EA Sports FC 25 Best Formations for Meta and Starter Teams

A top-tier formation can help you to extract the best from your players in EA Sports FC 25.

Image credit: EA Sports/VG247

Guide by James Billcliffe Guides Editor

Published on Sept. 23, 2024

You can have all of the best players in the world, but if you can’t fit them into a stable formation then they’ll never win anything.

The best formations in EA Sports FC 25 all start from the same place: a solid defensive foundation. The aim of the game is to stifle your opponent without compromising your own attacking capabilities, allowing you to seamlessly transition from defence to attack with plenty of passing options which let you progress the ball forward without isolating your Strikers.

In theory, particularly with the wealth of new positional options available to FC 25 managers thanks to Player Roles, any formation can achieve this. However, in practice, the best formations in EA Sports FC 25 let you pull off these manoeuvres more quickly, more easily and more consistently.

As the meta evolves, we’ll update this page with the latest strategies. But, in this Early Access stage at least, general opinion seems to be that similar tactics to FC 24 are still working well, they’re just achieved in a more fluid and interesting way.

4-3-2-1

Following on from last year, the 4-3-2-1 formation is considered by many pro players to be the meta formation. This is because of its capacity for a compact defence and a versatile attack which gives your players a huge array of passing options to work the ball around your opponent’s similarly compact team.

The 4-3-2-1 differs from the 4-3-3 because it plays with 2 CAMs instead of wide players, asking them to tuck in and get more involved in general play. This leads to a less realistic representation of real football, but allows for much slicker and quicker progression of the football in-game. Also, at this early stage of the game, it’s also a great formation to use if you’ve packed some good CAMs, but no good LM and RM players.

If you do have good wingers though, you can still play this powerful formation. As referenced in our Tactics Codes page, some pros like Team Gullit start with a flat 4-5-1 formation, then pack the midfield before asking their wide midfielders to play as inside forwards, utilising the strong new attacking AI which exists for these roles and keeping LM and RM players still in their preferred positions.

By doing this, it means your team will defend as a very compact and congested 4-5-1, making them very tough to break down. Then, on the break or in possession generally, your players will storm the middle of the pitch to create short, fast passing combinations.

It’s similar to the Red Bull style of football preferred by the likes of Ralf Rangnick, Julian Nagelsmann and Jesse Marsch, but much more effective than it’s proven in real-life football.

4-4-2

The classic 4-4-2 is a rock-solid formation in EA Sports FC that works just as well as a starter formation and in the upper-echelons of competition. It offers a powerful mix of stout defence and tactical flexibility, allowing you to attack effectively with plenty of passing options without opening yourself up to counter-attack.

The fancy footballing name for this is “rest defence”, which basically just means your players are already in a good position to win the ball back as soon as you lose possession.

Within a 4-4-2, you want your LB and RB to stay balanced at full-back and maintain a solid back 4. Then, in the middle of the pitch, you want your biggest and strongest CM to stay defensive to sure up that back line even more. However, to stop your forwards from getting isolated, you need to keep your second CM balanced.

On the wings, I’ve found that if you set your wide players to attack then they really hug the touchline and last defender, which can lead to fewer passing options when you’re in transition. Keep them balanced too to counter this. Then, for your Strikers, you want one advanced forward to finish chances and one with better dribbling and passing to drop into the false 9 position. Again, this helps with passing options in build up. Without a number 10, it can feel like there’s a huge hole behind your attackers if you don’t actively ask a player to fill that space.

4-3-3

The 4-3-3 is my personal favourite formation, because it offers a huge amount of flexibility thanks to its different variations. It plays very similarly to the 4-3-2-1, just with more width by default - but you can very easily tweak this now. With the new Player Roles in EA Sports FC 25, you now have even more options to choose from, which is a really powerful tool to keep opponents guessing.

In previous editions, the 4-3-3 (4) was a great formation which essentially allowed you to play a Guardiola-style 5 and 5 split, with 5 attacking players and 5 tasked with holding down the defence. Up front, an advanced forward is supported by a fast, technical shadow striker with great dribbling and skill moves to progress the ball, while the wingers provided options for cutbacks out wide.

The rest of the midfield consists of a box-to-box player to link the two phases and a physically dominant CDM whose only job is to gobble up counter-attacks and bully the opposing team. The team is then finished off with a pretty flat back 4 that stays solid behind the sweeping DM.

4-3-1-2

In the short term, if you’ve found yourself with a lot of good midfielders but fewer wide options, the 4-3-1-2 is another compact formation which prioritizes a CAM and a pair of box-to-box players over inside forwards to provide passing opportunities. This is also a good formation if you’ve got a couple of good Strikers who you can’t leave on the bench.

With this formation, you need to make sure you have enough players set to attacking roles, otherwise it’s easy for that front 3 to get isolated and crowded off the ball. In EA Sports FC 25, the wingback AI seems very strong, which could be a good idea to provide a wide outlet - however this could leave you open to counter-attack. If you are going to use an attacking wingback, I’d suggest having them be on the same side as a balanced midfielder so there’s someone to cover their position.

If you're looking for players to fill these positions check out our list of the best EA Sports FC 25 Wonderkids.

We also have run-downs of the best players to sign in each position: