I’ve never been a trader. Sure, I’ve sold big cards in the past to boost my coin balance, but it’s almost entirely been from grinding packs and riding my luck from there on out. It worked well enough in pastFIFAgames, and I was happy with my life. Play, pack, sell. Rinse and repeat.
That all changed inEA FC 24. Trading life came at me quick when I saw an investment opportunity in front of my eyes. Playing the game early thanks to the Ultimate Edition I was reviewing meant that far fewer players were around to dictate the market. It was more unpredictable than ever, and more good players were going under the radar. I was also helped by a healthy dose of sexism, but more on that later.
When I was building prospective teams, I first wanted to try new players. Lauren Hemp and Chloe Kelly are a perfect link, and their cards looked excellent, so I shelled out 10,000 coins on the pair. A couple of days later I wanted to try someone new, and sold them for double that. The market was rising, and I’d got in on the ground floor. They eventually rose even further before the game’s full release, but you can’t regret lost profits.
I used this cash to buy a magnificent player called Fridolina Rolfö. The Barcelona Femení player is a left-back by trade, but works well on the wing. Her stats, however, tell a different story. Rolfö is in the fabled ‘Gullit Gang’, a term for players whose face stats are all above 80. It’s an exclusive club of players who can excel in practically any position on the pitch, pioneered by the legendary Ruud Gullit, who is always one of the best, and most expensive, players in Ultimate Team.
When I realised Rolfö’s potential as a Hemp replacement, she was just 12,000 coins. By the time I’d sold enough players to afford her, she’d already risen to 17,000. By the end of the week, she was selling for 80,000. However, I was hesitant to sell. She was killing it as a box-to-box midfielder in my team, and was vital to my rise through the divisions. But the allure of the profit was too much, and this is the moment I knew I’d become a trader.
This is where the sexism helped me out. Two weeks ago, every female player on Futbin, a fan-run website for tracking player prices in Ultimate Team, had been downvoted. Every player other than Aston Villa’s Alisha Lehmann, that is. Lehmann is well known for being conventionally attractive, boasting 15 million Instagram followers and her own £150 raunchy calendar. Instead of downvotes, Lehmann is on the receiving end of hundreds of misogynistic comments. That’s irrelevant for trading, however. Or at least, only tangentially relevant. The double standards EA Sports FC 24 players have for male and female footballers means that women are often a lot cheaper than men, to the extent that if I was offering advice on building a budget squad, I’d pick nearly all women.
This is why Rolfö cost just 17,000 coins. Even at her peak of 80,000 coins, she was far cheaper than any other member of the Gullit Gang. Her price has now settled at around 36,000, still a complete bargain for her stats. Compare her to the next cheapest Gullit Gang hero, John Arne Riise, who currently costs 162,000. He’s a little easier to link to, but that’s not the case for Uruguayan Federico Valverde, who costs 390,000 coins, over ten times Rolfö’s price. Valverde’s stats are marginally better than Rolfö’s, and yet he costs so much more. Gullit himself is well over 4 million, but he’s got a unique body type, Icon status, and that secret buff from having great hair.
It’s not all sexism, I admit. People want to play with players they know, and Valverde has more worldwide renown than Rolfö. More people are probably building La Liga teams than Liga F teams, although this in itself is rooted in the same issues. But these prejudices and preconceptions pay off for traders, and as a new recruit to the business life, I made the most of it.
I invested my profits in Pervis Estupinian’s Team of the Week card, although I admittedly sold it too soon to make the real juicy profits that others did. I’m playing it safe, though, and happy to take small wins. At this moment I’ve invested in Modric and Kroos, high rated Real Madrid cards, ready for the inevitable Player of the Month Bellingham SBC that will release soon. I’ve also got dozens of common Golds ready to sell tonight for around 200 profit each, after tax. I’ve gone from playing the game to grinding menus, and I’m actually enjoying it.
EA Sports FC 24 gameplay is frustrating, just like previous iterations of the game. I’ve lost more matches to injury-time winners than I can count, and I don’t know why I’m facing Andriy Schevchenko and Lionel Messi in Division 6. So when Rivals gets too much, I check my portfolio and put in some shrewd investments. I’m a quarter of my way to my first million, and from there, the moon. I accidentally became an Ultimate Team trader, and now I can’t get enough.
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