How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

[Jwetson]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

Is this thread for fifa 15 aswell if so what page does it go from 14 to 15

There is no real page number, as some people r still posting their fifa 14 careers on here. No matter which version of fia ur playing, the career is always welcome and will be read

[Solarios]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

Schalke hire German Alexander Bayer as it's new manager!

[Solarios]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

Transfers In: Paul Pogba Juventus -> FC Schalke 04 $10,000,000 + Farfan
Carlos Vela Real Sociedad -> FC Schalke 04 $16,000,000 + Sidney Sam

Transfers Out: Felipe Santana FC Schalke 04 -> Hannover 96 $8,500,000

Friendly
Schalke 04 - Toulouse (2-0)
WIN

August

Friendly
Liverpool - Schalke 04 (2-0)
LOSS

Friendly
FC Schalke 04 - Cesena (5-0)
WIN

Bundesliga Match 1
Hannover 96 - Schalke 04 (1-3)
WIN

Bundesliga Match 2
Schalke 04 - FC Bayern (1-1)
DRAW

[JAGGER6223]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

Good News Chico I won't be doing that Career Mode that I was thinking of doing.

[luzuriaga8799]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

i was just wondering what slider sets you guys are using. I haven't been able to find a good slider set for last gen

[indiblue]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

Warning: long post ahead. It's something I wrote up in my free time as a creative project, hope you guys enjoy it. There are a few details in here that give away what's happened since my last post, which ended on deadline day of summer 2016.

Spoiler

The making of a manager
Charlie Francis, senior correspondent

In the lobby of the main building at West Bromwich Albion’s training ground in Walsall, there are framed photos of the men who’ve done justice to the shirt – FA Cup hero Jeff Astle, appearance and goal leader Tony Brown, current assistant manager and former goal machine Bob Taylor, defensive legend Ally Robertson, and Fred Everiss, the secretary-manager under whose supervision the club won its only top-flight league championship, the 1919-20 Division One title. Given the achievements of some of these men, it’s tough to conceive that current manager Indi Blue’s visage could one day be among those photos, but that is increasingly a popular mindset among the people who work for and support this football club.

It’s been just under 36 hours since West Brom travelled to the Parc des Princes, contesting their first Champions League match against one of Europe’s elite, Paris Saint-Germain. Indi set his team up to take advantage of any space behind the French side’s resolute defence, which has conceded just one goal in three Champions League matches this season, but the combined resolve of Thiago Silva and David Luiz proved to be too much. In PSG, West Brom came up against the first team this season to defeat them, the first to keep a clean sheet against them, and only the second after Newcastle to score more than one goal against them.

For 24 of those last 36 hours, while the squad that travelled to Paris caught up on rest during a day off, Indi has been locked in his office, reviewing hours and hours of footage to figure out why he could not find a way for his team to unlock PSG’s back line. I’m told by Doris, the charming young lady of 67 who oversees the reception area, that the manager has come out only twice since he went in – once to get fresh batteries for his projector remote and once to stock up on sandwiches. If you’d told someone as recently as 2013 that in a few years, the manager of West Brom would be pissed off and trying to find out why his team lost their first match of the season to PSG in the Champions League, you’d have been laughed out of the country.

Just three years ago, in the fall of 2013, Indi was an assistant coach at Championship side Brighton & Hove Albion, where he helped mount a concerted effort to gain promotion, only for the Seagulls to eventually be denied by Steve McClaren’s Derby County in the playoff semi-final. Indi was in charge of scouting, much in the same way that Andre Villas-Boas was for Jose Mourinho at Porto and during that first stint at Chelsea. With his critical breakdowns of opposition game plans, Brighton were able to nullify many other teams’ strengths and amplify their weaknesses. A togetherness in the squad, fostered in part by Indi’s fiery rhetoric, was crucial to them holding their form throughout the campaign.

While Brighton decided to give it another go in the 2014-15 season, they had to do so without some of their best playing and coaching staff. Leonardo Ulloa made a lucrative move to Leicester City, while Will Buckley joined former Brighton boss Gus Poyet at Sunderland. The club’s long-time head of nutrition Ryan Mark moved to his hometown side Cardiff City, while Indi himself was offered the top position at West Brom, a move the he has since said he “could not turn down no matter how hard I tried”. Today, he is on track to be crowned champion of England and, if he plays his cards right, one of Europe’s finest.

The squad start trickling in, beginning with perpetual early bird James Milner and ending with the French-speaking contingent of Stephane Sessegnon, Gueida Fofana and Bakary Sako. Xabi Alonso pops in at the very end, having stopped his car at the gate to sign autographs and pose for photos with admiring fans. He offers me the same courtesy, stopping to ask how my family is. Here’s a man who’s won the World Cup and two European Championships with the greatest Spain side of all time, and he remembers my little boy asking for an autograph after the opening win at Sunderland, in which Xabi played a crucial role.

It doesn’t take long to get a feel for just why this club is on the upward trajectory it’s currently enjoying, perched at the top of the table, two points ahead of Arsenal and three ahead of Chelsea. With a 2-0 away win over Manchester City under their belts and a crucial fixture against the Blues next on the calendar, West Brom are threatening to do what Atlético de Madrid managed in the 2013-14 season – beat two of the world’s wealthiest clubs to the title on a relative pittance of a transfer budget, but with a team with such strong chemistry that it’s almost palpable. The atmosphere is so upbeat and vibrant that you’d never guess this is a team that poured much of last season’s winnings into the club coffers so they wouldn’t need to sell any players, a team that made just one permanent signing in the summer – the £4.5 million transfer of Lukas Podolski, who has so far bagged eight goals in nine games, from Arsenal.

