+-------------------------------+ | | | | | FIFA 07 Manager Mode FAQ | | Based on the Xbox version | | By RenoV | | | | Version 1.5 | | Last updated: 12/30/2006 | | | +-------------------------------+ +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | FIFA 07 | COPYRIGHT | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ This document is copyrighted to Saul Delgado, aka RenoV, (c) 2006. You can print this document for your own and personal use. No part of this document can be reproduced in any way to make a profit or with commercial purposes without my permission. If you want to quote some part of this guide, please ask permission, I will give you the permission most of the times. I'm in no way affiliated to EA SPORTS or any other company. All the names used here are the property of their respective owners. The only sites with permission to host this guide are: www.gamefaqs.com www.neoseeker.com www.ign.com Please note that I won't grant permission to any other site, since I don't want to bother myself having to send the updates manually later to all the sites that asks for my permission. Experience has taught me that it doesn't work this way, so I will stick to this system from now on. Sorry! +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | FIFA 07 | CONTACT INFO | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you want to contribute to this guide, feel free to write me, I will do my best effort to take all the contributions into the final version of the guide. If you have a question, PLEASE read the whole guide. I will just ignore mails with questions that are already covered within the guide. I don't want to sound rude, but it starts to get annoying answering the same questions over and over again, just because people is too lazy to scroll down and read for themselves. And PLEASE, keep in mind that I won't answer any gameplay related issues, only strategy regarding Manager Mode related ones... mailto: reno812 [at] gmail [dot] com Subject: "FIFA 07" Gmail has a great SPAM filter, so don't even bother trying to send me your trash, or you will get it all back... :P Also, for those out there reading this that just want to socialize a little, I'll let you with my hi5 URL, so you can keep in touch with me and talk about some other things besides FIFA ;) http://reno812.hi5.com/ +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | FIFA 07 | VERSION HISTORY | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ Version History. [v 1.0] - 10/24/2006 Basic layout and first sections added. Everything is a work in progress at this point. Almost any submission will make it through the guide. [v 1.05] - 10/29/2006 Found a few typos spread around, so I did a spellcheck and also added some other sections... Sections added: * Team Management * Squad * Player Growth * Player contracts * Export team * Statistics [v 1.1] - 11/1/2006 Added some questions to the FAQ section. Also corrected some information stated in a few sections, after playing more the game and founding that actually it was wrong! Sections corrected: * Youth Academy * Kick takers * Player contracts New sections added: * Transfers * Transfer market * Player search [v 1.15] - 11/7/2006 This update took longer than I thought. Not much work though, just a few sections and contrbituions added. New sections added: * Negotiation History * Signing a player * Club Transfer List * Transfer Summary * Shortlist [v 1.2] - 11/17/2006 This was a much needed update, because I got stuck at school this last week, but finally I got out, so now I'm ready to work back on the guide. Sections updated: * Frequently Asked Questions * Contributed Tips & Hints Sections added: * Financial Predictions [v 1.5] - 12/30/2006 Wow, it's been more than a month since the last time I had the time to sit down for a while and work on the guide. It's been some crazy days I have to say, I was lacking the time and the inspiration to write some more (believe me, it does take lots of inspiration to write and actually make it enjoyable for people reading it)... Anyway, I hope you guys are not just playing with videogames, but making something interesting out there and having a great time. I know it has nothing to do with the guide, but hell, it's 1 AM and I'm feeling like writing this down... I went on camp for two weeks and came back just two weeks ago, and it was actually a really impressive experience for me, you know, seeing all the things that I was missing just because I wasn't giving myself the chance to go out and let the college and let my girlfriend, and all that kind of stuff that makes your life feels like you are living someone else's life. Now I'm in deep trouble, and that's because I was almost engaged to my girlfriend, and during this weeks that I was out, I met someone that really has changed the way I see the things now... Go figure. I won't write the story here, it's not the point, the point is that even if this year is over, hopefully there will be plenty of time to do a lot of great stuff (and hopefully end writing this guide top!), but you guys have to always remember that life can be so great and so beautiful, all you have to do is just go outside and see what life has to offer! ;) Well, that is my new year's message for you all. Hope you guys like it, if not, just pretend you didn't read it at all... Ok, so now back to business, what do we have new on this update? I'm expecting to get closer to finish the guide with this guide, and since there's been a lot of time since the last update I've been reading a lot of your questions on the mail and been playing some little more, so I have many things to say. Here's a few list of the most important changes and new sections on the guide: Sections updated: - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - STAFF UPGRADES - SCOUTING - YOUTH ACADEMY - FINANCIAL PREDICTION - CONTRIBUTED TIPS & HINTS New sections: - TEAM CHEMISTRY AND MORALE By the way, I'm not drunk, but I do know that I just skipped the version number from 1.2 to 1.5, but is just that there are so many new things that I'm going to pretend that all the new information added equals three updates, so don't bother yourself asking me that on the mail! REMEMBER: THIS IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS!!! +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | FIFA 07 | INTRODUCTION | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ Hello there! It's been more than a year since I started writing the FIFA 06 FAQ, and once again here I am. Last year experience was even better than the year before, so I couldn't quit writing the FAQ for the Manager Mode... The sad news is that this will probably be the last FAQ I write for any Xbox game, due to the fact that now that the Xbox 360 is out for almost a year, M$ has decided to pull the cord and stop making games for this wonderful machine. But hopefully I will be able to buy my 360 in a couple of months and start doing more FAQs for more games! I have always said this: I'm a hardcore PES player, but still I never forget my roots, so no matter how much I enjoy the PES gameplay, I always come back and check the Manager Mode, which is ages ahead of the Master League. This is my third in a row FIFA FAQ, and probably none of you know about it, but my inspiration to start writing these FAQs for FIFA started back in 2004, when I started playing the Career mode for that year. I remember reading a FAQ made by this fellow called DG Dobrev, and enjoying so much what he wrote on that FAQ, that I was actually expecting the FIFA 2005 new Manager Mode to start writing a FAQ on my own... And so that's the short story on how I started into the FIFA FAQ writing (I already did some other FAQ before that by the way). And well, what can I say about this year regarding the FIFA universe? Not much, really. The gameplay is somewhat improved, but not enough to challenge Konami's fine piece, so I won't say anything else about that. But the Manager mode has been revamped and improved in many ways, that I will wait to be in the walkthrough section to explain them. I want to make this FAQ as 'Fool-proof' as I can, since year after year my mail inbox gets hundreds of emails asking the dumbest questions (no offence to anyone). And now, let's move into some other subjects here... +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | FIFA 07 | CONTENT INDEX | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ To navigate through the guide, please note that the guides have a number, so just press Ctrl + F on your browser and write the number of the section you are looking for. +-----+ | 1.0 | Frequently Asked Questions +-----+ +-----+ | 2.0 | Walkthrough +-----+ +-----+ | 2.1 | Create a Manager +-----+ +-----+ | 2.2 | Select Country +-----+ +-------+ | 2.2.1 | Select Team +-------+ +-------+ | 2.2.2 | Reading messages +-------+ +-----+ | 2.3 | Select sponsor +-----+ +-----+ | 2.4 | Manager Mode Central +-----+ +-------+ | 2.4.1 | Next Match +-------+ +-------+ | 2.4.2 | Office +-------+ +---------+ | 2.4.2.1 | Scouting +---------+ +---------+ | 2.4.2.2 | Youth Academy +---------+ +---------+ | 2.4.2.3 | Staff Upgrades +---------+ +---------+ | 2.4.2.4 | Financial Prediction +---------+ +-------+ | 2.4.3 | Team Management +-------+ +---------+ | 2.4.3.1 | Squad +---------+ +---------+ | 2.4.3.2 | Player Growth +---------+ +---------+ | 2.4.3.3 | Player Contracts +---------+ +---------+ | 2.4.3.4 | Export Team +---------+ +-------+ | 2.4.4 | Statistics +-------+ +-------+ | 2.4.5 | Transfers +-------+ +---------+ | 2.4.5.1 | Transfer Market +---------+ +-----------+ | 2.4.5.1.1 | Player Search +-----------+ +-----------+ | 2.4.5.1.2 | Signing a player +-----------+ +-----------+ | 2.4.5.1.3 | Negotiation History +-----------+ +-----------+ | 2.4.5.1.4 | Club Transfer List +-----------+ +-----------+ | 2.4.5.1.5 | Transfer Summary +-----------+ +-----------+ | 2.4.5.1.6 | Shortlist +-----------+ +-----+ | 2.4 | Team Chemistry and Morale +-----+ +-----+ | 3.0 | Contributed Hints & Tips +-----+ +-----+ | 4.0 | Final words +-----+ +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ | FIFA 07 | FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS | 1.0 | +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ Ok, the first question started to flow into my mail inbox, so I will answer the most common here. And please, don't send me question regarding gameplay, I already stated that I will ignore those emails... Q/ I choosed a 4+ star team at the beginning of my career, but I keep loosing money! How do I quit that team and start all over again with another team? A/ There's only two ways. First, you could start a new gamesave, since you are still in your first season, there's not too much to lose there. If you don't like that option, then you only have another chance, and is to get fired. Yes, it will affect your manager prestige, but I don't see any other way to get out of that. Just keep losing money and eventually you will get fired, and the season will end in that moment for you, and you will automatically be taken to the beginning of the next season, and you will be able to choose another team and everything will be pretty much the same like the last time you had to pick a team. Q/ I don't have XBOX Live, but I want to have my transfers up to date! What can I do about that? A/ You can manually update your roster. You can find the official transfer update list here: http://fifa07.ea.com/extra/?id=4495 Q/ I was looking through my players skills, and found that they were actually decreasing from year to year. Is there something I can do about it? A/ No, it's a completely normal reaction. You can't expect to have your players keeping their skills over the years (specially if they are more than 30 years old). It's like a rollercoaster, you go all the way up, and then at one point you start going down... Q/ If you fail one of the board's expectations, but make the other 3, are you definitely going to be fired at the end of the season? Or is it possible to keep your job? A/ No, you don't have to accomplish all of them. Of course, if you want to make sure that you will be asked to stay for another year, you better complete all of them, but failing on one doesn't necessarily means that you won't keep your job. Q/ How do I make it through the playoffs? A/ It varies from country to country. In some countries you will need to finish in the top 6, on anothers you need to finish on the top 8... So if you didn't get to that positions, you can be sure that you won't be on the playoffs :( Q/ Do I have to wait until the end of the season to extend my players contracts? A/ No, you can offer a player a contract extention anytime you want. You don't have to wait transfer windows or the end of the season, the only thing you should keep in mind that extending contracts costs money, so don't go around extending everyone's contract! Q/ I need help! I need to renew my squad contracts but no one seems to want to resign with my team, what should I do? A/ Don't worry. Usually the most common and easy solution to this is upgrade your negotiator staff member. There's always a point where your negotiator can't manage to 'persuade' your players, so you need a new person to handle it. But sometimes this doesn't seem to be the problem, so you should go with it and give the player the maximum allowed salary per game. And if it still doesn't make him sign, try the % bonus. If you still can't sign some player after trying all of this, you can still try something else: wait until the end of the season. If you are going to stay with the same team for one more year, once the season is finished and there are still players with just 1 year left on their contracts, you will have the chance to sign all of those players after the last match of the season. Don't worry, you won't have to negotiate the contracts, the players will make their offer and then it will be up to you to accept those contracts or let them go to some other team. Just make sure that you have enough money by the end of the season to afford all of those contracts remaining if you decide to try this option. Q/ I can't afford a stadium upgrade, but still I'm losing money, is there something else I can do about that? A/ Unfortunately there's not much you can do about this. You could try selling one of your top players to raise your budget a little bit, but it will only help for some time, and if you are losing money even at the home matches, then you are in some deep trouble my friend. Once your budget goes red and you start losing more money after every match, then you might consider just start to quick sim all of the games and wait to get fired. I know it doesn't sounds pretty, but this happens to many people that believes that having a budget of say $20,000,000 and spending $19,000,000 on a star player is a great decision. Believe me, it is not. I would love to give you guys a better answer but the truth is that there's no such thing in this situation. Sorry. Q/ What's a good team to start the manager mode? A/ I get this question every day on my mailbox, and I promised myself that I wouldn't answer this question this year, but after seeing that is helpless, I will do it anyway... As I've been saying on all of my FIFA guides, I never recommend a team, unless you write me asking me for it, and telling me exactly the idea that you have in mind to develop yourself as a manager in the game, then and only then I have some ideas that I might be sharing personally with you. Other than that, I'm going to be very clear here: If you don't want to spoil your game experience, and you want to feel that you tried everything this great game has to offer you, then you won't ever want to start with a team that is rated more than 3 stars. Doing so will make things so easy, that after a while you will get bored and even if you try after that going on a lower team, you won't feel comfortable since you already tried the best the game has to offer you, so if you don't want to spoil the game, please don't do it. If you are [insert team name here] biggest fan, and you still want to play the whole manager mode with that team, then fine, probably you won't need this guide. Just let me tell you, the manager mode wasn't designed to be played like that. Now, if you want to start from scratch and growing up as a manager, and going from the lowest teams to gradually better ones, there's a few ideas you might want to give a try. - Start with teams ranked with 0.5 to 1 star. This is a great chance to try the hardest thing in the game. Managing a team with a very low budget (less than $1,000,000), and with players with skills lower than 60... If you can manage to survive that, then I believe you are in the right way! - Let the best teams of the world for your later years in the game. If you ever wanted to manage Barcelona, ManU, AC Milan and all of the best teams in the world, you won't want to do it before your 9th or 10th year in the manager mode. Trust me, once you achieve all those past years in lower teams, gaining prestige and growing your list of trophies, you will be more than ready for the best this game has to offer you. And why do you have to wait until that for taking a job at those teams? Because once you do it, you will never want to go back, and if you do it in the first years, chances are that you won't move backwards and pick a lower team. This can affect the amount of points you win to buy in the Fan Shop, because unless you want to play again the whole manager mode, there will be lots of lost points on your manager savegame because you didn't wanted to play the lower leagues! Q/ What does it take to make the team chemistry grow? Mine seems to be stuck, also my team morale sucks! What can I do? A/ This is a very common question too, but I don't want to answer it right away here, so check for the new section regarding this issue! Q/ I started my current manager profile at this very low ranked team, and gain everything with them, but seems like the game is stucked with the starting level of the team! Is that a glitch? A/ I believe so. When I started playing with Rochdale at English League Two some time ago, it was a 0.5 star team, and the sponsor was giving me something like $3,000 per game. With my ticket sales income I was able to raise like $70,000 per game after every home match, so I managed to end that season with no problem. But the thing is that when I reached the Premier League with that team, no matter how good my team was doing and all the trophies I won over the past years with them, my sponsor offers were still around $3,000 to $5,000 and my budget was always less than $1,000,000 at the beginning of the season. And everyone reading this that is (or was) in the same situation knows that it is nearly impossible to win a league like the Premier League with something like that. Fortunately I have the autosave option off, so I went back to the last game of the past season and for the next season started the Premiership with another team, and well, it was then when I confirmed that actually this is a glitch, because instantly after I picked the other team my sponsor offers were around $200,000 to $350,000 per game... Just a tiny difference huh? ;) Q/ I can't afford those signing fees for some players... What can I do? Do I have to sell like 3 or 4 of my players to get one better? A/ No, you don't have to do that. When the transfer window comes, you have to know that you don't have to sell your soul to get some class players, and it's something called "FREE AGENTS"... Many people don't ever have done this, but if you enter the TRANSFER MARKET screen, in the SEARCH option (look for that section if you want more detailed info) there's one option that says STATUS, and you can cycle through several options there, but you have to set it to FREE AGENT. Now, what's a free agent? This are players that currently are not with any team, and this means that you don't have to pay any fee to any team for their services, so you have to just negotiate the per-game salary and some other things like bonuses or bids for your offer. If your offer is good enough, you will have a new great player on your team, and the best thing of them all, you didn't had to pay those huge amounts of money that you usually pay to another team to get a player. =P If the free agents screen is empty, chances are that you will have