A lot of focus is now going on FC 27 and its upcoming release in 2026, EA Sports have changed owners and in the process have been on the receiving end of increasingly tense feedback. The release of College Football 26 has been a disaster for the company, with the microtransactions crossing over to single-player offline modes causing the title to get review-bombed and panned by both content creators and fans alike. The Sims has similarly been put at risk as Paralives and other games aim to challenge its state as the number one life sim as EA’s greed turns away more dedicated fans.
FC 27 has a lot of heavy lifting to do to not only keep its fanbase coming back but also to repair the company’s image to some extent, although you could always play a more thrilling game over at Winbox.
Need: Finally Reinvigorate Career Mode
It isn’t controversial to say that the EA FC career mode is one of the weakest in the sports simulation genre. Even at its worst EA has managed to make a very good Road to Glory mode in CFB, a pretty solid career mode in Madden, and an NHL career mode that manages to avoid some of the their usual pitfalls.
Despite that, FC 26 and previous editions had an offline career mode that was almost unplayable. Whether it is random goals assigned to the player that are impossible to clear that cause fail states, or the unfixable manager trust rating decreasing for no reason, it is a mode that almost punishes the players for daring to try and play any mode other than Ultimate Team.
Even the manager career mode is outdated and lacking in depth compared to what you get in the NFL and adjacent titles. It is long overdue for an overhaul in how these modes work and what they focus on, particularly as scouting has been the same limited setup for almost a decade now, and computer AI has been useless for even longer.
Want: Improved Defending AI
While it isn’t always obvious on the lower difficulties, any of us who have tried to play EA FC on the higher difficulties are familiar with how absolutely cheeks the defensive AI is. Just watch some Winbox Live and you’ll see the difference between real defending and what the video game presents. Centre backs often get sucked into the goalkeeper like a vortex and leave players free in the box; edge-of-the-box defending is almost non-existent, and there’s almost no actual attempt to play to your tactics if you want an offside trap. Pressing high and often is the only way to really succeed, which just isn’t realistic. I would love to be able to grit out a 1-0 win, or play a counter-attack system that doesn’t need a heavy press.
Need to Avoid: Overuse of The Grounds
There’s a lot of talk that the Grounds could introduce some open world gameplay to a sports simulation title and someone, somewhere must have asked why by now..right? The open world area within a sports title isn’t new, it is actually taken mostly from 2K who have had The Island in their WWE title and the City in NBA 2K before, the issue is, both of those are awful game-interrupting settings that exist just to be tedious and ask for microtransactions.
If The Grounds is introduced in the new FC game, it will need to avoid overdoing it. Don’t make it a mode necessary for offline career play, keep it for those who want to take their skills online and spend real money on pointless cosmetics; don’t force it on the person just trying to play some career mode games.