FIFA 15 scouting guide part 4: Spotting top players on your scouting reports


CONTEST TIME!

Send me a photo/screenshot of the best youth player you’ve found! If you can, get the photo while they’re still in the academy so we can see their potential range, but if you want to promote them so we can see their OVR then feel free. To enter, just send the photo to the FIFA Scouting Tips Facebook or Twitter page, or leave a link in the comments here or on the YouTube page. A week from today (3rd October) I’ll choose the winner and post it at the start of a video and on social media!

Key points:

  • Your scout’s estimation of a player improves over time, giving you a better idea of how good they are
  • Potential 70-94 or higher is fantastic – sign them up!
  • Choose a player with high potential but low OVR instead of one with high OVR and low potential
  • Player status messages can give you a big hint as to how good they can become


Welcome to the FIFA 15 scouting guide!

Your essential guide to the scouting system in FIFA 15

This year I’ve decided to split the guide up into separate parts. This means that instead of having to wait until I’ve finished everything before a big all-in-one guide comes out, you’ll be getting content much more quickly. Just head over to the FIFA 15 scouting guide hub page to find the other parts as they are released.

Today I’m going to guide you through how you can spot top players on your scouting reports. What is a good potential range to look out for? And what can the Player Status screen tell you about your player’s potential? Read on to find out.

Contents

What do OVR, potential and strength ranges mean?

When you get a report from your scout, you will be presented with a list of players that he has found. Each will have a few details about himself listed (such as his name and age), his possible positions and then a few numbers under the headings ‘overall’, ‘potential’ and ‘strengths’. What do these numbers mean?

I have seen people say they represent the player’s current ability and the maximum he could reach. For example, if a player’s jumping range is 41-85 in the strengths panel, this would mean his jumping is currently 41 and could reach 85. However, this is not correct.

What these ranges actually signify are your scout’s opinions on how good the player is. So in the case of jumping being 41-85, that means your scout reckons the player’s jumping stat is somewhere between 41 and 85. Similarly, if the player has potential 76-94, this means your scout thinks his potential could be anywhere between those two numbers.

FIFA 15 scouting guide

This shows my scout’s initial estimation of this player’s OVR, his potential and his strengths

Over time your scout’s estimation of the player will improve as he spends more time watching him play. On the first of every month you’ll get an email from your scout updating you on what he thinks of them. You will then see that these ranges have narrowed, so the jumping range could now read something like 51-75. After roughly six to nine months, this could become a single number as your scout becomes certain of how good the player is at jumping.

Note that OVR and potential ranges never narrow down to just one number. OVRs narrow down to a four point difference (60-64, 71-75, etc), while potentials narrow down to a six point range unless the player’s final potential is 90-94, which is the highest potential range any player can get.

How to recognise a good potential range

One very easy way to quickly estimate how good a player can become is to work out the middle value in his potential range. For example, if a player on your report has potential 76-94, the middle value would be 85. You can therefore estimate that his potential is around 85. This is by no means set in stone, it’s just a simple way to see roughly what his potential might be.

FIFA 15 scouting guide

With potential 76-94, this player is going to be an excellent addition to the youth academy

Another good way is to look at the lower number in a potential range – for example, the 67 in 67-91. If this number is in the late 60s, the player is likely to have a respectable potential. If it’s in the 70s, then I would definitely sign them up, as these players are among the best you will find. If it’s in the 80s – well, that should be obvious!

Why potential is far more important than OVR

But what do you do if you have a player with a high OVR but low potential, and one with a low OVR but high potential? Which one should you sign?

I would always recommend you sign the player with the higher potential for one very simple reason: the May update. As I mentioned in part 3 of the FIFA 15 scouting guide, youth players only grow once per year – on 1st May.

When this happens, they can grow incredible amounts – 12 OVR points or even more. What this means is that any players with low OVR but high potential will grow vast amounts and will easily make up for the low original OVRs. Players with low potentials, however, will grow less and so may get overtaken.

FIFA 15 scouting guide

This player has a very low OVR, but his high potential and the boost from the May update mean that soon won’t be a problem

So just make sure you don’t promote your players until they’ve had at least one May update, as you could lose an entire year’s worth of growth!

Furthermore, the May update could surprise you. You could have a player with a low OVR who gets a massive boost from the update and becomes very valuable, so decide whether or not to release players after they’ve been through the May update.

Should you sign players straight away or keep scouting them?

Despite all this, it’s not always obvious whether or not you should sign a player as soon as he appears on your scouting report. Sometimes you find a player that isn’t amazing, but there’s a nagging worry that he could be the best player your scout finds on his trip. Or perhaps you’ve found lots of players in his position and don’t know if you need another.

In these cases, it’s often a good idea to tell your scout to keep watching him, then next month you’ll get another report that may give you a better idea of his abilities, whereupon you can decide to either sign or reject him.

However, the longer you wait, the greater the risk that another team could come and sign him to their own academy before you get a chance to sign him up.

FIFA 15 scouting guide

The dreaded message. But with a bit of reloading, you can stop it happening

If this does happen to you, don’t worry – there’s a way to prevent it happening.

Firstly, make sure you’re saving your game regularly and have at least one backup save. If you get an email (titled ‘Scouted players’) telling you a player has been poached, make sure you quit your save and load it up again. Now, advance one day, and if the message hasn’t arrived, save your game.

Keep advancing one day and saving. If you get to about a week after you got the message the first time around and the email still hasn’t come through, you should be safe. You can then advance as normal.

This can take a fair amount of reloading and requires a bit of patience, but if you’ve got players that you want to keep watching before deciding whether to sign them, it can get you out of a sticky situation.

How to work out a player’s potential once he’s been promoted

I would always recommend keeping a spreadsheet listing your youth players’ OVR and potential ranges, so that you know which are your most promising once you promote them.

However, the game gives you a great big hint as to their potential just in case you forget.

Once you’ve promoted your players, just head over to the Squad tab and then click on the Squad report button. Find the player you want to check, then look at the ‘Status’ message in the top right corner.

The message displayed there directly relates to your player’s potential (with a few conditions; see below). If your player has potential 80 or higher they will get one of three messages. Here’s what they mean:

  • Showing great potential: the player has potential 80-85
  • An exciting prospect: the player has potential 86-90
  • Has potential to be special: the player has potential 91 or higher
FIFA 15 scouting guide

‘Has potential to be special’ – this is the highest possible potential status, so keep an eye out for it!

If your player doesn’t have any of these messages and instead has, for example, ‘At the club since 2015’, this means their potential is below 80.

But also bear in mind that if your player’s OVR is less than 60, none of this applies. They will have ‘At the club since 2015′ regardless of their actual potential. Once they hit 60 OVR, however, the status message appears.

So, if you promote a player under 60 OVR with not status message, don’t instantly think he’s not going to become a world beater. Wait until he’s grown a bit, because then you should get the hint from the game regarding his potential.

And as one final caveat, once a player gets to 22 years old or higher, the potential status message disappears. This is why it’s a good idea to keep that spreadsheet with a list of your youth players’ potentials so that you know how good they could become even after they hit 22.


And don’t forget to enter the youth player contest! Just post your photo in the comments below, contact me on Facebook or Twitter, or share it in the comments on YouTube! I’ll pick a winner and let you all know by this time next week.

Thanks for reading part four of the FIFA 15 scouting guide. If you have any thoughts on this or the YouTube video, make sure you let me know in the comments below.

Make sure you connect with me on social media. I’ve just launched the FIFA Scouting Tips YouTube channel, and you can follow me on Facebook or Twitter for all the latest updates.