A good bit of the credit goes to a board of directors with good sense, a chairman who wants only the best, and players who operate at the very peak of their abilities every time they are called upon to do so, but all these people will tell you that most of it is down to Indi. He’s the lynchpin of the operation, the central pillar unto which everything is tied. Without his planning and tactics, there would have been no double over Liverpool last season. Without his shrewd analysis of the opposition, West Brom would never have made it to their first cup final since 1970 when they lost to Tottenham in 2015. Without his convincing words and ability to coax the best out of his players, there’d be no Xabi, Podolski, Milner or Winston Reid at The Hawthorns – crucial players, all of whom joined West Brom primarily because they believed in the manager and his vision.

No Indi means Nathan Redmond would still be an ordinary winger, rather than the diminutive monster in the hole the manager has turned him into, allowing him to drift about to pick up the ball, dribble and shoot at will to great effect. The Englishman is beginning to fulfil the potential of three prodigies. “It’s really different. I’ve had good managers at my previous clubs,” says the Birmingham native, who grew up a City fan, “but Indi is something else. We work on certain parts of my game together. He gives me the confidence to try things I might not do otherwise, and the knowledge to know when to be myself and when to be part of the team.”

After signing for West Brom in the winter of 2015, Redmond made an immediate impact in the latter half of the season, but a premature contract dispute almost halted his career with the club before it truly took off. He took the advice of his family and found new representatives, working hard enough to break into the first team. By the end of last season, he had racked up ten goals in all competitions. Joining up with the national side at this year’s Euros, Redmond scored four goals and registered three assists as England ran riot and conceded just one goal, during a semi-final loss to eventual winners France. Raheem Sterling was once touted as the future of English football, but Redmond has well and truly taken on that title for himself, and it is, as he says, all down to Indi’s guidance. “The man is a revelation.”

At this time, Indi decides to take Redmond’s words to heart and reveals himself, shaggy-haired and stubble-faced, visibly tired and hungry from the effort he’s just put into making sure the mistakes of the last match are not repeated when the Parisians come calling in the Midlands. “Just keep your distance,” he tells me when I offer my hand. “I reek horribly. Haven’t showered since we got back.” It’s the smell of “obsession and psychosis”, to use his own words. We make plans to meet in the canteen in 20 minutes, enough time for him to shave and shower. After a breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs, while his assistant coaches take the squad through their paces, I’m given a guided tour of the facilities, starting with the altitude room where players enhance their breathing, and ending with the sanctum sanctorum – the manager’s office.

“At Brighton, the only person who had an office was the manager. The rest of us, the scouts and coaches, we all gathered in the conference hall or canteen and discussed things,” Indi reveals. “Ideally, you want to have a level of privacy when you discuss football matters, so I’ve made sure that each department has its own office – my assistant and I have our own offices, the rest of the coaches have a slightly bigger one, and the scouts have their own room of a similar size. If we need to discuss something concrete, we either meet in my office or at the stadium conference room, if the board are involved. But the thing is, at this club, there’s a level of trust that’s developed where I would not hesitate to leave my work out in front of the canteen staff or the housekeeping staff. But then people from outside can sometimes gain access under false pretences; it’s happened before at other clubs.”

Indi’s private chambers are quite like the man himself – pristine, meticulously organised, yet unruly in places where it’s evident that work is ongoing. In one corner is an enormous whiteboard with tactical options for the Chelsea game; in another is a large LED screen, connected to his computer via high-definition cables. The screen shows PSG midfielder Blaise Matuidi tackling Marseille midfielder Gianelli Imbula during their 2-2 draw at the Parc des Princes, just three days before West Brom arrived for their match. It’s one of several matches on the computer, all organised by competition and season, as clear as the rest of the office. “Organisation is the key. You need to keep things in a way that you can easily control them,” Indi says. “Without control, you are at the mercy of other factors. You don’t dictate what happens; you need to react, and your reflexes won’t save you every time. If you act first, you can determine the outcome.”

The manager listens to himself, and a light goes on. Indi suddenly understands why PSG beat West Brom, and it only takes one word to tell me. “Xabi.” I knew it was coming. “I should have played Xabi as the organisational midfielder. We got picked apart because (Thiago) Motta and (Marco) Verratti decided the tempo, and for all the strengths of my other central midfield players, none of them can organise passing and pressing the way Xabi does.”

I take a quick glance around the office. Adorning the walls are all sorts of things, each one framed and mounted – shirts, scarves, match balls, programmes, and other bits of memorabilia. There’s the match ball from last season’s win at Anfield – “Xabi didn’t want it, so I took it” – as well as scarves and mementos given to him by fans of the club, with whom he regularly interacts at charity events, fan forums, and supporters’ trust meetings. “Being in the Champions League doesn’t allow me to go out and meet the supporters as often as I did, but they understand. They’d rather it be this way, I’m sure!”

However, the most peculiar framed piece on the wall is a signed shirt – a Liverpool number 45 with the name ‘Balotelli’ emblazoned above it, and a lengthy bit of writing below it. “Don’t ask me how I got that,” Indi says, knowing full well that I would anyway. “It was after we beat them at Anfield. I’m heading down to the changing room after giving my presser and I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around, and there’s Mario, staring at me with not an expression on his face. He hands me the shirt, says absolutely nothing, and then walks away. An hour later, I get a cryptic message that says ‘I know you wanted it’, and I find out later from Brendan Rodgers that it’s Mario’s number. The guy’s a nutter, I think, but a loveable and harmless one. Good kid. But eventually, once we get back home, I unpack my bag and read the message. ‘You might win today, Mr. Indi, but I always win tomorrow. Ciao, Mario’. I’m still trying to figure out what that means.”

So far as I can tell, Indi’s quite happy with winning today. Tomorrow can be dealt with if it ever shows up.

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[10cabee]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

i was just wondering what slider sets you guys are using. I haven't been able to find a good slider set for last gen

I like Orion's slider sets. He makes it feel much more realistic.

[jamiec47]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

Warning: long post ahead. It's something I wrote up in my free time as a creative project, hope you guys enjoy it. There are a few details in here that give away what's happened since my last post, which ended on deadline day of summer 2016.

Spoiler

The making of a manager
Charlie Francis, senior correspondent

In the lobby of the main building at West Bromwich Albion’s training ground in Walsall, there are framed photos of the men who’ve done justice to the shirt – FA Cup hero Jeff Astle, appearance and goal leader Tony Brown, current assistant manager and former goal machine Bob Taylor, defensive legend Ally Robertson, and Fred Everiss, the secretary-manager under whose supervision the club won its only top-flight league championship, the 1919-20 Division One title. Given the achievements of some of these men, it’s tough to conceive that current manager Indi Blue’s visage could one day be among those photos, but that is increasingly a popular mindset among the people who work for and support this football club.

It’s been just under 36 hours since West Brom travelled to the Parc des Princes, contesting their first Champions League match against one of Europe’s elite, Paris Saint-Germain. Indi set his team up to take advantage of any space behind the French side’s resolute defence, which has conceded just one goal in three Champions League matches this season, but the combined resolve of Thiago Silva and David Luiz proved to be too much. In PSG, West Brom came up against the first team this season to defeat them, the first to keep a clean sheet against them, and only the second after Newcastle to score more than one goal against them.

For 24 of those last 36 hours, while the squad that travelled to Paris caught up on rest during a day off, Indi has been locked in his office, reviewing hours and hours of footage to figure out why he could not find a way for his team to unlock PSG’s back line. I’m told by Doris, the charming young lady of 67 who oversees the reception area, that the manager has come out only twice since he went in – once to get fresh batteries for his projector remote and once to stock up on sandwiches. If you’d told someone as recently as 2013 that in a few years, the manager of West Brom would be pissed off and trying to find out why his team lost their first match of the season to PSG in the Champions League, you’d have been laughed out of the country.

Just three years ago, in the fall of 2013, Indi was an assistant coach at Championship side Brighton & Hove Albion, where he helped mount a concerted effort to gain promotion, only for the Seagulls to eventually be denied by Steve McClaren’s Derby County in the playoff semi-final. Indi was in charge of scouting, much in the same way that Andre Villas-Boas was for Jose Mourinho at Porto and during that first stint at Chelsea. With his critical breakdowns of opposition game plans, Brighton were able to nullify many other teams’ strengths and amplify their weaknesses. A togetherness in the squad, fostered in part by Indi’s fiery rhetoric, was crucial to them holding their form throughout the campaign.

While Brighton decided to give it another go in the 2014-15 season, they had to do so without some of their best playing and coaching staff. Leonardo Ulloa made a lucrative move to Leicester City, while Will Buckley joined former Brighton boss Gus Poyet at Sunderland. The club’s long-time head of nutrition Ryan Mark moved to his hometown side Cardiff City, while Indi himself was offered the top position at West Brom, a move the he has since said he “could not turn down no matter how hard I tried”. Today, he is on track to be crowned champion of England and, if he plays his cards right, one of Europe’s finest.

The squad start trickling in, beginning with perpetual early bird James Milner and ending with the French-speaking contingent of Stephane Sessegnon, Gueida Fofana and Bakary Sako. Xabi Alonso pops in at the very end, having stopped his car at the gate to sign autographs and pose for photos with admiring fans. He offers me the same courtesy, stopping to ask how my family is. Here’s a man who’s won the World Cup and two European Championships with the greatest Spain side of all time, and he remembers my little boy asking for an autograph after the opening win at Sunderland, in which Xabi played a crucial role.

It doesn’t take long to get a feel for just why this club is on the upward trajectory it’s currently enjoying, perched at the top of the table, two points ahead of Arsenal and three ahead of Chelsea. With a 2-0 away win over Manchester City under their belts and a crucial fixture against the Blues next on the calendar, West Brom are threatening to do what Atlético de Madrid managed in the 2013-14 season – beat two of the world’s wealthiest clubs to the title on a relative pittance of a transfer budget, but with a team with such strong chemistry that it’s almost palpable. The atmosphere is so upbeat and vibrant that you’d never guess this is a team that poured much of last season’s winnings into the club coffers so they wouldn’t need to sell any players, a team that made just one permanent signing in the summer – the £4.5 million transfer of Lukas Podolski, who has so far bagged eight goals in nine games, from Arsenal.

