It’s one of the biggest innovations in the FC 25 career mode: the youth academy with the youth tournaments in Rush. I looked at and tested it extensively in my first career – and I’m delighted with the possibilities. Only a few small bugs are annoying.
But let’s start from the beginning – let’s take a look at the youth academy first. It’s practical that all the topics in the youth academy are grouped together in the menu, which is still quite awkward to use: The youth team, the youth scouts, the youth development plans and the youth tournaments. This is much better than in FC 24, where the youth scouts were in the same menu as the senior scouts.
Das Scouting ist jetzt viel detallierter
Youth scouting has been significantly expanded – certainly one of the most exciting features, you can now scout in 160 countries, from Montenegro to Pakistan. It’s great fun looking for talent in dwarf states like San Marino. This gives the youth players much more depth and individuality. Scouting has been refined even further – in line with the new FCIQ tactics system.
You can now not only search for players in certain positions, but can also search for specific player roles. So that the future youth player with great potential also fits directly into the playing philosophy. If you want classic nine-man forwards, you can look for them somewhere in Africa.
However, one thing is annoying: the number of positions per scout is limited and you sometimes get lost in the search menus. The many details are sometimes difficult to overlook. So you have to spend a little more time looking for the right youth player with the right scout
Youth players are really young now
Important: the youth players now really look like 14 or 16, no longer like 30-year-old fathers with full beards. And they also shout with young voices, which you will see later in the Rush tournament mode. The youth development plans are now summarised in an additional menu. You can then click through all the players one after the other and adjust the plans.
The displays have changed slightly here, you have to click through first. The development time for progress is now displayed with two different weekly values, white and green. Green is the boost, white is the normal time. However, this is displayed in the overview of youth players – we will have to wait and see whether this is possibly a bug.
Einen Testbericht zum neuen Karrieremodus lest ihr hier.
Rush Tournaments – big fun!
Then we come to the centrepiece of the new youth work. Every two months you are asked to take part in a youth tournament. You click on the tournament and are taken to a selection screen to choose who should play. Annoyingly, you are not allowed to choose from the entire squad, but only from eight players randomly selected by the AI.
You should therefore make sure that you don’t have too many casualties in the youth academy. After the line-up, you switch directly to the Rush youth tournament mode. Rush is the new mode as a replacement for Volta, where you play with five against five players with simplified rules. At kick-off, the ball is released in the centre and everyone runs to the centre circle.
Feel free to discuss with us on Discord!
There is a real street football atmosphere on the pitch
Then things get intense on the small pitch. In career mode, the tournaments are – unfortunately – only played on the club’s training pitch, not in the beautiful Nike Stadium as in FUT. EA should definitely change this, as success and tournament victories remain unadorned, without cheers or spectators.
Nevertheless, playing in Rush is really fun. Short, quick passes, no big formations, real street football, just like in Fifa Street. You can try out your youth players intensively, they shout commands to each other (‘To me!’ ‘Here, here, play!’) and cheer (‘Great save!’) – it’s like being on a real football pitch.
I recommend setting the playing time to 3 minutes, otherwise the game will get tough at some point and too many goals will be scored. This makes for a very entertaining change of pace. You can play the youth players with their fully developed potential, i.e. as good as they can become. Or with their current values. Both have their appeal. If you win the quarter-finals, you go through to the semi-finals – and then the final.
Ratings and boots after the match and tournament
After each match, there is an overview in which you can see the five boys – or girls in the case of women’s teams – listed with their actions such as saves or shots on goal that match their position. And a score of up to 10, just like the professionals. Success has a quick impact – I was able to immediately recognise my progress after playing in a final with FC Heidenheim, where I was beaten by FC Bayern Munich.
Before you start your career, you can also set how quickly the youth players develop – slowly, normally or dynamically – which I also think is a really good feature. Everyone can customise their own career mode.
Another bug: the improvements in overall strength or values are generally no longer displayed in green and plus or red and minus in career mode. This is a major drawback because you lose the overview.
Conclusion: The youth academy has become really good!
Overall, EA has taken a big step forward with the new youth academy – you can identify much more with the young players and play with them at a very early stage. You can recognise their strengths and weaknesses and know better who you should ultimately bring into the squad. Rush is really fun and is football at grassroots level. Being able to develop your youth players in this way is really good.
For FC 26, you could introduce youth leagues and show the results of the youth team – for even more realism. But we don’t want everything at once 🙂