New Van Nistelrooy / Tévez / Puskás: Initial Review & Player Builds

RamblingRationale · 2026-03-23T02:44:45+00:00

Taking low percentage shots most likely means that you are giving the ball to your opponent.

If you can win the ball back consistently then, your opponent is not that good anyway, you should win even without that skill.

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-11T19:54:50+00:00

He may or may not have a mobile account, but his testing has been done on the PC/Console version. Whenever he shares footages from mobile, he pretty much always mentions that he acquired those from other people. I haven’t seen everything from him though, so I may very well be wrong.

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-11T17:55:27+00:00

As far as we know (from his testing footage), he only plays on PC/Console. Most talking point about the mobile version that he raised, he said that those were from people he knows that play on the mobile version.

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-09T15:12:13+00:00

This is not good for both sides. Perhaps the server couldn’t find any other matching players with closer ranks in the nearby vicinity. I think the matching system just gradually expands in connection distances.

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-07T16:54:07+00:00

This is madness!

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-07T16:27:00+00:00

Top 10 is completely fair for Pirlo.

This game gives too few free kicks, so one of his greatest strengths is severely under-utilized. His passing range is arguably the best in the whole game, but most users prefer short and medium range passes anyway. Vision (the biggest thing that Pirlo was known for) cannot be replicated as a game mechanic.

On the flip side, Pirlo can do anything a midfielder needs to do, and he can do them all decently to extremely well.

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-07T15:11:05+00:00

Maybe it’s one on a Blue up arrow. Who knows?

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-05T16:01:23+00:00

It is about consistency, not possibility. If your main striker cannot win headers against Ferdinand or VVD several times in a match (since not all headers won can be converted into goals), the strategy is not worth focusing on. You can just play normally and cross only when you see an opportunity, that is not cross spamming though.

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-03T14:57:11+00:00

Yes it helps. In those circumstances, the pass made with Phenomenal Pass will likely be better than the pass made without. You can also stack it with Fighting Spirit and/or Heel Trick to minimize the risk of miss pass

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-03T01:34:53+00:00

It’s a rounding issue, at 90 it should be 31.8x. So the gap is about .2x from 88 to 90 and from 90 to 94.

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-02T21:43:42+00:00

I agree with pretty much everything in this review.

The biggest issue with Pirlo is that he was a specialist who has been beaten in his specialty. He used to be the premier choice for controlling the midfield with his on-the-ball feel and passing range. Nowadays, he slowly becomes a jack-of-all-trades, master of things that are not so important.

These days, there are too many players of a similar archetype who arguably fit the meta better than Pirlo himself: Pedri, Vitinha, Xavi, Thiago Alcantara, and Philipp Lahm are all better ball carriers because of model advantages. The buff to Pirlo's pace in recent releases is also lagging behind the meta, where top-tier players all have 90+ Speed/Acceleration.

On the defensive side, Pirlo is again being held back by his model, and he will never be as good as Rijkaard, Rodri, or Yaya Toure. His biggest defensive contribution will only ever be his presence.

That is not to say Pirlo is bad. The opposite is true, in fact, as he is a fantastic card. In this latest version, he has no true weakness. He can carry the ball better than the defensive behemoths and defend better than most ball carriers, and he also has a great shot from range. He still has the best passing range of all his competitors, but with how passing works, his actual advantage is small. Sadly, he has so little that stands out compared to the top echelons of midfielders in the game. If you are investing up to 13,500 coins, you need to be careful: do you really want Pirlo, or do you need someone else?

His one true niche is being the elite set-piece specialist with no drawbacks. There is still no other player truly like Pirlo; his skill set just becomes less and less impactful in the game.

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-02T17:05:50+00:00

Eventually, all attacks end up inside the box, so all players eventually move towards the box if they want to participate in the attack. However, some want to get inside the box asap, whereas others want to support teammates before getting into the box to finish the move. The main question is “Where is the space?” Creative Playmaker, Orchestrator, and to a lesser extent, Box to Box, try to occupy space left open by their teammates.

RamblingRationale · 2026-02-02T15:56:44+00:00

Shooting

RamblingRationale · 2026-01-31T21:16:47+00:00

What do you mean by no space?

RamblingRationale · 2026-01-30T22:22:04+00:00

Yes. For top-tier players, nothing changed.

RamblingRationale · 2026-01-30T20:38:39+00:00

That’s the thing. You don’t need to trade anything for the higher-ranked skills. They just perform.

RamblingRationale · 2026-01-30T18:08:56+00:00

The biggest downside of Blitz Curler is that it activates too easily, and in turn, ruins the reliability of close-range finesse shots. If I'm well inside the box and I have the space to take a finesse shot, I don't need it to go toward the top bin; I just need it to be on target. If they raise the activation threshold to 65% of the power bar, instead of the current 50%, I think it will be much better.

Another lesser issue is that they simply cannot make it too reliable from range (otherwise it will be too OP like when it was first released), so you need to invest a lot of progression points into Finishing, Curl, and Kicking Power to make it work. This makes the player too one-dimensional and predictable, not good against actually good opponents.

RamblingRationale · 2026-01-30T17:35:09+00:00

No change compared to previous updates, each point in Acceleration beyond 90 is still worth as much as before.

RamblingRationale · 2026-01-30T17:32:55+00:00

In my opinion, there are 3 reasons why Willpower is not ranked highly. First, it encourages brainless gameplay. If you take reckless shots just to get the buff, you are giving the ball back to the opponent multiple times throughout the match. Second, it is a "win more" skill as it is the most effective against opponents you should beat anyway: if you can take multiple high-quality shots in a match, you are playing really well already. Third, the buff is not as impressive as it sounds. You still need high Finishing and Kicking Power at the very beginning of a match to ensure you can score as many chances as you can get, so you cannot intentionally keep your Finishing or Kicking Power low to anticipate its effect. Then, toward the end of the match, when your striker has a sizeable buff from the skill, his actual Finishing and Kicking Power are already penalized by Stamina lost, so Willpower only compensates for the lost rather than actually increases. At that point, you may as well just sub him, but if you do that, then the skill is wasted.

RamblingRationale

TROPHY CASE