A good bit of the credit goes to a board of directors with good sense, a chairman who wants only the best, and players who operate at the very peak of their abilities every time they are called upon to do so, but all these people will tell you that most of it is down to Indi. He’s the lynchpin of the operation, the central pillar unto which everything is tied. Without his planning and tactics, there would have been no double over Liverpool last season. Without his shrewd analysis of the opposition, West Brom would never have made it to their first cup final since 1970 when they lost to Tottenham in 2015. Without his convincing words and ability to coax the best out of his players, there’d be no Xabi, Podolski, Milner or Winston Reid at The Hawthorns – crucial players, all of whom joined West Brom primarily because they believed in the manager and his vision.

No Indi means Nathan Redmond would still be an ordinary winger, rather than the diminutive monster in the hole the manager has turned him into, allowing him to drift about to pick up the ball, dribble and shoot at will to great effect. The Englishman is beginning to fulfil the potential of three prodigies. “It’s really different. I’ve had good managers at my previous clubs,” says the Birmingham native, who grew up a City fan, “but Indi is something else. We work on certain parts of my game together. He gives me the confidence to try things I might not do otherwise, and the knowledge to know when to be myself and when to be part of the team.”

After signing for West Brom in the winter of 2015, Redmond made an immediate impact in the latter half of the season, but a premature contract dispute almost halted his career with the club before it truly took off. He took the advice of his family and found new representatives, working hard enough to break into the first team. By the end of last season, he had racked up ten goals in all competitions. Joining up with the national side at this year’s Euros, Redmond scored four goals and registered three assists as England ran riot and conceded just one goal, during a semi-final loss to eventual winners France. Raheem Sterling was once touted as the future of English football, but Redmond has well and truly taken on that title for himself, and it is, as he says, all down to Indi’s guidance. “The man is a revelation.”

At this time, Indi decides to take Redmond’s words to heart and reveals himself, shaggy-haired and stubble-faced, visibly tired and hungry from the effort he’s just put into making sure the mistakes of the last match are not repeated when the Parisians come calling in the Midlands. “Just keep your distance,” he tells me when I offer my hand. “I reek horribly. Haven’t showered since we got back.” It’s the smell of “obsession and psychosis”, to use his own words. We make plans to meet in the canteen in 20 minutes, enough time for him to shave and shower. After a breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs, while his assistant coaches take the squad through their paces, I’m given a guided tour of the facilities, starting with the altitude room where players enhance their breathing, and ending with the sanctum sanctorum – the manager’s office.

“At Brighton, the only person who had an office was the manager. The rest of us, the scouts and coaches, we all gathered in the conference hall or canteen and discussed things,” Indi reveals. “Ideally, you want to have a level of privacy when you discuss football matters, so I’ve made sure that each department has its own office – my assistant and I have our own offices, the rest of the coaches have a slightly bigger one, and the scouts have their own room of a similar size. If we need to discuss something concrete, we either meet in my office or at the stadium conference room, if the board are involved. But the thing is, at this club, there’s a level of trust that’s developed where I would not hesitate to leave my work out in front of the canteen staff or the housekeeping staff. But then people from outside can sometimes gain access under false pretences; it’s happened before at other clubs.”

Indi’s private chambers are quite like the man himself – pristine, meticulously organised, yet unruly in places where it’s evident that work is ongoing. In one corner is an enormous whiteboard with tactical options for the Chelsea game; in another is a large LED screen, connected to his computer via high-definition cables. The screen shows PSG midfielder Blaise Matuidi tackling Marseille midfielder Gianelli Imbula during their 2-2 draw at the Parc des Princes, just three days before West Brom arrived for their match. It’s one of several matches on the computer, all organised by competition and season, as clear as the rest of the office. “Organisation is the key. You need to keep things in a way that you can easily control them,” Indi says. “Without control, you are at the mercy of other factors. You don’t dictate what happens; you need to react, and your reflexes won’t save you every time. If you act first, you can determine the outcome.”

The manager listens to himself, and a light goes on. Indi suddenly understands why PSG beat West Brom, and it only takes one word to tell me. “Xabi.” I knew it was coming. “I should have played Xabi as the organisational midfielder. We got picked apart because (Thiago) Motta and (Marco) Verratti decided the tempo, and for all the strengths of my other central midfield players, none of them can organise passing and pressing the way Xabi does.”

I take a quick glance around the office. Adorning the walls are all sorts of things, each one framed and mounted – shirts, scarves, match balls, programmes, and other bits of memorabilia. There’s the match ball from last season’s win at Anfield – “Xabi didn’t want it, so I took it” – as well as scarves and mementos given to him by fans of the club, with whom he regularly interacts at charity events, fan forums, and supporters’ trust meetings. “Being in the Champions League doesn’t allow me to go out and meet the supporters as often as I did, but they understand. They’d rather it be this way, I’m sure!”

However, the most peculiar framed piece on the wall is a signed shirt – a Liverpool number 45 with the name ‘Balotelli’ emblazoned above it, and a lengthy bit of writing below it. “Don’t ask me how I got that,” Indi says, knowing full well that I would anyway. “It was after we beat them at Anfield. I’m heading down to the changing room after giving my presser and I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around, and there’s Mario, staring at me with not an expression on his face. He hands me the shirt, says absolutely nothing, and then walks away. An hour later, I get a cryptic message that says ‘I know you wanted it’, and I find out later from Brendan Rodgers that it’s Mario’s number. The guy’s a nutter, I think, but a loveable and harmless one. Good kid. But eventually, once we get back home, I unpack my bag and read the message. ‘You might win today, Mr. Indi, but I always win tomorrow. Ciao, Mario’. I’m still trying to figure out what that means.”