to wait until next transfer window to look for free agents, because this list gets populated just once every transfer window, so as soon as it begins go and check if there's something interesting for you! Keep sending your questions! ;) +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ | FIFA 07 | WALKTHROUGH | 2.0 | +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | WELCOME TO MANAGER MODE | | | | This is the Season... you take full control | | | | * Look after any League Club in the game | | * Add your Created Clubs to any league | | * Develop your Youth Players into the Stars of tomorrow | | * Manage from the Touchline in the all new Visual Sim | | * Scout the World to find your Teams' missing link | | * Choose your sponsors, and decide what you want to achieve | | | | And remember to keep your board happy, or face the axe! | | | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ This is the screen that welcomes you to the new FIFA 07 Manager Mode. It might seem that is almost the same thing than last year, and actually it is, but trust me, there are very interesting things that will keep you playing this for a while. I don't want to spoil your experience, so I will cover the basics and try to explain you the most important and tricky things for newbies. Remember my goal for this FAQ: make a 'Fool-proof' guide, so I won't make the mistake of taking you for granted and just write having in mind that you already know how to move around in the game. I will start from scratch trying to explain everything in detail. For people that already know my writing style, you know that I will do later a Manager Mode Example, so until that one is up, please be patient! Ok, that's it... let's get into our first task... +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ | FIFA 07 | CREATE A MANAGER | 2.1 | +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ The first thing you have to do before starting the Manager Mode is creating yourself in the game, as a Manager of course. Don't bother too much by the way you will look, this will all be generic... These are the things you have to set up before advancing to the next screen: * Manager look (21 pictures) * First name * Surname * Nation * Currency (pounds, euros or dollars) * Born (Year) * Born (Month) * Born (Day) As I always say, put whatever comes to your mind here, just remember that you will carry on for 15 seasons what you write down here. You can't edit this info later! +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ | FIFA 07 | SELECT COUNTRY | 2.2 | +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ The first thing you will notice is that this time your job offers aren't distributed in regions, but by Country. Also note that below the Country name the game tells you if there are job offers for you there. Don't worry by this, because at the beginning of your Career there will be job offers in every country. For those wondering about using their created clubs at the beginning of the game, please wait until that section is up and running before flooding my mail with questions about it! :P The list of countries (and leagues) available on the games is as follows: * England F.A. Premier League Football League Champ Football League One Football League Two * France French Ligue 1 Orange French Ligue 2 Orange * Germany German Bundesliga 1 German Bundesliga 2 * Italy Italian Serie A Italian Serie B * Holland Dutch Eredivisie * Norway Norwegian Tippeligaen * Poland Polish Ekstraidasa * Portugal Portuguese Liga BWIN * Scottland Scottish Premiere * Spain Spanish Primera Spanish Segunda * Sweden Swedish Allsvenskan * Switzerland Swiss Axpo Super League * Turkey Turkish Super League * Brazil Brazilian League * Mexico Mexican 1st Division * United States MLS * Republic of Korea K-League * Austria Austrian Bundesliga * Belgium Belgium League * Denmark Danish Superligaen As you can see, you have many leagues to choose from, so I will tell you the same thing I told everybody in my last FAQ, I never recommend a league to start from. It's completely up to you. My only advice is to start from the lower divisions and gain your prestige to take over bigger teams as you advance from season to season. That's the reason for this game mode. If you insist in taking a single team and manage it for the 15 season, well, if that makes you happy... Just remember, nothing makes prestige grow more than achieving trophies and leagues from all around the world, so don't make the mistake of staying in the same team for too long! +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ | FIFA 07 | SELECT TEAM | 2.2.1 | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ So you finally got decided for a Country? Good, now you have to choose a team from that Country. Note that in this screen you may find teams from different leagues all mixed up, it depends if the Country you selected has more than one league. Search in the list for the team you want, and when you find it, you will see a couple of stars next to its name. The teams are ranked from 1 to 5 stars in this game, meaning that the more stars a team have, the better overall skill level this team has. In the right side of the screen you will see the team's kits and his stats, and also you will see how much budget they have. The better the team, the bigger the budget. If you are new to this game, I would recommend you to stick to lower teams for the first couple of seasons, since having a big team doesn't mean that you will have money to spare, although the budget might look tempting, so the best thing in this cases is to wait until you get used to manage a small team, then you will be ready to manage a bigger team. (And no, I won't post here the complete list of teams in the game, it would be a complete waste of tame. You have the game, look it for yourself!) After you sign for a team, you will see the classic newspaper news telling the world about you in your new team. Actually, you will only see the headers, you can't read the newspaper article :( +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ | FIFA 07 | READING MESSAGES | 2.2.2 | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ After picking a team you will be introduced to your laptop, actually is just your email client in your laptop. There will be 4 new messages waiting for you. The first one is from your Board of Directors. Learn to please these guys because no matter how good your team is, if you don't please this people you have no future in your team. Anyway, the mail tells you about their findings on the most influential player on the team. They will ask you to line up this man to make sure the fans will support the team. The next mail is from your Scout report on the Youth Academy (I will explain this later in detail). There will always be at least one player that is actually doing great in the Reserves and you might want to take a look at him, and it's up to you if you sign him for the first team, or let him waste on the reserves. The next mail is again from your Board of Directors. This are the expectations they have for you and the team. Make sure you read this carefully because you will need to fulfill this requirements during the season if you don't want to have trouble. Finally, the last mail warns you about the players that might have their contracts about to finish, so you better take care of this as quickly as you can! +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ | FIFA 07 | SELECT SPONSOR | 2.3 | +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ This is very important, so you better read this screen carefully! You need a sponsor if you want to be able to pay your players after every match. Sign for a sponsor that don't supply your needs and you will not long last on any team. On this screen you will see from 1 to 2 pages of sponsors. Every sponsor have different signing offers, so you need to read and understand what is what you are reading. This is usually what they offer you: * FUNDING PER GAME This is the most important thing you need to look after. This is the amount of money the sponsor will give you after every match, no matter if you win or lose. You might want to sign for a sponsor that offers you the highest per game funding in the first seasons, specially if you pick a lower team, because this and your ticket sales are the only income you will have. * LOYALTY BONUS This is a plus. Many sponsors offer you this bonus if you sign for them for consecutive seasons. This shouldn't be the thing you are looking if you want to keep your finances healthy! Yes, I know it's great to have an extra bonus to make that big transfer you want, but don't get blind for it, don't let this decide for you! * LEAGUE BONUS This is the amount of money that your sponsor will pay you if you finish in first place at the end of the season. This could be a reason to sign for a specific sponsor, since chances are that you will actually finish in that place... ;) * DOMESTIC CUP BONUS If you win the Cup for the Country you are playing for, you will have this extra bonus to make some staff upgrades or for transfers... Usually is not a huge amount of money, but it can be useful for some shopping, if you know what I mean... * INTERNATIONAL CUP BONUS If your team plays, say the UEFA Champions League, or any other cup where are teams from other countries, and you actually win it, you will make yourself with this bonus. * EXTRA BONUS This is something that will change from sponsor to sponsor. Some will give you this bonus if you have the top scorer of the league, if you have the team with least goals conceded, if you have a player in the 'Team of the Month' thing, you get the idea... Remember, this is a very important decision. Also remember that the only way you can get rid of a sponsor contract is by being fired, so there's no room for signing with other sponsor in the middle of the season. +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ | FIFA 07 | MANAGER MODE CENTRAL | 2.4 | +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ After doing all of the things I explained before, another newspaper will appear on the screen. It will always be a big star available for transfer, so if