The Backpage | FIFA Street World Tour Tips

In this week’s Backpage, football journalist and FIFA fan Darren Cross looks at five ways to improve your FIFA Street World Tour team…

The first time I played FIFA Street I thought that, because I play a lot of FIFA 12, I’d be half decent at the game right away and could head straight in to face the CPU on the hardest setting.

Then I watched the opposition team repeatedly intercept my passes before flicking the ball over my defenders’ heads or nudging it through their legs. I got well and truly pannad to pieces in that first game, and realised quickly that FIFA Street is far more than a small-sided version of FIFA 12.

In my next match I made sure no-one was looking, dropped the difficulty level and abandoned my patient, passing style in favour of a fast, skill-focused one-on-one approach. In no time at all I was popping out pannas of my own and finding new ways to score jaw-dropping goals and earn valuable style points for my World Tour team.

For me, FIFA Street is all about World Tour. Building a team of your own and improving their abilities by earning style points is ridiculously addictive and also essential if you want to get the best out of the game’s online modes; you’ll use your created team in Street Season, the equivalent of FIFA 12’s Head To Head Seasons mode.

With this in mind, I thought it might be useful to share a few things with you that have really helped me improve my created team, win more games and ultimately have a lot more fun.

1. SHARE THE STYLE POINTS
Your players pick up style points in games by executing moves and generally playing with flair. The style points are the key to levelling up your players and unlocking new skills and other things like diving headers, scoop passes and rabona shots. Once purchased, the skills you’ve unlocked will earn you even more style points and so your players will earn XP quicker if you continue to bust out your new moves.

The important thing here is to remember to share the style around the core of your team by performing skills and flair moves with the six players you use most. This way they’ll grow consistently and you’ll have a much more balanced team to use offline and online.

The unused members of your squad will still level up slowly even though they’re not playing, but I concentrate solely on my starting six because there’s no sense in spending time trying to level up your back-up players when you’ll be ditching them for better ones that you’ll hopefully win in future challenges.

Also, by having a team full of good players – rather than one great captain and a load of okay team-mates – you’ll stand a better chance of winning in the more specialised game modes, like Last Man Standing for example.

2. SPEND ON SKILLS FIRST
Personally I spend my upgrade points on skills as soon as they become available – each new level your players reach unlocks skills – then I use whatever is left on their attributes and styles (the only exception is the goalkeeper, but more on that in a moment).

This is obviously because, as we’ve just seen, skills are the key to quick levelling. But I also do this because the skill moves give you a genuine advantage in games. If you’ve got ten different ways of beating your marker, that’s far better than just having a panna or regular skill or air beat in your locker.

Perhaps even more importantly, the game is just a lot more fun when you can call on different skills and start chaining flair-packed moves together. Also, don’t forget that you can preview a skill before you buy it by hovering over it and pressing X on 360 or Square on PS3. Useful if you don’t know what a Rainbow Swirl is.

3. DON’T NEGLECT PLAYER STYLES
In the upgrade screen, cycle down the tricksmenu and you’ll see Styles. These also cost upgrade points and they give you the ability to do things like dummy the ball, play scooped passes and scorebicycle kicks.

The most important one for me so far is the closed leg jockey, which is basically the anti-panna. Once purchased, you can jockey your opponent with your legs closed to defend against being nutmegged – I’m still getting used to saying panna – and it can be really useful, especially in online games when players seem to go for pannas a lot.

It costs four points and I definitely recommend buying it as soon as you can.

4. BALANCE YOUR ATTRIBUTES
Once I’ve purchased all the available skills and any styles I want for my players, I use any remaining points on boosting their attributes.

This is what defines the type of player they’ll be. If your player has Level 5 Shooting, for example, but Level 2 for everything else, he’ll be a Finisher and you’ll see the target icon next to his name in your line-up. The basic icons are:

Hammer – Powerhouse. Earned when Athleticism is dominant.

Wall – Stopper. Defending is dominant.

Player with ball – Dribbler. Dribbling is dominant.

Gloves – Goalkeeper. Goalkeeping is dominant.

Atom – Playmaker. Passing is dominant.

Target –Finisher. Shooting is dominant.

Running man – Sprinter. Speed is dominant.

Scales – Balanced. Nothing is dominant.

It’s also possible to create combos. For example, one of my players has Level 9 Athleticism, Defence, Dribbling, Passing and Speed, but Level 10 Shooting. He gets a flaming ball icon and is known as a Power Finisher. More on this in a future Backpage.

Outfield I’ve got a Stopper, a Dribbler, a Sprinter, a Powerhouse and a Finisher making up the rest of my strongest six players. Personally I don’t recommend building a Playmaker by investing in Passing points. I just don’t think Passing is as important in Street as it is in FIFA 12, so for me the points are better spent elsewhere.

5. IT PAYS TO LOSE
Nope, I’m not suggesting you throw matches. What I am saying is that it’s worth sticking with games even when you’re getting a thrashing, as your players still earn style points when they’re on the losing team.

Don’t go turning your console off in a huff. Take the defeat and use your style points to upgrade and have another go.

I hope you found some of that useful. I’ll be back with more FIFA Street tips soon, but if you have any you’d like to share then please tweet them to me @Darren_Cross using the hashtag #streettips and I’ll retweet the best ones.

As always, thanks for reading and see you next week.
Darren