So far as I can tell, Indi’s quite happy with winning today. Tomorrow can be dealt with if it ever shows up.

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That was a truly incredible read, not going to lie. The style of writing was brilliant and it was captivating.

[moose141]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

Warning: long post ahead. It's something I wrote up in my free time as a creative project, hope you guys enjoy it. There are a few details in here that give away what's happened since my last post, which ended on deadline day of summer 2016.

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The making of a manager
Charlie Francis, senior correspondent

In the lobby of the main building at West Bromwich Albion’s training ground in Walsall, there are framed photos of the men who’ve done justice to the shirt – FA Cup hero Jeff Astle, appearance and goal leader Tony Brown, current assistant manager and former goal machine Bob Taylor, defensive legend Ally Robertson, and Fred Everiss, the secretary-manager under whose supervision the club won its only top-flight league championship, the 1919-20 Division One title. Given the achievements of some of these men, it’s tough to conceive that current manager Indi Blue’s visage could one day be among those photos, but that is increasingly a popular mindset among the people who work for and support this football club.

It’s been just under 36 hours since West Brom travelled to the Parc des Princes, contesting their first Champions League match against one of Europe’s elite, Paris Saint-Germain. Indi set his team up to take advantage of any space behind the French side’s resolute defence, which has conceded just one goal in three Champions League matches this season, but the combined resolve of Thiago Silva and David Luiz proved to be too much. In PSG, West Brom came up against the first team this season to defeat them, the first to keep a clean sheet against them, and only the second after Newcastle to score more than one goal against them.

For 24 of those last 36 hours, while the squad that travelled to Paris caught up on rest during a day off, Indi has been locked in his office, reviewing hours and hours of footage to figure out why he could not find a way for his team to unlock PSG’s back line. I’m told by Doris, the charming young lady of 67 who oversees the reception area, that the manager has come out only twice since he went in – once to get fresh batteries for his projector remote and once to stock up on sandwiches. If you’d told someone as recently as 2013 that in a few years, the manager of West Brom would be pissed off and trying to find out why his team lost their first match of the season to PSG in the Champions League, you’d have been laughed out of the country.

Just three years ago, in the fall of 2013, Indi was an assistant coach at Championship side Brighton & Hove Albion, where he helped mount a concerted effort to gain promotion, only for the Seagulls to eventually be denied by Steve McClaren’s Derby County in the playoff semi-final. Indi was in charge of scouting, much in the same way that Andre Villas-Boas was for Jose Mourinho at Porto and during that first stint at Chelsea. With his critical breakdowns of opposition game plans, Brighton were able to nullify many other teams’ strengths and amplify their weaknesses. A togetherness in the squad, fostered in part by Indi’s fiery rhetoric, was crucial to them holding their form throughout the campaign.

While Brighton decided to give it another go in the 2014-15 season, they had to do so without some of their best playing and coaching staff. Leonardo Ulloa made a lucrative move to Leicester City, while Will Buckley joined former Brighton boss Gus Poyet at Sunderland. The club’s long-time head of nutrition Ryan Mark moved to his hometown side Cardiff City, while Indi himself was offered the top position at West Brom, a move the he has since said he “could not turn down no matter how hard I tried”. Today, he is on track to be crowned champion of England and, if he plays his cards right, one of Europe’s finest.

The squad start trickling in, beginning with perpetual early bird James Milner and ending with the French-speaking contingent of Stephane Sessegnon, Gueida Fofana and Bakary Sako. Xabi Alonso pops in at the very end, having stopped his car at the gate to sign autographs and pose for photos with admiring fans. He offers me the same courtesy, stopping to ask how my family is. Here’s a man who’s won the World Cup and two European Championships with the greatest Spain side of all time, and he remembers my little boy asking for an autograph after the opening win at Sunderland, in which Xabi played a crucial role.

It doesn’t take long to get a feel for just why this club is on the upward trajectory it’s currently enjoying, perched at the top of the table, two points ahead of Arsenal and three ahead of Chelsea. With a 2-0 away win over Manchester City under their belts and a crucial fixture against the Blues next on the calendar, West Brom are threatening to do what Atlético de Madrid managed in the 2013-14 season – beat two of the world’s wealthiest clubs to the title on a relative pittance of a transfer budget, but with a team with such strong chemistry that it’s almost palpable. The atmosphere is so upbeat and vibrant that you’d never guess this is a team that poured much of last season’s winnings into the club coffers so they wouldn’t need to sell any players, a team that made just one permanent signing in the summer – the £4.5 million transfer of Lukas Podolski, who has so far bagged eight goals in nine games, from Arsenal.

A good bit of the credit goes to a board of directors with good sense, a chairman who wants only the best, and players who operate at the very peak of their abilities every time they are called upon to do so, but all these people will tell you that most of it is down to Indi. He’s the lynchpin of the operation, the central pillar unto which everything is tied. Without his planning and tactics, there would have been no double over Liverpool last season. Without his shrewd analysis of the opposition, West Brom would never have made it to their first cup final since 1970 when they lost to Tottenham in 2015. Without his convincing words and ability to coax the best out of his players, there’d be no Xabi, Podolski, Milner or Winston Reid at The Hawthorns – crucial players, all of whom joined West Brom primarily because they believed in the manager and his vision.

