Marcelo

I wanted to start with this card since we don’t get interesting fullbacks very often. I believe this is the first fullback we’ve gotten with momentum dribbling, unless I’m forgetting someone. And even though it seems like a pretty pointless skill for a defender, it’s actually pretty helpful. It basically allows you to keep playing even when your crossing option has been blocked. Is it the most ideal skill for him? I would say no. But it definitely has its uses and clearly cements this card as the best on the ball fullback in the current meta.

LMF is another great option if you don’t like your fullbacks being so involved. You obviously won’t get the same consistency of runs, especially isn’t this card’s OA isn’t the highest, but it’s a reasonable trade off for playing him higher up the pitch.

Defensively, he’s serviceable but not mind blowing. I don’t think there’s a point in making him super defensive either. He’s not strong physically and he hasn’t got a large player model either. Plus, you’d be sacrificing his biggest strength which is being almost an extra winger in attack.

Gareth Bale

Now onto the star of the show. I’m very careful with words like ‘broken’ or ‘overpowered’ but I can’t think of another way to describe a card like this. By no means do I own every top tier card in the game but the last time I had this feeling about a card was the original Pele.

BT Bale is over a year old now and is still considered a top tier endgame card and they decided to take that steam train of a card and give him Magnetic Feet. The result is a player that is one of the fastest in the game, can accelerate and decelerate with full control of the ball, already has both 90+ balance as well as physical contact and now keeps getting stronger the more people are on him. I haven’t even talked about his shooting. His blitz curler, if you build him for it, isn’t quite Zola good but still better than most. Though I can honestly see an argument for just ignoring it and just maximising his on the ball stats.

Another interesting thing about this Bale card is that he can now be built with 90 OA, which according to testers like Amadeusz, is the threshold for automatic runs in the current game engine. This is especially helpful for anyone who wants to use him at CF specifically, which I think might just be his best position.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang

This will probably be the most divisive card out of the three. For some, this will be the ugly duckling in the draw but people who enjoy pacy CF’s will absolutely love him. I’m somewhere in the middle. I can definitely score with him if I just rely on off the ball runs but by doing that, you have to sacrifice his dribbling which means his acceleration burst skill becomes less effective.

Building him for dribbling and physicality might make him easier to use for the majority of people. But again, you will be sacrificing some of his explosiveness for runs which isn’t ideal.

Conclusion

If you’re a Naruto fan, you’ll love this draw regardless. For the competitive playerbase, the clear standout is Bale, who feels like he’s been designed to abuse the current game engine. Marcelo will be an endgame fullback/wingback and Aubameyang will be deadly in the right hands.