Trading with the META
FUT Millionaire #6
What happened?
At the beginning of FIFA 20 Cristiano Ronaldo was a lot more expensive than Messi. After a few weeks of Weekend League (the most competetive mode in FIFA), people realized that Messi fit the META (Most Effective Tactic Available) of FIFA 20 more so than Ronaldo, therefore Messi experienced a huge rise in price and CR7 did the opposite and fell. For the first time in years, Messi’s gold card was more expensive than Ronaldo's.
Why did it work?
When people started to build their teams in FIFA 21 most start with what worked for them the previous year. Looking at past FIFAs, Ronaldo (big, strong and fast) was the perfect META player. Messi was of course always a good card but his weaknesses (a lack of height & strength) let him down.
With this in mind, the demand for CR7 was higher than for Messi and therefore, he was more expensive. After a few weeks people learnt that that the META had changed in FIFA 21. Small players with high agility and balance seemed to have a bigger impact than the old META-style (tall & strong). More and more people changed their teams and experienced how good players like Messi were in the game. CR7’s and Messi’s Futbin graphs (shown above) visualise this.
What can we learn from it for FC 24?
Keep an eye on what works for you and what works against you whilst playing the game.
To understand the META for FC 24 it will be beneficial to watch pro players, this will allow you to experience the best players in the game and what players work allowing you to recognize patterns. We can’t really predict if there will be a change of the META or what would change without having time to play the game.
This is something we will discuss together in the Discord once we have played our first few games but we can give you an example of what could happen if the META were to change:
Heading becomes the META → Harry Kane and Robert Lewandowski become overpowered → Price Rise
Players like Lewandowski and Kane etc. are normally not META, they are slow to react and feel very unresponsive. If FC 24 turns out to be a game where heading is really effective, they could be players we could invest in. If this was the case, another good investment could be wingers with high pace, acceleration and crossing attributes.
Important: This is nothing that is likely to happen, it will only work if there is massive META change. A bit similar to the hype around 'lenghty' players in FIFA 23 which is another good example.
Addition: I personally think it's worth to especially keep an eye on how woman perform in the game. They might be underrated by a lot of casuals in the beginning, mainly because they just son't know most woman players. Very soon though, we will all know how good some of them are. Wouldn't be surprised if we see a very good rise on them.