FIFA 14 | So You Want A… Goalkeeper

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Welcome back to this year’s inaugural installment of the So You Want A series! First up: goalkeepers.

Here are my recommendations:

• Gerónimo Rulli
• Roman Bürki
• Rubén Blanco

Number one on the list is the highest-potential player you can actually buy straight away, Gerónimo Rulli. Playing for Estudiantes in Argentina, he is extremely well rounded. He’s athletic and makes a great shot stopper, but he also has very good handling and positioning, so he should be ideally suited to deal with whatever is whatever is thrown at him. Add in the fact that Estudiantes should accept an offer of just over £2m for him and he becomes very difficult to pass over.

Second on the list is Roman Bürki. Although he’s only just joined Grasshopper in Switzerland, give it a few months until January and you may be able to grab yourself a real star in the making. He’s a fantastic shot stopper with 80 diving and 82 reflexes and is actually better at this than Renan Ribeiro, one of my key choices from last year. Already possessing a great starting OVR and with a potential of 82 that can easily be exceeded, Bürki could be the kind of superb stopper that you’ve been looking for.

Finally, we’ve got my bargain choice – Rubén Blanco. But don’t think that because he’s cheap he’s lacking in ability. He already has 75 handling, which is fantastic for a player with his OVR. Not only this, but his next best stat is his diving, so not only will he be able to reach all manner of shots, but he will hold on to them as well. This will be invaluable for you, as there’s nothing worse than conceding a soft goal when you keeper parries a shot that he should have caught. These stats are just going to get better and better as he grows, and with an asking price of less than a million (which can be negotiated down even further), you’d be mad not to even consider him.

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The articles in this series should give you some ideas if you’re looking for a new signing in a key area. There is one article for each position on the pitch to make it easy for you to quickly find players to bolster your squad.

All of the players given here have a minimum potential of 80, so you know you’re getting quality. The maximum OVR for each player is 73, both to keep transfer prices down and to avoid presenting you with too many options and thus making it too difficult to choose the player you need.

The ‘Avai?’ column is short for ‘available?’ and refers both to whether or not you can buy the specified player at the start of the first season and how long their current contract is. Let’s take Y/2 as an example – Y means that yes, you can buy him at the start of a new career, and the number means he has two years left on his contract. Similarly, N/3 would mean that no, you can’t buy the player straight away, and he has three years left on his contract. These ‘no’ players are often available for transfer if you wait until the January transfer window, however. For some players this column is blank – this means that they are out on loan at the start and are therefore unavailable for purchase until the second season.

Initial player costs may seem very low this year. The figure in the player cost column refers to the price you are given if you scout the player. But I’ve also added a new column this time round – ‘They want’. This refers to the price the other team want for the player if you enquire about him. Often there is a large difference between the player cost obtained through scouting and that obtained through an enquiry. This leaves a lot of room for negotiation, so don’t be put off if a price in the ‘They want’ column is high, as you can usually get the player for much less. Try bidding lower than what you think will be accepted – you may be surprised at their response. If the ‘They want’ column is blank it’s because the team refused to give a price, either because the player has just joined them or because they are loaning him in.

And as a final note, in FIFA 14 EA update player OVRs and potentials every week. Mose of the time these are very minor changes, and most players won’t be affected at all unless they have had a very noteworthy week. Furthermore, some players occasionally disappear if they have been put in the reserve squad that week. So just bear in mind that these figures should be read as a guide only and not a definitive account of player costs, potentials, etc, for the entire season.[/expand]

And with those thoughts in mind, here’s the list in full: