Player „shows great potential“ – What does that mean.
The Fifa career mode understandably has one big goal: to lead your team to the top of the world. However, this goal is sometimes reached faster and sometimes slower, depending on your squad, your talent development, the trainings and of course your results. These in turn depend to a certain extent on your strategy and tactics, but also on the game and difficulty settings.
Youth development and talent scouting
If you sum up the prevailing opinions of popular forums, youth development or youth academy is the key to success of any career in Fifa. This is only understandable, because after all, the goal is to build a team that will rise in the coming years and ultimately win titles. Since you have 15 years in career mode (until you retire), you can choose your team wisely, shape it for the long term and, of course, rely on your own young talent right from the start. A player who is 33 years old at the start of his career should therefore no longer play a role in your ambitious plans for the future.
Assess and evaluate the potential of players
If you have found a player through your scouts and put him into your professional squad, you can see the current potential assessment in the player view. Fifa has always opted for a system that is quantifiable on the one hand, but „spongy“ on the other. On the one hand, we have very clear statements that can be associated with possible potential, but we do not have any mathematical adjusting screws to fully call up the potential. So it’s possible that a player’s potential will change over time, both upwards and downwards. Of course, you can only control the development to a certain extent.
Staggering of the potentials in the Fifa career mode
- „In the club since 2022“: Potential is a maximum of 80 GES. Lowest assessment.
- „Shows great potential“: potential is 80-84 GES.
- „An exciting man for the future“: potential is 85-89 GES.
- „Has potential to become something special“: potential is 90-94 GES.
- „One of the best in the world“: The player has already reached at least 90 GES.
- „Has that extra something“: the player is suitable for fulfilling marketing goals and is considered a crowd puller.
- The maximum of 99 GES may well be reached by some players after a long period of time
Interpretation of the potentials
So if you have a player in potential who is certified as having „great potential“, he will most likely „only“ reach a range between 80 and 84 GES. However, this does not have to be the case. Through training, consideration in the starting lineup, and meeting contractual demands, you can motivate the player to perform at his best. So it can happen that players develop contrary to their original prognosis and are already in the next level after a few months. It is important to note that this is only a rough estimate of the target range. Each player has the opportunity to hit, undercut or exceed the potential estimate exactly.
Recommended actions for the „shows great potential“ level
Players who are only rated as „shows great potential“ tend to be less suitable for long-term planning. You may have a player or two within this level who will actually achieve over 90 GES or more. In percentage terms, however, the chance is relatively small. So in the long term, these players should not be considered in squad planning – after all, you want to build the absolute top team.
Short-term strategy
In the short term, on the other hand, things look different: You usually start with Peterborough, Saarbrücken or Wiesbaden in one of the lowest leagues. Your squad usually has an average strength of about 60 GES. A scouting player from your youth academy who now shows high potential could still reach 80-84 GES – and thus significantly exceed your current squad average.
Do not categorically discard
The decision to directly sort out such players is therefore wrong (depending on your tactics). Especially in the lower leagues, your scouts usually don’t deliver top results yet, so you have to take the players that are offered to you – and from that you can still choose the best one. So you should try to change your squad step by step at the beginning and replace them with youth players. „Showing great potential“ is certainly not the top solution. But it is a good possibility to put one or the other regular player with his 60 GES on the transfer market or to release him.
In the long term only „has potential to become something special“.
In the long run, however, your 80-84 GES scouting players should not matter. Be aware that they may help you in the first two or three seasons and develop well. However, the development will (probably) stagnate over time. It must be clear that these players are only a temporary solution for your team. And if you’re really lucky, you’ll even get a player from the lowest level, who will develop surprisingly positively.