No Indi means Nathan Redmond would still be an ordinary winger, rather than the diminutive monster in the hole the manager has turned him into, allowing him to drift about to pick up the ball, dribble and shoot at will to great effect. The Englishman is beginning to fulfil the potential of three prodigies. “It’s really different. I’ve had good managers at my previous clubs,” says the Birmingham native, who grew up a City fan, “but Indi is something else. We work on certain parts of my game together. He gives me the confidence to try things I might not do otherwise, and the knowledge to know when to be myself and when to be part of the team.”

After signing for West Brom in the winter of 2015, Redmond made an immediate impact in the latter half of the season, but a premature contract dispute almost halted his career with the club before it truly took off. He took the advice of his family and found new representatives, working hard enough to break into the first team. By the end of last season, he had racked up ten goals in all competitions. Joining up with the national side at this year’s Euros, Redmond scored four goals and registered three assists as England ran riot and conceded just one goal, during a semi-final loss to eventual winners France. Raheem Sterling was once touted as the future of English football, but Redmond has well and truly taken on that title for himself, and it is, as he says, all down to Indi’s guidance. “The man is a revelation.”

At this time, Indi decides to take Redmond’s words to heart and reveals himself, shaggy-haired and stubble-faced, visibly tired and hungry from the effort he’s just put into making sure the mistakes of the last match are not repeated when the Parisians come calling in the Midlands. “Just keep your distance,” he tells me when I offer my hand. “I reek horribly. Haven’t showered since we got back.” It’s the smell of “obsession and psychosis”, to use his own words. We make plans to meet in the canteen in 20 minutes, enough time for him to shave and shower. After a breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs, while his assistant coaches take the squad through their paces, I’m given a guided tour of the facilities, starting with the altitude room where players enhance their breathing, and ending with the sanctum sanctorum – the manager’s office.

“At Brighton, the only person who had an office was the manager. The rest of us, the scouts and coaches, we all gathered in the conference hall or canteen and discussed things,” Indi reveals. “Ideally, you want to have a level of privacy when you discuss football matters, so I’ve made sure that each department has its own office – my assistant and I have our own offices, the rest of the coaches have a slightly bigger one, and the scouts have their own room of a similar size. If we need to discuss something concrete, we either meet in my office or at the stadium conference room, if the board are involved. But the thing is, at this club, there’s a level of trust that’s developed where I would not hesitate to leave my work out in front of the canteen staff or the housekeeping staff. But then people from outside can sometimes gain access under false pretences; it’s happened before at other clubs.”

Indi’s private chambers are quite like the man himself – pristine, meticulously organised, yet unruly in places where it’s evident that work is ongoing. In one corner is an enormous whiteboard with tactical options for the Chelsea game; in another is a large LED screen, connected to his computer via high-definition cables. The screen shows PSG midfielder Blaise Matuidi tackling Marseille midfielder Gianelli Imbula during their 2-2 draw at the Parc des Princes, just three days before West Brom arrived for their match. It’s one of several matches on the computer, all organised by competition and season, as clear as the rest of the office. “Organisation is the key. You need to keep things in a way that you can easily control them,” Indi says. “Without control, you are at the mercy of other factors. You don’t dictate what happens; you need to react, and your reflexes won’t save you every time. If you act first, you can determine the outcome.”

The manager listens to himself, and a light goes on. Indi suddenly understands why PSG beat West Brom, and it only takes one word to tell me. “Xabi.” I knew it was coming. “I should have played Xabi as the organisational midfielder. We got picked apart because (Thiago) Motta and (Marco) Verratti decided the tempo, and for all the strengths of my other central midfield players, none of them can organise passing and pressing the way Xabi does.”

I take a quick glance around the office. Adorning the walls are all sorts of things, each one framed and mounted – shirts, scarves, match balls, programmes, and other bits of memorabilia. There’s the match ball from last season’s win at Anfield – “Xabi didn’t want it, so I took it” – as well as scarves and mementos given to him by fans of the club, with whom he regularly interacts at charity events, fan forums, and supporters’ trust meetings. “Being in the Champions League doesn’t allow me to go out and meet the supporters as often as I did, but they understand. They’d rather it be this way, I’m sure!”

However, the most peculiar framed piece on the wall is a signed shirt – a Liverpool number 45 with the name ‘Balotelli’ emblazoned above it, and a lengthy bit of writing below it. “Don’t ask me how I got that,” Indi says, knowing full well that I would anyway. “It was after we beat them at Anfield. I’m heading down to the changing room after giving my presser and I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around, and there’s Mario, staring at me with not an expression on his face. He hands me the shirt, says absolutely nothing, and then walks away. An hour later, I get a cryptic message that says ‘I know you wanted it’, and I find out later from Brendan Rodgers that it’s Mario’s number. The guy’s a nutter, I think, but a loveable and harmless one. Good kid. But eventually, once we get back home, I unpack my bag and read the message. ‘You might win today, Mr. Indi, but I always win tomorrow. Ciao, Mario’. I’m still trying to figure out what that means.”

So far as I can tell, Indi’s quite happy with winning today. Tomorrow can be dealt with if it ever shows up.

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Talk about a way to build up a career mode, awesome stuff!!! Such a great way to build up a career and make a story about it to pique the interest while still providing all the relevant info so we know what the team has accomplished.

[moose141]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

West Ham United - Episode #11: Tale of Two Matches

In this episode we face opposite ends of the spectrum in taking on Leicester City and Chelsea while discussing the future of the career mode.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/X-SQaLeIE_Y?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Keano16]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

Warning: long post ahead. It's something I wrote up in my free time as a creative project, hope you guys enjoy it. There are a few details in here that give away what's happened since my last post, which ended on deadline day of summer 2016.