you are in a big team and have enough budget, you might want to check if you can sign that player. Otherwise, just ignore it. And well, after all this set up, we are finally ready to manage our team! People who played the FIFA 06 Manager Mode will feel home with the menus and the layout. And most of the options here work exactly the same way they did last year... If you are new around here, don't worry, I will explain everything again ;) As usual, I will divide this section into many sub-sections to keep things clear and smooth around here... But before we jump into the sub-sections, the options available here in the menu will look something like this: +-----------------------+ | NEXT MATCH | +-----------------------+ | OFFICE | +-----------------------+ | TEAM MANAGEMENT | +-----------------------+ | STATISTICS | +-----------------------+ | TRANSFERS | +-----------------------+ | SAVE MANAGER MODE | +-----------------------+ +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ | FIFA 07 | NEXT MATCH | 2.4.1 | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ When you are ready to play your next match, use this option and you will be taken into the MATCH SETUP screen. Your options here are +-----------------------+ | PLAY MATCH | +-----------------------+ | VISUAL SIM | +-----------------------+ | QUICK SIM | +-----------------------+ | MANAGE YOUR TEAM | +-----------------------+ | TICKET PRICE | +-----------------------+ The PLAY MATCH option will take you directly into the pitch. Be sure to manage your team before using this option, or you will have to leave the game and it will automatically result in a loss... This is specially painful if you have the AutoSave option ON, so be careful with that. The VISUAL SIM has been changed from the last year's one. Now you will have an On-Screen narrated game, where you can adjust the speed of the text that describes what's going on in the pitch. You can't do anything from here, just sit down and read what happens. If your team is not doing well you can intervene, which will take you into the match in the same minute it was in the Visual Sim. This will be easy for those familiar with games like Championship Manager. The QUICK SIM option will just generate automatically the result of the game. That's it, you can't intervene, it will just give you the result and there's nothing you can do about it. Now, how is this result going to be generated? It's not a certain thing, but I believe that it is generated depending on your team's latest performances, so I would recommend avoiding this option if you are not doing well in the last matches. MANAGE YOUR TEAM will allow you to make last-minute changes to your line up or your substitutes, as well with your kick takers and man marking setup. I will explain the TICKET PRICE option later on its own sub-section, since it is an important issue, but I want to cover it on the finances section, so let's just leave it for now... +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ | FIFA 07 | OFFICE | 2.4.2 | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ There are many things you can do in your office. Too bad there isn't any option to hire a hot assistant... I miss that from PES Manager :( +-----------------------+ | CALENDAR | +-----------------------+ | SCOUTING | +-----------------------+ | YOUTH ACADEMY | +-----------------------+ | STAFF UPGRADES | +-----------------------+ | SPONSOR DETAILS | +-----------------------+ | MANAGER HISTORY | +-----------------------+ | FINANCIAL PREDICTION | +-----------------------+ | BOARD EXPECTATIONS | +-----------------------+ | CURRENCY | +-----------------------+ I will explain the easy things right here, and some other things will have their own sub-sections, because I want to focus on some things later... CALENDAR On the calendar you can see all the matches you have to play in a month, as well with all the fixtures for those dates. There's not much to say about this anyway... SPONSOR DETAILS Did you forgot what was on the contract you signed at the beginning of the season? This option will show you the contract, so you can review your pending assignments with your sponsor. MANAGER HISTORY This screen will show you all your achievements during your career. There are some statistics and records about you. It may be worth looking after a few seasons to see your past performance. BOARD EXPECTATIONS This shows you a summary of the expectations the Board of Directors has on you. You can see your current results, and compare them with the list of expectations. Also you can see the comments the Board has about your work, but note that these comments will only show up after the end of the season. CURRENCY This isn't is even a screen, is just a button actually. It will allow you to change the currency used on the game. You can cycle through pounds, euros or dollars. Enough said. Now I will explain the other options more in detail... +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | SCOUTING | 2.4.2.1 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ This is the screen you want to look at when you are looking for new, fresh talent. Keep in mind that the players that this scout will find are unknown and talented young boys, and that the quality of the results depends on your Staff (see the next sections for details on this). There are a few things you need to specify when sending your scout: LOCATION You need to specify which part of the world you want your scout to look for new talent. I was asked before if the region you look at has something to do with the skills the players has, and I would say no, but I haven't done any research within the game to support this, so I will just stick to my answer for now... Anyway, the regions available for searching are: * England * France * Germany * Netherlands * Italy * Spain * Rest of Europe * Africa * Americas * Asia/Oceania ROLE If you are looking for a specific position, you can select it here. If you are just looking for any new talent, just leave it as 'Any'. POSITION If you selected a role, then you may want to select a position too, and it will depend completely on the role you picked before. DURATION You need to pay special attention here. The duration of the scout will directly influence the results of the search. The deeper you search, the better results you will find. After sending your scout, you can only wait. Depending on the duration you selected, it will take from a couple of weeks to one month, or even more, so be patient. You will be informed of the results (if there's any) after your matches. Please note that the SHORTLIST option will be explained later in the TRANSFERS section. For now let's just keep things simple. * UPDATE * Many people has asked me regarding some glitches with the scouting system on the game. If you have a level 6 or 7 scout and still are getting players with overall skills of 35 to 40, then I believe you are having a glitch. But also don't expect to get players around 85 to 90 even with a level 10, it just won't happen. Even with a level 10 on everything, your results will be around 65 to 70, so expect something in that range. Now, if you confirmed that your scout has a glitch, the easiest way to get rid of that glitch without having to start all over again the manager mode, change teams for the next season. Usually it stops the glitch from happening again. +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | YOUTH ACADEMY | 2.4.2.2 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ This is one of the new features of the FIFA 07 Manager Mode. And I have to say that is a very interesting one. What is it for? Think of it as your young reserves team, and they are waiting for a chance of jumping into the first team. It will change from team to team, so one teams will have several players in this section, and some others will have very few. How does it work? You have a list of available players, and you can see their stats. And there are two things you can do with them, sign any of them for your team, or let them in the list for more time. It's like a free scouting service! Now, if you don't know how the signing process works, you might want to wait for the TRANSFERS section be up and running (which I hope will be in the next update). A good advice is that even if you don't want the players on this list, you can always have them to sign with your team, and put them on the club transfer list on the next transfer window. This will make some profit for you, because signing this players costs you from $3,000 to around $30,000 or $40,000; but you can sell them for around $80,000 to $100,000+ in some cases... Either way it won't be bad for your budget ;) Also remember that if you don't sign them, they will go to another team by the end of the season, and you won't get a dime for that, so you better follow my advice and sign them for selling them later. * UPDATED * I found that actually not all the players in this list will sign with you, so don't be surprised if you try to sign a player and they decline your offer! I found different reasons for this, sometimes their parents won't let them sign because they don't think football is the path for they to follow. Other times the player will tell you that they feel that you are not the right manager for them... So that will complicate things a little, but don't worry, you can always use the Scouting option if you need! +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | STAFF UPGRADES | 2.4.2.3 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ One of the most important things you have to take care of is about your staff. You will have to depend on them for a lot of things, so you better make sure that you have the best staff you can. Each staff member has 10 levels, and upgrading each level will cost you some of you budget, so schedule your upgrades if you don't want to bankrupt your team! There are 8 staff members, which are as follows: STRIKER COACH This staff member will focus in striker training. If you want to have your strikers in good shape, you need to upgrade this staff member. MIDFIELDER COACH This staff will train your midfielders exclusively. Same as the striker coach actually... DEFENSE