FIFA 23 career mode comes with several new  features and additions that make your life more convenient and interesting. Below you’ll find an overview of everything new FIFA 23 career mode has to offer, plus some tips on how to get a strong start in the career mode. Once you’re all caught up, get your own copy of FIFA 23 for Xbox or PlayStation and start building your ultimate career. 

What’s new in FIFA 23 career mode?

Player personalities

In FIFA 23 career mode, you can create your very own clubs and players. The performance of your custom players is affected by a new player personality feature that determines how players act on and off the pitch. Your player personality type can be either Maverick, Heartbeat or a Virtuoso; each offering stat boosts if your players’ actions align with them.

Mavericks are all about chasing the spotlight by seeking individual glory. If you choose to go for impossible shots instead of helping a teammate score a goal, you can be sure your player is becoming a Maverick. Decisions made off the pitch also affect personality traits: more individually-minded players might choose to invest in various businesses and buy fancy sports cars in a brand-new set of activities not related to playing football. 

Players going for the Heartbeat personality are known for reading the game well and leading exemplary personal lives. They understand that to win the team has to act as a unit and not a collection of fame-hungry attention seekers. In their private lives, Heartbeat players don’t overextend themselves toward too many distractions. Their main goal is always to play football as a cohesive team.

The last remaining personality type is the Virtuoso. They are skilful and intelligent players who see the importance of effective technique but may still act spontaneously during matches and away from the pitch. The Virtuoso slots perfectly between the Maverick and the Heartbeat, acting as a blend of both personality traits.

You can do vicarious things to nudge your players’ personality traits in different directions. You can, for example, set up your own clothing brand or start an esports team. When it comes to more football-oriented activities, you can visit injured teammates at the hospital or even read books written by different football legends. Pick activities that best align with individual players’ personality types to see them evolve and earn stat boosts.

Dynamic highlights and playable moments

FIFA 23 career mode is all about blending football with spicy narrative drama. The game offers a slew of dynamic cutscenes that draw attention to big milestones in your players’ or clubs’ careers. For example, you will see short clips play out when you sign a huge star to your club, when your custom player switches clubs or when some other monumental development comes your way. These dynamic highlights help immerse you in the game and make you feel like you’re truly a part of the wider world of football. 

Another nifty addition to the FIFA 23 career mode is playable moments. When managing a club, you don’t have to sit through 90-minute games to find the most important moments requiring your attention. On the flip side, you also don’t have to resort to only looking at Football Manager style stat screens that show no on-pitch action whatsoever.

The silver lining between these two extremes comes to FIFA 23 in the form of playable moments. The game picks out the most pivotal moments from each match and gives you direct control over them. These key moments include shots on the goal, one-on-one battles and other important instances that may or may not lead to you (or your opponent) scoring. You will be able to only control the match during these decisive moments and then let the computer take the reins again. You save time and get to play only the most exciting parts of each match, so it’s a win-win situation.

The Transfer Analyst is hugely helpful

Negotiating player transfers has received a substantial overhaul in the FIFA 23 career mode. You will now receive a useful evaluation once a deal on a player has been closed, or you can even delegate the task of striking those deals so you can focus on other aspects of the game. This is where your new transfer analyst comes into play.

After finalizing a transfer, your Transfer Analyst will evaluate you by letting you know how well you did. You will learn if you paid a good price for the player you purchased and if the player will actually improve the team. If you sold a player, the analyst will tell you if you got a fair price and whether or not you have a replacement available. This is all hugely useful, allowing you to learn from bad deals and then use that knowledge to do better in the future.

If this kind of micromanagement is not your cup of tea, you can delegate dealing with transfers to your assistant. You will just have to specify the minimum and maximum amount of money your assistant can bid for players or the upper and lower salaries they are allowed to offer to newcomers. Once that is done, your assistant will get to work. After a couple of days, they will let you know via a message if they have been successful. 

New clubs, stadiums and managers

In addition to the aforementioned new features, a slew of other improvements have arrived to FIFA 23 career mode. A welcome step toward realism and authenticity is the addition of authentic managers. Real managers are playable in FIFA 23, and they can be assigned to any team in the game. Yes, you can have the legendary Pep Guardiola lead a completely unknown team to stardom. What could be more fun than that?

Another step towards realism and immersion in FIFA 23 comes in the form of a handful of new stadiums. The Camp Nou, Stadio Olimpico, Allianz Arena, Allianz Stadium, and City Ground have been digitally recreated and are fully at your disposal.

When it comes to clubs in FIFA 23 career mode, there is some bad and good news. First, the bad: a number of well-known clubs don’t feature in the game. AC Milan, AS Roma, Atalanta, and Napoli are not playable in FIFA 23, as well as clubs belonging to J-League and Liga MX. Russian clubs are absent as well because of the Ukrainian invasion.

Fortunately, there’s still a very good reason to celebrate: FIFA 23 is the first FIFA game ever to feature women’s football clubs. At launch, the game features 24 women’s clubs from England and France divided between two leagues:

Women’s Super League (England): Arsenal, Aston Villa, Brighton & Hove Albion, Chelsea, Everton, Leicester City, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Reading, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United.

Division 1 Arkema (France): Bordeaux, Dijon, Fleury, Guingamp, Le Havre, Lyon, Montpellier, Paris FC, Paris Saint-Germains, Reims, Rodez, Soyaux.

Tips for a strong start in FIFA 23 career mode

Choose your club carefully

When starting a new career you, might want to take control of your favourite club. While that’s completely normal and entirely viable, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when looking to have the strongest start in FIFA 23 career mode.

For the highest level of control over all aspects of your team, consider creating a brand-new custom club. This allows you to pick your home stadium, kit and players, the latter of which determines how good your club will be from the start. 

In FIFA 23 career mode clubs come with expectations or goals you are required to meet as you progress through your career. This is where creating your own club comes in handy once again, as hugely successful, well-known clubs come with huge expectations that can be difficult to fulfil. For example, you might have to sign on a large number of incredibly expensive players, which requires mastery of FIFA 23’s other systems: transfers, finances, management, etc. Especially for FIFA newcomers, creating their very own club might make things more manageable initially. 

Use scouts to build strong teams

We already covered how the transfer analyst can help you learn from bad deals to help you strike better ones down the line. However, if you want glowing reports from your analyst as early as possible, you should get used to using your scouts to find the best players for your team.

Don’t hesitate to send your scouts looking for players already at the start of the game or to find new players for your academy. In the case of scouts, pay attention to two key attributes: experience and judgement. Higher experience allows the scout to find a higher number of players for you to pick and choose from. Judgement determines the quality of players the scout brings back for you to choose from.

Scouting meshes well with the transfer analyst system. Scouts give you an estimate on how much to bid on any given player. If you don’t scout out players early, you’ll be throwing your precious money in the wind, as you will have no idea how much you should pay.

Fitness, sharpness and morale

You have created your team and scouted out the best players. You’re not down preparing yet, though, because when it comes to balancing your team, you have to focus on three core attributes: fitness, sharpness and morale.

Fitness determines how much energy your players have during matches. You can recover it during rest days. Using a player often in training and matches will increase their sharpness, but it will deal a blow to their fitness. It’s a tight balancing act: if you want your players in top form, you can’t overextend them. Rest and off-time are important as well. The third attribute, morale, goes up if players get to play matches regularly and receive praise for their efforts. Once again, you’re on a tightrope: send the player to the pitch too often, and their fitness will suffer, don’t do it enough, and their morale goes down.

Training sessions can help steer their three core attributes in your desired direction. You can also set up individual training plans for each player depending on their physical performance, age and other attributes.