Spoiler

The making of a manager
Charlie Francis, senior correspondent

In the lobby of the main building at West Bromwich Albion’s training ground in Walsall, there are framed photos of the men who’ve done justice to the shirt – FA Cup hero Jeff Astle, appearance and goal leader Tony Brown, current assistant manager and former goal machine Bob Taylor, defensive legend Ally Robertson, and Fred Everiss, the secretary-manager under whose supervision the club won its only top-flight league championship, the 1919-20 Division One title. Given the achievements of some of these men, it’s tough to conceive that current manager Indi Blue’s visage could one day be among those photos, but that is increasingly a popular mindset among the people who work for and support this football club.

It’s been just under 36 hours since West Brom travelled to the Parc des Princes, contesting their first Champions League match against one of Europe’s elite, Paris Saint-Germain. Indi set his team up to take advantage of any space behind the French side’s resolute defence, which has conceded just one goal in three Champions League matches this season, but the combined resolve of Thiago Silva and David Luiz proved to be too much. In PSG, West Brom came up against the first team this season to defeat them, the first to keep a clean sheet against them, and only the second after Newcastle to score more than one goal against them.

For 24 of those last 36 hours, while the squad that travelled to Paris caught up on rest during a day off, Indi has been locked in his office, reviewing hours and hours of footage to figure out why he could not find a way for his team to unlock PSG’s back line. I’m told by Doris, the charming young lady of 67 who oversees the reception area, that the manager has come out only twice since he went in – once to get fresh batteries for his projector remote and once to stock up on sandwiches. If you’d told someone as recently as 2013 that in a few years, the manager of West Brom would be pissed off and trying to find out why his team lost their first match of the season to PSG in the Champions League, you’d have been laughed out of the country.

Just three years ago, in the fall of 2013, Indi was an assistant coach at Championship side Brighton & Hove Albion, where he helped mount a concerted effort to gain promotion, only for the Seagulls to eventually be denied by Steve McClaren’s Derby County in the playoff semi-final. Indi was in charge of scouting, much in the same way that Andre Villas-Boas was for Jose Mourinho at Porto and during that first stint at Chelsea. With his critical breakdowns of opposition game plans, Brighton were able to nullify many other teams’ strengths and amplify their weaknesses. A togetherness in the squad, fostered in part by Indi’s fiery rhetoric, was crucial to them holding their form throughout the campaign.

While Brighton decided to give it another go in the 2014-15 season, they had to do so without some of their best playing and coaching staff. Leonardo Ulloa made a lucrative move to Leicester City, while Will Buckley joined former Brighton boss Gus Poyet at Sunderland. The club’s long-time head of nutrition Ryan Mark moved to his hometown side Cardiff City, while Indi himself was offered the top position at West Brom, a move the he has since said he “could not turn down no matter how hard I tried”. Today, he is on track to be crowned champion of England and, if he plays his cards right, one of Europe’s finest.

The squad start trickling in, beginning with perpetual early bird James Milner and ending with the French-speaking contingent of Stephane Sessegnon, Gueida Fofana and Bakary Sako. Xabi Alonso pops in at the very end, having stopped his car at the gate to sign autographs and pose for photos with admiring fans. He offers me the same courtesy, stopping to ask how my family is. Here’s a man who’s won the World Cup and two European Championships with the greatest Spain side of all time, and he remembers my little boy asking for an autograph after the opening win at Sunderland, in which Xabi played a crucial role.

It doesn’t take long to get a feel for just why this club is on the upward trajectory it’s currently enjoying, perched at the top of the table, two points ahead of Arsenal and three ahead of Chelsea. With a 2-0 away win over Manchester City under their belts and a crucial fixture against the Blues next on the calendar, West Brom are threatening to do what Atlético de Madrid managed in the 2013-14 season – beat two of the world’s wealthiest clubs to the title on a relative pittance of a transfer budget, but with a team with such strong chemistry that it’s almost palpable. The atmosphere is so upbeat and vibrant that you’d never guess this is a team that poured much of last season’s winnings into the club coffers so they wouldn’t need to sell any players, a team that made just one permanent signing in the summer – the £4.5 million transfer of Lukas Podolski, who has so far bagged eight goals in nine games, from Arsenal.

A good bit of the credit goes to a board of directors with good sense, a chairman who wants only the best, and players who operate at the very peak of their abilities every time they are called upon to do so, but all these people will tell you that most of it is down to Indi. He’s the lynchpin of the operation, the central pillar unto which everything is tied. Without his planning and tactics, there would have been no double over Liverpool last season. Without his shrewd analysis of the opposition, West Brom would never have made it to their first cup final since 1970 when they lost to Tottenham in 2015. Without his convincing words and ability to coax the best out of his players, there’d be no Xabi, Podolski, Milner or Winston Reid at The Hawthorns – crucial players, all of whom joined West Brom primarily because they believed in the manager and his vision.

No Indi means Nathan Redmond would still be an ordinary winger, rather than the diminutive monster in the hole the manager has turned him into, allowing him to drift about to pick up the ball, dribble and shoot at will to great effect. The Englishman is beginning to fulfil the potential of three prodigies. “It’s really different. I’ve had good managers at my previous clubs,” says the Birmingham native, who grew up a City fan, “but Indi is something else. We work on certain parts of my game together. He gives me the confidence to try things I might not do otherwise, and the knowledge to know when to be myself and when to be part of the team.”

