there's a difference in gap there between 9 and 10%. And, you know,

[00:36:11] but strangely, John, when you get to distance running matches, female and male players run exactly the same distance. But male players can kick the ball almost 15 to 25% harder than the female players, John. So from your point of view, should we as gamers be looking at reality or should we just accept that this is a game and it's all the better for us all if female players are matching with male players?

[00:36:42] It's a nice topic to throw there on my lap, mate. Just going back on why this started the discussion, I think that's a very important topic. Most forwards or most players which are very good at this game are because they are, are good because they are very nimble. They're good with passing, but also 80 strength on a female player is just as much as an 80 strength on a center defender, which is male.

[00:37:10] So you have in this situation, female small players, bullying big male players from the ball, which on its own isn't necessarily an issue. But back in the day when we use very nimble players, like for example, Dries Mertens, which everyone used, right? What happened then is he's fast, he's nimble. But if you just have a big defender next to him, you just bully him off the ball.

[00:37:39] But because of the introduction of, I forget how you call it, this fumbling dribble thingy, where if they have high dribbling, they still sort of keep the ball with them. Yes. The combination with them being small, the combination with them still having good strength, and the combination with the ball still being at the speed of the dribbling, make small players with high dribbling stats, and maybe even higher strength, very good in this game. Even more so than they were last year. Remember Alpina this year, last year?

[00:38:09] It's even better this year, right? Again, not necessarily an issue, except this was where the discussion came in. People were saying, well, why would we use male players if they're all the same strength? If they, and that's the problem, you shouldn't, if I'm quite honest, because they are actually not as good as their female counterparts, because they're from much nimbler, they're much stronger, and much easier to just move around.

[00:38:39] Right? The way Nick phrased it was a poor phrasing, and I think he was very well aware of what he was saying, and the way he phrased his video to make sure they got clicked going. Right? I don't think female players in this game is the problem. What they just should have done, and I think this is still a golden solution, is take body size into account for scaling certain stats. Yes. If you're six foot tall, and you have 80 strengths,

[00:39:08] let's say that's 100%. If you're five foot five, and you're 80 strength, that means, for example, that would count as 75%, whatever. Then, if you have a female that's five foot, but still has 80 strength, that would count as 60 strength. She has no chance to get a big defender, but she can still be nimble, walk around, et cetera. That would probably just fix it. Currently, it's all 80, and currently, it doesn't matter. Right? I think that's where sort of the main issue is.

[00:39:37] My biggest bugbearer I have with this whole discussion is because it was aimed at female, and I'm not like a feminist, but I think everyone deserves equal chances, but there were so many reactions to that video saying, yeah, you're right, should be a separate ultimate team. It's not, that's the female players in the game aren't the issue. It's that scalability, which can be tuned, which could solve a problem, again, which isn't necessarily, if you have,

[00:40:04] if you still have a five foot five male player, but 80 strength, it would be exactly the same. The thing is, we don't have that many. No. So the female aren't actually the problem. The other thing is, which really bugged me out, is that people were going, well, they shouldn't be in the game anyways. Now, you know, all the macho thing that came in the comments. I was like, yeah, why the three years in now? Why would we get the discussion? Why does the discussion even exist? But also, lots of people saying, well,

[00:40:32] the fact that female scoring against me is disconnecting me from real football, and we've got all of post. I was actually thinking, maybe I should just say, just mention them all on the show, but we're not going to go there. I think that's not very nice to do. I had a discussion on the, one of the discords, which a person says, well, female players in the, in the game, disconnect me from real life football. I'm like, okay, but using a Maradona card, like, who doesn't actually live anymore,

[00:41:01] is not disconnecting you from real life football. A beta check, which we played for years at striker, isn't disconnecting you from real life football. Where do we draw the limit? So I think there's two problems here. One, people using this as an example of why it's not very realistic. Again, it is a video game. It is getting less realistic with more manual added futures we bring in.

[00:41:31] I don't think it's an issue because it adds playability, but if you add AI on defense, AI, the defense will be more realistic. Yeah. Well, two years ago, we decided, or no we, but EA decided to say, okay, we have two different modes. One of them is foot, which will have the arcade style thing. And we have a realistic mode, right? I think the realistic mode doesn't allow to play male versus females. Because we've been to tournaments where, yeah,

[00:42:00] I'll take the Dutch national female team and play Argentina. And you can't even do that. Yeah. So there you can't even do that. Right. But the competitive foot is the arcade mode. So the whole realistic thing, we should just forget about. Yeah. No, you're very trying to. I do think just to, I think the way Nick phrases is absolutely poor. And now he says he didn't mean it that way. But he has one point.