COACH As with the strikers and midfielders, this coach will focus on training your defence. GOALKEEPER COACH This is a very important one. You want a class goalkeeper, you better invest on this coach. NEGOTIATOR If you want to make some big transfers, you need to upgrade this staff member as much as you can. If your negotiator level is down, most of the players won't come to your team. Keep that in mind. SCOUT Upgrading this staff member will help you to improve your scouting results, meaning in more talented young players. MEDIAL STAFF Pay special attention to this one. If you don't want your players to be fatigued after every match, you need to upgrade this staff member. Or if you don't want to lose your players for too long when they get injured, this staff member will help you to reduce the time they are off. STADIUM MANAGER The size of your stadium determines how much tickets you can sell, so this upgrade will pay return you a lot of money in the long term. Note that this is by far the most expensive upgrade of them all. If you are planning on upgrading this, you might want to make sure that you won't run out of money for paying your players. * UPDATED * Some people have been asking me what's the point of upgrading the defender, midfielder and striker coaches? This might be a waste of money for some, but if you want your younger players to develop faster and increase their overall skill faster, then you want to invest your money here. If you don't do it, this players will last longer to increase their overall skill, and you can see that after every match... How? Have you seen many of your players reach 100 XP points many times and still are stuck on the same overall skill? They won't develop their full potential until you upgrade this staff members. Also don't expect that even having a 10 level on this staff members your players will reach the 100 XP points and automatically will gain the next point on their skills... The difference will be that by the end of the season probably they will gain one or even two more skill points than the predicted in the "PLAYER GROWTH" screen. +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | FINANCIAL PREDICTION | 2.4.2.4 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ Ok, people started asking about this section, so I believe it's time to start writing about it. Is important that you understand what this screen does. First of all, everything you do here doesn't have any effect in any other side, since this is only like a tool that will help you planning your budget and seeing how your finances will evolve, depending on a couple of things. This screen is divided in three boxes. The first one, the one in the upper left part of the screen is the PREDICTED EXPENSES, the second one is right below the first one, is the INCOME box, and the last one is the BUDGET. PREDICTED EXPENSES This is just a prediction. Keep in mind that this is just affected by what you've done in the past, so if you keep moving your transfers and doing staff upgrades the info displayed on this box will change. INCOME Now, this is the box that you can interact with. See the A button next to the Tickets field? If you press A, it will show you how much your income funds vary depending on the price of the tickets. Note that a HIGH price doesn't mean more incoming funds, so figure out which level price is the one that gives you more revenue. Usually at the beginning of the season on any new team you will have to set the price to MEDIUM or even LOW, so check this screen always at the beginning of the season, and as you gradually gain more reputation and fan respect, you can check here if you can step to the next ticket price. BUDGET This is the result of the last two boxes. If you have more expenses than incoming funds, you will have red numbers here, so you better plan wisely your transfers and set a right ticket price, so you can balance this. * UPDATE * This issue is not directly related to the financial predictions screen, but is on this screen that you can actually discover that something is going on with this. I'm talking about selling the fan favourite player. A few seasons ago I made the mistake to sell the fan favourite player while I was having some serious money problems... And although I did a stadium upgrade with that money, I thought that I was going to recover all that money really fast and that it was the solution to all of my financial problems, actually I started to notice that even after a really expensive stadium upgrade my ticket sales were almost the same than the sales that I was having with the old stadium... I came to this screen to see what was going on, and noticed that people refused to pay the high ticket price after I sold that player, and I had to set the price on medium, meaning that I wasn't making more money, but I was making even less money that I was doing before upgrading my stadium and selling that player. So be very careful about your decisions, and I mean it financial-wise... Always check this screen after this kind of decisions, sometimes you believe people don't care about this and that no matter what you do they will always crowd your stadium, but I had to learn the hard way that it isn't like that at all! +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ | FIFA 07 | TEAM MANAGEMENT | 2.4.3 | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ This screen is another big section, and unlike the Office, you control here the issues regarding your squad and your players' contracts. You have a menu here, which looks something like this: +--------------------+ | SQUAD | +--------------------+ | PLAYER GROWTH | +--------------------+ | KICK TAKERS | +--------------------+ | EDIT KIT NUMBER | +--------------------+ | PLAYER CONTRACTS | +--------------------+ | CONTRACT ALERTS | +--------------------+ | EXPORT TEAM | +--------------------+ I will explain the easiest options here, and I'll have to make a couple of sub-sections for those options that needs more explanation. KICK TAKERS This is just like the option you have when you are in the NEXT MATCH option. This will just tell the game which players will take your corner kicks, free kicks and penalty kicks. You better configure this before starting the match, because it's a little annoying to do it during the match (you can cycle through your squad to take a free kick or corner kick by pressing the White button and then moving the left stick). EDIT KIT NUMBER There's this chart with all the available numbers you can assign to your players. The numbers in red are the numbers that are already taken. You can change your kit numbers anytime you want, no matter if you are in the middle of the season. CONTRACT ALERTS If you have players with just 1 year of contract remaining, this screen will warn you about that. You can only renew those player contracts if they are not retiring. If a player is retiring they will have a sign next to their picture, meaning that you can not renew his contract. Note that this screen will only show you which players have this problem, but you need to go to PLAYER CONTRACTS for renewing those contracts (see the next sections for that). Next I'm gonna explain the remaining options in their own sub-sections... +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | SQUAD | 2.4.3.1 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ This option lets you change your current team line-up, as well the substitutes for every match, also the reserves. You need to come here and check your players fatigue after every match. Full green fatigue bars are the best, while red empty are the worst. You might want to avoid having red or yellow fatigue bars on your line-up team. Also note that on the right side of the screen you have by default your current formation. You can cycle through the available formations by pressing the Black/White buttons. Pressing the Left/Right triggers will take you to another options on the right side of the screen. The COMPARISON option will give you the chance of compare two players stats. Just press A and the stats for that players will lock, and you can move to any other player while still having the first player's stats on the screen. The CHEMISTRY option will display some attributes like Morale, Team Experience and Preferred Position for every player. This is specially useful if you are trying to improve your Team Chemistry (I will cover that in another section). +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | PLAYER GROWTH | 2.4.3.2 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ (Thanks to Matt McCluskey for the corrections to this section) As you may have already know, this year one of the new features of the Manager Mode is that your players will have a dynamic growth in their stats, meaning that you will actually be able to see how are they developing after every match. After every match you will see how many XP points (experience) he gained, this depending completely on how many minutes he played. When a player reaches 100 XP points, they don't necessarily go up 1 point in their overall skill. Sometimes they remain the same overall, but increases in 1 point other stats like stamina, sprint speed or composure. Although this could not be enough to gain 1 point in their overall skill. Well, at this screen you can see more detailed information about this. On the left side of the screen you have your team roster, and as you move through your players, you will see that on the right side of the screen you have a chart on your player growth (current and future). Pressing the Right/Left trigger will advance or return the X axis (years). Note that you can only see a prediction on the next 2 years from where you are, so that tells you that the stats for the players aren't static, giving you the chance to improve greatly those stats through the years. +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | PLAYER CONTRACTS | 2.4.3.3 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ (Thanks to Matt McCluskey for the corrections to this section) You must pay special attention to this section. You have your team's complete roster here, and all you will see here is information regarding