After signing for West Brom in the winter of 2015, Redmond made an immediate impact in the latter half of the season, but a premature contract dispute almost halted his career with the club before it truly took off. He took the advice of his family and found new representatives, working hard enough to break into the first team. By the end of last season, he had racked up ten goals in all competitions. Joining up with the national side at this year’s Euros, Redmond scored four goals and registered three assists as England ran riot and conceded just one goal, during a semi-final loss to eventual winners France. Raheem Sterling was once touted as the future of English football, but Redmond has well and truly taken on that title for himself, and it is, as he says, all down to Indi’s guidance. “The man is a revelation.”

At this time, Indi decides to take Redmond’s words to heart and reveals himself, shaggy-haired and stubble-faced, visibly tired and hungry from the effort he’s just put into making sure the mistakes of the last match are not repeated when the Parisians come calling in the Midlands. “Just keep your distance,” he tells me when I offer my hand. “I reek horribly. Haven’t showered since we got back.” It’s the smell of “obsession and psychosis”, to use his own words. We make plans to meet in the canteen in 20 minutes, enough time for him to shave and shower. After a breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs, while his assistant coaches take the squad through their paces, I’m given a guided tour of the facilities, starting with the altitude room where players enhance their breathing, and ending with the sanctum sanctorum – the manager’s office.

“At Brighton, the only person who had an office was the manager. The rest of us, the scouts and coaches, we all gathered in the conference hall or canteen and discussed things,” Indi reveals. “Ideally, you want to have a level of privacy when you discuss football matters, so I’ve made sure that each department has its own office – my assistant and I have our own offices, the rest of the coaches have a slightly bigger one, and the scouts have their own room of a similar size. If we need to discuss something concrete, we either meet in my office or at the stadium conference room, if the board are involved. But the thing is, at this club, there’s a level of trust that’s developed where I would not hesitate to leave my work out in front of the canteen staff or the housekeeping staff. But then people from outside can sometimes gain access under false pretences; it’s happened before at other clubs.”

Indi’s private chambers are quite like the man himself – pristine, meticulously organised, yet unruly in places where it’s evident that work is ongoing. In one corner is an enormous whiteboard with tactical options for the Chelsea game; in another is a large LED screen, connected to his computer via high-definition cables. The screen shows PSG midfielder Blaise Matuidi tackling Marseille midfielder Gianelli Imbula during their 2-2 draw at the Parc des Princes, just three days before West Brom arrived for their match. It’s one of several matches on the computer, all organised by competition and season, as clear as the rest of the office. “Organisation is the key. You need to keep things in a way that you can easily control them,” Indi says. “Without control, you are at the mercy of other factors. You don’t dictate what happens; you need to react, and your reflexes won’t save you every time. If you act first, you can determine the outcome.”

The manager listens to himself, and a light goes on. Indi suddenly understands why PSG beat West Brom, and it only takes one word to tell me. “Xabi.” I knew it was coming. “I should have played Xabi as the organisational midfielder. We got picked apart because (Thiago) Motta and (Marco) Verratti decided the tempo, and for all the strengths of my other central midfield players, none of them can organise passing and pressing the way Xabi does.”

I take a quick glance around the office. Adorning the walls are all sorts of things, each one framed and mounted – shirts, scarves, match balls, programmes, and other bits of memorabilia. There’s the match ball from last season’s win at Anfield – “Xabi didn’t want it, so I took it” – as well as scarves and mementos given to him by fans of the club, with whom he regularly interacts at charity events, fan forums, and supporters’ trust meetings. “Being in the Champions League doesn’t allow me to go out and meet the supporters as often as I did, but they understand. They’d rather it be this way, I’m sure!”

However, the most peculiar framed piece on the wall is a signed shirt – a Liverpool number 45 with the name ‘Balotelli’ emblazoned above it, and a lengthy bit of writing below it. “Don’t ask me how I got that,” Indi says, knowing full well that I would anyway. “It was after we beat them at Anfield. I’m heading down to the changing room after giving my presser and I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around, and there’s Mario, staring at me with not an expression on his face. He hands me the shirt, says absolutely nothing, and then walks away. An hour later, I get a cryptic message that says ‘I know you wanted it’, and I find out later from Brendan Rodgers that it’s Mario’s number. The guy’s a nutter, I think, but a loveable and harmless one. Good kid. But eventually, once we get back home, I unpack my bag and read the message. ‘You might win today, Mr. Indi, but I always win tomorrow. Ciao, Mario’. I’m still trying to figure out what that means.”

So far as I can tell, Indi’s quite happy with winning today. Tomorrow can be dealt with if it ever shows up.

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WOW! Great read man! Really enjoyed it. A really in depth CM there. Very interesting.

[Solarios]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

Where should I play Pogba? CDM or CAM? I usually always play him at CDM

[luzuriaga8799]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

I like Orion's slider sets. He makes it feel much more realistic.

Orions next gen slider set works on the 360?

[vrabbit]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

Where should I play Pogba? CDM or CAM? I usually always play him at CDM

CDM, I have a player that's very similar to him and I play him at RM too and he beasts it there.

[10cabee]

Re: How's Your FIFA Career Mode Going?

Orions next gen slider set works on the 360?

It should do but if you don't like them then you could always tweak it to what you think the game should play like.