Welcome back to Three of the Best, a series here on Doublejump where we take a look at FIFA 22 Ultimate Team’s major promotions and list some of the cards that you might have overlooked. A couple of notes about the series before we get started:
- We will be focusing on cheaper cards. It’s obvious that any new version of Neymar or Kylian Mbappe is going to be worth the coins, so there’s no point saying it again;
- We’re also avoiding any cards that are only available for a limited time (namely SBC and Objective cards) since we want this series to be as relevant now as it is in June; and
- We’ll also typically wait to release these articles until after the promotion, given EA’s penchant for a “mini-release” this season.
With all of that out of the way, let’s dive in!
EA did an outstanding job with the first Winter Wildcards team last week, adding some fantastic cards to all of the major leagues and a couple of smaller ones as well. The second batch of Winter Wildcards is a safer play, with only three cards that won’t be easy to link and only a further three from outside the “Big Five” leagues, but it’s also one of the cheapest promotional teams in recent memory, with a number of game-changing cards available for less than 60,000 coins.
It was genuinely tough to break this team down into just three of the best, but I’ve gone ahead and done just that. I’ve also called this segment the “Centre-Back Special” because I believe that defenders need a whole lot more love than they get; if you’re desperate for a cheap attacker, though, consider Romain Alessandrini or José Morales.
Jordan Teze (Netherlands, CB, Eredivisie — PSV)
Price: 19.000 (PS5)
Best Position: CB, RB
Chemistry Style: Shadow
Teze is the absolute closest you’re going to get to the perfect centre-back for FIFA 22 without spending half a million coins or more. He’s a six-foot centre-back with insane physical stats, brilliant agility for the position, and the ability to play out from the back like Pau Torres from Team One, but he’s also really, really quick — quick enough that you could easily get away with playing him at right-back if you wanted to, especially with a Shadow chemistry style applied.
This card isn’t just in there on its own, though. Spend an extra 40,000 coins on the Road to the Knockouts version of Ryan Gravenberch, then spend an hour or two doing the objective to get your hands on Leeroy Owusu and Justin Bijlow from the Squad Foundations Eredivisie set, and you’ve got four extremely high-level players to start building your team around. Add Calvin Mac-Intosch and the Team of the Group Stage version of Antony to that list, and I just built you half a team (which I personally use, I might add) for less than 200,000 coins! You’re welcome.
Çağlar Söyüncü (Turkey, CB, Premier League — Leicester City)
Price: 57,000 (PS5)
Best Position: CB
Chemistry Style: Anchor
This card is so strikingly similar to Prime Rio Ferdinand that I could probably just finish this segment right here. For those who don’t want to click the link, and for me not wanting to write a single sentence and then say “you do the rest”, here’s what I mean:
Söyüncü costs 57,000 coins right now on the PlayStation 5 transfer market. His price should rise once he’s no longer in packs, but it won’t go anywhere near the 1,400,000 coins it’ll cost you to get your hands on Prime Ferdinand… And they’re really not all that different from each other: Ferdinand has an extra point in Pace, but that’s negligible; he’s also got a two-point edge in Defending as well, but when that difference is between 89 and 91 that’s kind of like buying a Ferrari and then not wanting to put premium fuel in it because it’s more expensive. Rio’s also an inch taller and has the Power Header trait that Söyüncü doesn’t, but again, that doesn’t really translate into the game.
Really, the only reason you’re buying Prime Rio — or getting the Middle version out of Icon Swaps — over Söyüncü is if you absolutely cannot link Söyüncü into your team. That’s how good this card is.
Nnamdi Collins (Germany, CB, Bundesliga — Borussia Dortmund)
Price: 59,000 (PS5)
Best Position: Anywhere in the defence
Chemistry Style: Anchor
I could make another Prime Ferdinand comparison here, and that shows just how many cards EA has released that give the Icon defenders a run for their money, but I won’t. I won’t do that in large part because Collins is a whole lot more. If you’re a Bundesliga fan who missed out on the Showdown version of Niklas Süle, you missed out on one half of the perfect centre-back pairing (the other half being Rulebreakers Lukas Klostermann)… But Nnamdi Collins is your saviour.
He’s nowhere near as physically imposing as Süle, who could intimidate the Incredible Hulk with his sheer size and mass, but Collins will help you in a whole different way: he’s a 6’2” centre-back with a staggering 89 Pace, combined with solid defensive stats and incredible physical stats even before you apply a chemistry style. That means, with an Anchor chemistry style applied, he absolutely, positively will not be outrun, and he probably won’t be out-jumped or outmuscled either.
Not only is Collins an incredible centre-back, but he’s a high-level full-back option and his Passing stats (82 Crossing, 84 Short Passing) mean that he could even do a job for you as a right midfielder in a 3-5-2 if you like to go down that route.