[00:42:29] And that is female players with good strength and good dribbling are now currently the best cards in the game. And I do think that needs to get tuned. Again, tuned, not get rid of the whole category of players. All I was going to add, John, to your eloquent response here is. I'm trying to be eloquent here. No, no, it was very eloquent. It was a lot of language. So maybe the whole comment section will burn down after.

[00:42:58] No, but all I was going to say is, at the end of the last game, I had a 99 rated Yusuf Chimiti, who plays for Rangers, and a 99 rated Manny Fernandes card. Those cards, from my club, were better than, the Chimiti was better than the Ronaldo card. And the Fernandes card was better than Virgil van Dijk. Let me tell you something right now. If you're buying those two players,

[00:43:27] you certainly wouldn't take Chimiti over R9. And likewise, you wouldn't probably take Manny Fernandes over Virgil van Dijk. So we're happy when we're evil in players up to blur the lines between reality and fantasy. We can have Cruyff. We can have any Ajax player wear a finer shirt in this game. Exactly. So I think, I think to be fair, you know, we just have to realize it is a video game. You know,

[00:43:56] taking female players out of the game, or giving them a separate mode for me is a retrograde step. I don't even look at them anymore. I've got female players and male players. I just look at them as my players in my club. And I would say, I came up against a guy last, this week, who was great at crossing. And I have two female center backs. And his Isaac card absolutely dominated those two in the air, which you would expect.

[00:44:22] So as the game becomes tuned and the players become slightly better, I think we'll see more of a balance starting to appear. I think, as you say, it's just this early start of the game where, you know, male players are a little bit clunky and the female players are that little bit more nimble. Yeah. But also like if you compare, the thing is, if you compare two high rated strikers, for example, let's say you compare Pina to Messi, that would show that Messi is actually weaker than Pina,

[00:44:51] which of course in reality probably isn't true. But from a female perspective, Pina is a strong player. Yeah. And I think that's where we sort of went wrong. And that's not necessarily wrong, but the problem is the way some of the new functionalities work with stats, that means that where they're wrong. I do think if they just tune,

[00:45:16] I think add size or length or body type into the face stats, in certain face step, like in strength, we have lengthy on players, right? We have acceleration on players. We should just need to get a strength stat on players, make them a tank, make it, get female certain body type or body, like a, a, a, um, defending type or strength type.

[00:45:45] Then we're done because you can then tune it. They can have 90 strength. That's fine. But you know, a female with 90 strength five being, being five, five against a male being 95 of 90 strength with six foot, you know, that male will win. And then it's still fine because you still use the female players. They're still very nimble. They can still shoot. They can still dribble. They can be there. But yeah, if they run into Virgil van Dijk, they'll have an issue. Then again, they'll be faster than Virgil van Dijk because they will have a different acceleration type.

[00:46:13] I think it's just a matter of finding a bit of balance there. And it's not necessarily, it should actually say big strong guards get bullied by, uh, smaller strong guards. And that shouldn't be the case. I think that's the whole discussion we were, we should actually be having. And that is a matter of just tuning it to be fair. No, no, definitely. And I think, you know, we've tried to give our points of view across, um,

[00:46:43] Nick is big enough for that to, to, to, to, to answer these questions. To be fair. And I, I, I tell him if he would have come on the show, he knew how he would put, he said, his, this video title was, I think something like female players are ruining the game. Yeah. I mean, you know what you're doing there, right? Um, his point though, except some remarks, actually made during the video, most of the points is what I'm trying to say as well. I don't,

[00:47:11] don't even disagree with that, but that's a matter of tuning instead of being, uh, very unsensitive and just knowing what audience you're catering there. No, definitely. But look, John, that wraps up episode seven, four, five. That's a good wrap up my career as well. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. A big thank you to our boardroom elite patrons, Graham and Caden for keeping the studio running. You know, weekend league is just a little bit off. So good luck for the guys for that. Well,

[00:47:42] you know, for our patrons, remember, your exclusive Tuesday bonus episode drops. So make sure you check us out at patron.com forward slash foot and review. Hit us up in our socials, you know, let's keep this going. This is not a one night stand. This is a long term relationship. Let's keep the dialogue. Season nine. Let's keep the dialogue going. We answer all the comments that you give us. So even if you disagree with us, please be respectful about it, but give us that five star review. We really, really appreciate it.

[00:48:09] Tell us your comments about where you stand on the women players and the ultimate team. We'd love to hear them. We may disagree with them, but we'd love to say, please give us a five star review. Tell me, tell us I'm wrong, but do give a five star review while doing so. Which we would appreciate. But again, thank you. Thank you to everyone for listening. We'll see you on the pitch, but there is only one way to finish it. And that is to drop it. Drop it. Drop it.