your players contracts. You can renew your players contracts in this section. No matter if a player still has 2 or 3 years in his contract, if you want to boost his morale, or if you are getting too many buy offers from other teams, and if for some reason you don't want to sell him, renew his contract and that will be a clear signal for other teams trying to buy that player. Note that the maximum length a contract can be is 5 years. You can not extend a contract more than that. If you don't renew a player contract and it expires, you still have the chance of signing him at the end of the season. If you fail to sign him (or you just turn him down), then he will left the team. Now, be aware that it won't be always easy to renew a contract. Sometimes players will want some special treatment in order to renew contract with you. Usually raising the fees a little will help, or offer him an extra bonus for goals scored (for strikers and midfielders), clean sheets (defenders and goalkeepers). When resigning a player, the screen will have this options: RESIGNING YEARS How many more years you want to sign this player with your team. Remember, you can't sign a player for more than 5 years. PLAYER SALARY PER GAME How much this player will receive for every match he plays, no matter if he plays the entire match, or just 5 minutes. PER CLEAN SHEET (GK, DF) This is a percentage value. In this case is applied only for defenders and goalkeepers. This percentage can vary from 5%, 10% or 15%. Use this option only if you have tried raising the salary and still don't want to resign with you. GOAL BONUS (ST, MF) This is also a percentage value too. This will only apply for strikers and midfielders as stated before. Same rules as above, use this only if you need it (specially if you are signing a player that scores many goals per season). After you filled this fields, you can press A, and the player will tell you if he accepts or rejects your offer. If you get your offer rejected, you need to wait a couple of matches before you can strike another offer to that same player. When trying with a player that already rejected your offer, raise a little bit your previous offer, also include some clean sheet or goal bonus. +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | EXPORT TEAM | 2.4.3.4 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ If you want to use your current Manager Mode team in other game modes, or in Xbox Live, you can use this option. You need to select this option, and give a name for the gamesave data. The file will be created and you then will have to leave your current Manager Mode file to return to the FIFA 07 main menu. From here, go to the LOAD screen and you should see the gamesave you just created with your Manager Mode team. Press A and the game will prompt you where you want to place the data (you need to have at least one empty slot). After you selected one empty slot where to place your team, the game will place your team in MY LEAGUE. Now you just need to go into that game mode you want and when selecting team, cycle through the leagues and you will find the MY LEAGUE option, and you should find there the team you just exported! Simple as that, genius! :P +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ | FIFA 07 | STATISTICS | 2.4.4 | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ Every year I come to this section and get a little bit dissapointed, and this year I'm feeling kind of the same... anyway, this is not a discussion on what should and shouldn't be done with this option, let's just explain how it works. The menu for this section looks more or less like this: +----------------------+ | LEADERBOARD | +----------------------+ | PLAYER STATS | +----------------------+ | XXX PLAYOFFS * | +----------------------+ | LEAGUE TABLE | +----------------------+ * This option will depend on the league you are playing. Some leagues have playoffs, and some others don't, so this could vary from one league to another. Let's explain these options then... LEADERBOARD This option is actually just several charts. You will find here: * Top Scorers * Average Goals/Game * Assists * Clean Sheets * Yellow Cards * Red Cards PLAYER STATS Now, this is the thing that dissapoints me. I would expect some better compilated information, but is just a bunch of numbers in screen, and the column headers aren't even well explained, so I won't struggle with that here. LEAGUE TABLE This is the classic league table, where you can see the current standings for the league you are playing. Matches played, wins, loses, draws, everything is here. Not much to say really. XXX PLAYOFFS If the league you play has a playoff system, you will see here the match legs, and you can cycle through the different stages using the White/Black buttons. XXX CUP If you are playing any kind of cup in the league you are, you can see the match legs here. Or if the cup has an elimination round (like ECC) you can see the group stage and then cycle through the next rounds. +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ | FIFA 07 | TRANSFERS | 2.4.5 | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------+-----------+ Ok, let me get this straight: This has to be one of your top priorities when managing a team. Why? Because without new and talented players your team will always be missing something. If you played FIFA 06 you will feel very comfortable with this transfer system, because it's almost the same thing. A few new nice things have been added, but basically it's the same transfer system than last year, so I expect having no trouble explaining this again. But first things first. The first thing you need to know is that you can't make transfers all year long, so you need to stick to the transfer windows, which usually are from July to August, and then all January long. If you are planning on getting that big transfer I would recommend you planning your finances very carefully. Is normal to get excited about this, spending a lot of money in one player, but not doing wise business could ruin a complete season, so you can't tell that I didn't warn you! Remember, always keep a balance between transfers, staff upgrades and contract renewals. And well, with that said I believe that we are ready to move into the transfer menu... +------------------------+ | TRANSFER MARKET | +------------------------+ | NEGOTIATION HISTORY | +------------------------+ | CLUB TRANSFER LIST | +------------------------+ | TRANSFER SUMMARY | +------------------------+ | SHORTLIST | +------------------------+ Since this is one of the most important sections of the whole guide, I won't take anything for granted and I will do a sub-sectin for every option in this menu... +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | TRANSFER MARKET | 2.4.5.1 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ Well, think about this like if this were a supermarket... I know, it's not the best way to explain it, but let me get to the point. You don't want to waste your time looking in 20 different places, you want to see what's available to buy in a single place... So you need to come here. In this window you will have a compilated list of players available for transfer. At the top of the window is displayed some information you should take a look at. Is your budget and your remaining bids. Also you can see the status of the player you are currently looking at (could be for sale or for loan). It should look something like this: +------------------------------------------ | | BIDS REMAINING: X | BUDGET: $ XXX,XXX | STATUS: For Sale / For Loan | | WHAT ARE THE BIDS? I always get this question, so I want to make this very clear. You have a limit on how many times you can try to buy a player every week. I think this is a great idea, because otherwise people would just flow the market trying to get as many players as they can, so this is a fantastic way to reduce that. IS THERE A WAY TO GET MORE BIDS? Yes, don't use your bids one week and it will accumulate with the next week ones, so you will have lots of bids after a while if you don't use them all at the beginning. IS THERE A DIFFERENCE IF I USE DOUBLE BIDS WHEN SIGNING A PLAYER? Yes. If you use double bid when offering a contract to a player, the player will take notice of that, meaning that you have a serious offer for him, so that should make a difference. Always remember to have a negotiator with a high level, otherwise this shouldn't make any difference at all. After explaining the bids, the only thing remaining is to remind you that you can cycle through pages of available players using your Left/Right trigger. Not finding what you are looking for? Then look at the next section. +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | PLAYER SEARCH | 2.4.5.1.1 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ So you came to the transfer window and didn't find what you wanted? Don't worry about that, the TRANSFER MARKET screen only shows the players that are available within your home league. You can search for more players through all the world. To access this option you need to press the Black button in the TRANSFER MARKET screen. Once you press that button, a new menu will show up and the TRANSFER MARKET menu will fade in the background. Now, you need to know what you are looking for if you want best results, although you could find almost anything here. Actually you can see all the players in the game if you want to... Also note that you can look for players that aren't even listed for transfer, this meaning that no matter if they are not listed for transfer you can still bid for them (although it will be harder to sign a player that is not listed for transfer). This are the search options: * LEAGUE (Leave it as "Any" if you want to search all the leagues) * TEAM (You can specify a team or leave it as "Any") * ATTRIBUTE You can search for a very specific condition in a player... this are the search options for this option: * OVERALL * ACCELERATION * AGGRESSION * SPRINT SPEED * STAMINA * STRENGTH * MARKING * TACKLING * BALL CONTROL * DRIBBLING * CROSSING * HEADING * SHORT PASSING * LONG PASSING * FINISHING * SHOT POWER * LONG SHOTS * REACTIONS * COMPOSURE * REFLEXES (GK) * HANDLING (GK) * POSITIONING (GK) * FREE KICKS * WEAK FOOT ABILITY * DIVING (GK) * MIN (ATTRIBUTE SELECTED) * MAX (ATTRIBUTE SELECTED) * ROLE (DEF, MID, ATT) * POSITION (The specific position in the role you selected) * PLAYING STYLE Also you can search for a specific playing style, which are: * SHOT STOPPER * TARGET MAN * CLINICAL STRIKER * COUNTER ATTACKER * DRIBBLER * MIDFIELD MAESTRO (MAESTRO = MASTER in Spanish) * DEFENSIVE MIDFIELDER * BOX TO BOX * BALL WINNER * SWEEPER * STOPPER * WING BACKS * ATTACKING WINGER Note that this styles are available for every player, regardless the role or the position you selected, so this list won't vary. * STATUS This is the one thing you should look at. You can specify the status for the player you want, and if you add this to all the options I just listed above... Well, you can see the Search potential this tool has! This are the options you can select here: * AVAILABLE FOR TRANSFER (Only listed players will be shown) * AVAILABLE FOR LOAN (Only listed players will be shown) * FREE AGENT (Players without a team) * OFFER ALREADY MADE * ANY After filling all this fields, you can press the A button, and the search will begin. If you have luck the background will highlight again and you will have a list with the players found that matched your specifications. If you didn't have luck, you can search again (changing a few options to see if you have luck with that, or you can just cancel the search and return to the TRANSFER MARKET screen. +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | SIGNING A PLAYER | 2.4.5.1.2 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ well, I assume you already know how to search for a player (see the last two sections for that), so now I will explain how to actually make an offer to a player. No matter if you are in the TRANSFER MARKET screen or the SEARCH PLAYER option, scroll to the player you want to offer a contract, and press the A button. A new screen will come, which is called CONTRACT CONDITIONS. At this screen you can specify the exact terms of the contract you are offering to that player, so read them carefully and make sure that you understand what you are offering him. This are the options: STATUS You need to specify what kind of contract you are offering him. It can be a BUY contract, or a LOAN contract. Note that if you are willing to buy a player, you will need to also pay a transfer fee. If you just want to loan that player, you won't be asked for a transfer fee, but keep in mind that if you sign that player, he will remain on your team until the end of the season, and then he will return to his original team. TRANSFER FEE This is the fee that you need to pay to the player's team in order to let him go to your team. If you already made an offer for that player and things didn't go well, you might want to try raising this a little bit. PLAYER SALARY PER GAME How much you will pay to this player for every match he plays. Even if he plays just a couple of minutes, you will have to pay him this fee. Never ever place an offer with a lower per game fee than the original that is already place for default on the player's contract. He will turn your offer down most of the times. CONTRACT LENGTH You will need to define this only if you are trying to buy the player, remember that in LOAN contracts you already know that the player will play with your team just until the end of the season. Now, the general rule is that you can offer longer contract lengths to younger players, while in veterans you will want to offer them just 1 or 2 years, specially if they are already over 30 years old. # OF BIDS As I explained above, if you want to be taken seriously by a player, you need to use double bid. So when use a single bid? When you already have high skilled players on your team, it seems like new players tend to come easier to your team, so you can use then just one bid on those cases. CLEAN SHEET BONUS (GK, DEF) This can be an extra bonus you can offer, but be careful, because if the player's salary is already high, and you offer him say 15%, you will need to pay him a lot more money... Worse if you have several players with this contract conditions in your team! Use this wisely. GOAL BONUS (ST, MF) Same as above. Use this only as a bonus for a player that is getting hard to sign. After you submit the offer, you need to wait until the next match is over, and then you will receive an email from your negotiator, telling you if you signed or not that player. If you couldn't sign him, see the next section for some help on that! +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | NEGOTIATION HISTORY | 2.4.5.1.3 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ You must know that not all of the times you will succesfully sign a player, specially on the first attempt, so you need to learn to understand this section to modify your offer and learn what was the factor that made that player don't want to sign with you. Please note that you will be able to use this screen until you make an offer out to a player. No matter if you signed him or not, until that you just won't be able to use this screen. I assume that you already know how to make an offer to a player (read the section above for more details on that), so we'll just discuss here how to understand the information on this screen. At first, you will have at least one player on the list, but it could be more. You might want to check that there are some smileys on the right side of the name of the players, telling you how satisfied were they with your last offer. Once you scroll through the players, you will notice that on the right side of the screen are the details of your last offer to that player, but the interesting stuff here is what you can do by pressing the Black/White button. Doing so will take you to the RESULTS screen that will indicate how close or far you were from signing this player. This is not a hard thing to understand. It's a half-circle graphic where you can see an arrow telling you where your offer landed. This are the three colors of the graphic: RED - NOT EVEN CLOSE Ok, there are two chances here. Either you tried to sign a player that is way out of your reach, or your offer was lower than he was already receiving in his current team, so try again raising his salary or offering him a bonus, maybe that will help. ORANGE - GETTING CLOSE Ok, your offer wasn't that good, but it didn't sucked either! You need to use double bid if you didn't at first, and raise a little bit your previous offer. GREEN - SIGNED No matter if the arrow just landed just passed the orange color, or if it reached the 100%, you just signed this player. That's the only thing that matters. Well done! Always look to this graphic when you are trying to sign a player, it will pretty much tell you all you need to know to sign a player! +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | CLUB TRANSFER LIST | 2.4.5.1.4 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ So you need a little cash? Have too much players warming the bench? You might want to sell them or just loan them to other teams. At this screen you will have your complete team roster, and you can see some details like their overall skill, age, price and morale. So, the question is... HOW DO I SELL/LOAN OUT A PLAYER? If you want to sell a player, you need to set his status to SELL, and for that you just need to scroll until you are placed on that player, and press the A button. The screen will fade and a tiny option will pop up. You have just two options, set the status to FOR SALE, or FOR LOAN. And that's it, all you can do is wait. Sometimes after a match you will receive offers from other teams. But note that this is not a rule, if you set a player's status to SELL/LOAN it doesn't mean that all the other teams will be automatically sending offers for these players. Also note that the player's morale will drop like 5% after you change his status to LOAN/SALE. Questions about how selling a player after you receive an offer? I'll write a section for that, just be patient! :P +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | TRANSFER SUMMARY | 2.4.5.1.5 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ You couldn't sign a player and now you want to know who did? Or you just want to see how is the market going nowadays? This is the section for you. Now, let me tell you that there's not a lot of things you can do here, is just like a report from all the transfers being made during the current transfer window in all of the leagues of your current manager savegame. The details you can see here are: * SURNAME * PRICE * FROM * TO Other than that, all you can do is just see the Bio for those players, change the sorting of the list, or just search by Surname... If you want to do something else, you should go back to the TRANSFER MARKET screen... +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ | FIFA 07 | SHORTLIST | 2.4.5.1.6 | +---------+-----------------------------------------------------+-------------+ If you paid your scout to go looking for new players, and you weren't so sure about signing or not a player, you probably send those players to this list. And is actually a great new addition to FIFA 07, since you can save the findings of your scout to sign them later, something that you couldn't do on FIFA 06! When you have players waiting on this list, your only options are sign the player or let him more time in the list. You can't change the contract options, since they don't have a team behind them to negotiate. So, the next time you receive news from your scout, and you don't have the money in that right moment, or you just want to see if there's something better, send the players to this list, they will be here for the rest of the season, so don't worry ;) +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ | FIFA 07 | TEAM CHEMISTRY AND MORALE | 3.0 | +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ People has been asking for a way to make their team chemistry grow, and probably there's many ways to do it, but the method I'm about to tell you about has worked just fine for me, so I'll stick to this one. If you have some different method, please let me know, the more ways we have covered to this issue will benefit all of you! Now, this method works only if you stick to it. This is a long-term strategy, so don't expect to improve your team chemistry like 30 points per season... FIRST STEP "KNOW YOUR TEAM" I'm assuming that you are starting a new season with a new team. You can do this even if you are in the middle of the season or even finishing it, but the results will show after a while. As soon as you get to your new team, go to SQUAD and select the formation that suits better your style of playing. Usually the game uses the 4-4-2, and if you play with that one, then don't change anything. After that, look for the first team players, the substitutes and reserves, and look for the most talented players you have. Try to put the best players for the positions the system you just picked. Try to switch players in some positions to see if someone has a better overalls kill in a specific position, sometimes it happens (remember that a CAM will perform best in his position than in a RM or LM position, so pay attention to that and all of the other positions!) We are ready for the next step. SECOND STEP "GIVE ME THAT NUMBER!" You can take this step only if you already did the last one. If you do it without reading and doing what I just said above, then this method won't work. So now you have your starting eleven. I guess it is the best you have in hand, so now go to the KIT NUMBERS screen. Here's the magic. Your starting eleven will be in the first page of players in this screen. Assign them numbers from 1 to 11 IN THAT ORDER! don't skip anyone and don't switch numbers. Maybe some of you have a player with a specific number and don't want to change that, so it's ok, don't do it, but if you want to get this to work you will have to sacrify that... With your subs and reserves you are free to assign any number you want, it doesn't matter... THIRD STEP "STICK TO YOUR 1st SQUAD" Now, if you did the last two steps, you have now selected the best team you could, and you assign them a number from 1 to 11. What's next? You need to play this starting team ALWAYS! You can only change a player if he's injured or is too tired, otherwise you can't mess with your starting squad. Doing so won't help at all on improving your team chemistry. REWARDS The reward of using this system is that even if you forget the order your players have in the pitch, you can always use the numbers to know which one is the specific position for that player. After a few months (in game of course) you will notice that the players will get used to your system and the team chemistry will start to grow noticeable. The bad thing is that after a while, if you sell a player or get a new one, the other players will need some time to get used to him, so your team chemistry will stuck for a little while during that, but then it will start to grow again, so don't worry about that. THAT'S OK, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TEAM MORALE? Ok, the problem with this system is that your first team morale is going to be on top... But your subs and reserves will start to complain about you don't giving them some minutes on the pitch. You can always have 3 different substitute players enter the pitch for 20 or 30 minutes every match, and this way you will make their morale grow a little too, although it won't be as much as the first team morale. But I prefer to let my whole first team to rest when I'm playing against the teams in the lowest part of the table. I use my complete subs and reserves team on those matches, and that way they won't feel like they are just warming the bench! Don't worry about giving a draw or even losing those matches (unless you are after the "Undefeated season" reward by the end of the season), what's important here is to keep your team morale high, and this is an excellent way to do it without messing with this system. Do you have a better system for this? I'm open to hear new ideas about this issue. +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ | FIFA 07 | CONTRIBUTED HINTS & TIPS | 3.0 | +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ Alright, I have received some good stuff on my email regarding FIFA 07, so I want to share it with everyone reading this. Please note that duplicate contributions won't be credited! Want to add something we don't know yet? See the contact info at the beginning of the guide... Contributed by: Max147 (PC) "... And the easy way to make goal is in if I shoot the ball while crossing by pressing the 6 button and shoot by pressing 5 button then 80% i get goal but sometimes 20% faliure when my timing is wrong and where is the trick stick i can't find it out." Contributed by: Patrick Star EASY MONEY At the transfer period at the start season, buy the "free agent" player and have stat ovr > 80, then sell the player. or you can add the player to your squad. You can get 8 million euro or more according the player's age. EASY PLAYER If your scouting level is high (best if 10), it's better to scout the player than buy a player that plays in other club. It's cheaper an mostly, you can get a young talent that will be a next "Ronaldinho" or others. This can be a good investment to, because after 2 or 3 years the player's price will be increased. Some more tips by: Max147 "To take the power head shot please use the dummymove + shoot and see but use the formation of 4-3-2. But beaware to keep pressing those keys cause if you hit those keys after the keeper kicks the ball and the timing is wrong then the player will come forward and other player will come to take the heading but most of the time he will miss it. Try it with and without using dummy move and see the different. Hey if u guys want to know the tricks in fifa then plz try with the classic teams not only those teams but Arsenal, Chelsea, Barcelona and lots of other teams cause they have very good moves and their chemistry is also above 90 don't aim to make goals just try to see their cool moves like for example if your opponent is doing the long pass(See the diagram below) then just try pressing the dummy move + a and see what happens not everytime but depending upon your player's position your player specially midfielders will boost and come forward to reach the ball. Try just mixing with the pace control and dummymove + arrow keys i use joystick 5 + 6 + anolog stick. Just try to mix them and see what happens u may not realise when u are just starting but u will after couple of practice. Once i made some cool some moves and Mr. Andy Gray said "I can't do that." * \ @@@@@ @ = Your Player \ * = Opponent (During the long pass) * Always use the dummymove while your alone or defending that's the way that you won't loose the ball most of the time. In this version of fifa 07 i see that calling the defenders isn't so necessary i feel that using the dummy move is enough while defending according to my experience. And don't forget to use (OT=Offside trap and BO= Box Overload ZD= Zonal Defending) Cause OT tactics will keep your defenders to a straight line in front of the opposition strikers and BO=Box Overload will push more players into the oppositions box and ZD = Zonal Defending the defenders will stay on their position until you will call them. Other like Wp=Wing play is also imp i think i don't have to write about that i think so. This are my most used tactics in the game. And plz do not tackle (Slide Key-A) form behind cause i have tried it if you tackle from behind then 90% chances of red card which you don't want though i tried from the front using the Slide it was 60 yellow and 40 red. I don't know what this is but after playing one season i was undefeated in every game then when i started a new carrer mode then my reputation level was 3 usally it gets started with 2 but i don't know is this a bug?" Contributed by: Willie Visser "I own the PS2 version of the game. I have received a list of players that will grow into stars when taken into your team. This works on the PS2 version but I'm unsure of the Xbox version. You can just check and if it's the same you can add it to your hints & tips. Copied into this email is part of the email that I received from EA containing the lis of players to look out for… Tips from the Manager: We have a more realistic player growth system in the game now. Get hold of a promising youngster and turn them into stars of the future. Keep an eye out for these players on the transfer market as they could be the key to winning this season: Daniel Sturridge, Nuri Sahin, Jesus Navas, Ramon, Jeremy Toulalan, Anderson . Thanks" Contributed by: Eli Kagan "I've been really confused because my version of the game (xbox 360) doesn't have a lot of the features that you mentioned in the manager mode. For example, I don't have the Youth Development thing, Financial Prediction, Short List. Inside Manager mode, my menus look like this: NEXT MATCH OFFICE -CALENDAR -SCOUTING -CONTRACTS -STAFF UPGRADES -SPONSORSHIP CONTRACT -MANAGER HISTORY TEAM MANAGEMENT -PLAYER GROWTH -SQUADS -FORMATIONS -FORMATION EDITOR -ATTACKING MOVEMENT -DEFENSIVE ROLES -KICK TAKERS -EDIT KIT NUMBERS STATISTICS TEAM PERFORMANCE LEAGUE TABLES GROUP TABLES FIXTURES TOP 20S PLAYER STATES TRANSFER CENTRAL MY FIFA 07 EA SPORTS TRAX SETTINGS PROFILE MANAGER EA SPORTS EXTRAS SAVE QUIT" * Keep sending your contributions, they are very welcome on this section! +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ | FIFA 07 | FINAL WORDS | 4.0 | +---------+---------------------------------------------------------+---------+ I'm doing my best effort to deliver you a complete and useful guide. But doing so takes time, so if you want to speed things up a little, please be kind and submit your suggestions, hints and tips to make this guide even better. I could make a list with a bunch of names that wouldn't mean anything to anyone (except if your name is on the list), so I won't. I just want to thank anybody reading this, which is the main reason why I wrote this. Peace. +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | FIFA 07 | THE END | +---------+-------------------------------------------------------------------+