Introduction: How do these articles work?

Each Sunday I examine a different team in detail and look at why they’re a good team for FIFA 16’s career mode. The teams are broken down into the following categories:

• Tier 1: Teams in tough divisions that can push on to challenge for silverware
• Tier 2: Teams that will have to fight for survival in a challenging division
• Tier 3: Teams that start in a lower division but can hope to get promoted and work their way up higher leagues
• Tier 4: Teams that start right at the bottom of the pile, with few funds or high potential players

FC St. Pauli (Tier 4)

Tier 4 teams have it tough – their small budgets and a lack of high potential players make surviving in any league a real challenge.

Contents

1. Why choose FC St. Pauli?
2. Lineups
   1. Strongest starting lineup
   2. Highest potential lineup
3. Recommended purchases
4. Suggested sales
5. Future considerations
   1. Get a new central midfielder
   2. Renew contracts

Starting transfer budget: £525,000
Starting wage budget: £20,000
Default formation: 4-4-1-1
Board expectations: Finish mid table, reach cup round of 32
Key player: Lasse Sobiech
Best young prospect: Jeremy Dudziak

Why choose FC St. Pauli?

The board expects you to finish mid table. That doesn’t sound too unreasonable, until you realise that FC St. Pauli have one of the lowest counts of high potential players in the division. They’ve only got 10 players with 70 potential or higher (there are only three teams with fewer) – finishing mid table may be achievable in the first season, but it’ll get increasingly difficult unless you invest in plenty of promising youngsters. And with a rather restrictive budget, that’s not going to be easy.

On the other hand, they do have a good balance of (reasonably) promising young players in every position, so there aren’t any huge weak spots in the side. FC St. Pauli also have a lot of pace in attack, with the likes of Miyaichi and Sobota likely to cause all kinds of havoc for slow defenders. While you’ll need more than that to propel you up into the top Bundesliga, it’s certainly a good asset to have.

FC St. Pauli’s key player is Lasse Sobiech. At 72 OVR at CB, he’s the team’s best player by a couple of points, and he’ll be absolutely rock solid in defence thanks to his great strength and tackling ability. Standing at 6’5″ and with a superb 83 heading accuracy, he will dominate aerial battles and will score plenty of goals for you from set pieces.

The team’s most promising young player is Jeremy Dudziak. He’s a left midfielder, but I’d recommend dropping him slightly deeper to left back due to the side’s lack of quality full back options; he’ll do great there, as he used to be a left back in the game until recently. With 78 potential, he’ll develop into a rampaging, attacking full back in a season or two, and could even grow into the 80s with enough good performances.

Strongest starting lineup

Changing the formation to 4-3-3, here is FC St. Pauli’s strongest starting lineup, with OVRs in brackets:

Highest potential lineup

After changing the formation again to 4-1-3-2, here is FC St. Pauli’s highest potential lineup, with potentials in brackets:

Recommended purchases

Key signings required: GK, RB.

Looking at the OVR lineup image above, the most obvious positions that need improving are GK and RB, as they’re the only ones not to have a player with 70 potential or higher. We’ll have to limit ourselves to just improving those positions for now, as FC St. Pauli’s budget doesn’t really allow for much more.

Speaking of budget, before buying any players we need to adjust its ratio to 78:22. This will give you £1,220,635 in transfer funds and £6,620 in wages. Now let’s bring in some new players.

Jesse Gonzalez
Club: FC Dallas
Position: GK
OVR: 65
Potential: 77
Age: 20
Cost: £670,000
Wages: £3,750

Having a solid goalkeeper is key to any division-climbing career mode team, but unfortunately FC St. Pauli come up short in this department. While Himmelmann is decent enough, he’s basically at his potential and will only grow one more point to 69. That’s not good enough long term.

My suggestion is to buy Jesse Gonzalez of FC Dallas. Starting at 65 OVR, he’s only a couple of points behind Himmelmann but has 77 potential, so will quickly surpass him and take the number one spot. His strengths lie in his diving and reflexes, which, combined with his 6’4″ height, will make him very difficult to beat in the future.

FC Dallas want £925,000 for him but I was able to knock that down to £670,000, a great saving considering FC St. Pauli’s budget. His wages are £3,750.

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Pawe? Stolarski
Club: Lechia Gda?sk
Position: RB
OVR: 63
Potential: 77
Age: 19
Cost: £540,000
Wages: £2,600

FC St. Pauli are certainly not lacking in right backs – they’ve got four of them – but with potentials of 65, 67, 68 and 69, they’re not exactly high potential. The highest rated among them (Marc Hornschuh) only has 54 acceleration and 65 sprint speed, which is hardly enough for a full back (he’s much more of a mispositioned centre back).

Instead, buy Pawe? Stolarski of Lechia Gda?sk in Poland. He starts with 77 acceleration and 83 sprint speed, so is far quicker than FC St. Pauli’s current options at right back. In fact, thanks also to his 83 stamina, he’s an excellent player to heavily train – because he’s already got pretty good physical stats, you don’t need to worry about them becoming stunted with lots of training. So don’t be surprised if you can get him to exceed his potential if you decide to train him.

Lechia Gda?sk will ask for £725,000 for him, but you can buy him for around £540,000. His wages are £2,600.

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Those transfers will leave you with £10,635 in transfer funds and just £270 in wages. That’s obviously not enough if you want to buy more players or some scouts, so let’s move on to the players I recommend you sell in order to raise some extra cash.

Suggested sales

Seeing as we’ve brought in a good new goalkeeper, we can sell most of the low potential alternatives. Selling Svend Brodersen and Philipp Heerwagen will get you around £200,000. Keep Robin Himmelmann for now.

In defence, sell Joël Keller, Jan-Philipp Kalla, Bernd Nehrig and perhaps Yannick Deichmann. That’ll bring you in around £650,000 – £800,000.

Finally, I’d say you can safely move on Okan Adil Kurt and Denis Rosin for about £200,000 total.

So after all that, you’ll have added around £1,050,000 – £1,200,000, depending on whether you sell Deichmann.

Future considerations – get a new central midfielder

I’m slightly concerned for FC St. Pauli’s central midfield, because most of the high potential central midfielders already on the team are fairly attacking. Really, you need at least one high potential defensive midfielder to keep things safe in the middle of the pitch.

So with that in mind, I suggest you buy Alexis Blin of Toulouse FC with the money you make from selling the players above. He’s rated 65 and has 80 potential, but actually goes up to 67 OVR if you play him at CDM. That’s because his tackling stats are some of his best, and his 72 interceptions will help him break up oppositions attacks with ease. His passing is also good, so he can be played as a deep-lying playmaker as well.

Toulouse FC want £1.1m for him but I got him for £800,000, so you can easily afford him with the money raised from selling players. His wages are £2,150.

Future considerations – renew contracts

You might notice that you get quite a lot of offers for your players in the first transfer window – that’s because so many of them have expiring contracts (13 in fact, almost half the team!). Make sure you don’t lose any of them for nothing in the January transfer window by renewing their contracts as soon as possible.

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That’s it for this week’s article on good teams for career mode. FC St. Pauli will perform well enough at first, but you’ll need some serious improvements if you’re going to work your way up the leagues. But that’s part of the fun, and will make a career with them a long and enjoyable one.

I’d like to hear if you have any thoughts about the format of the article itself. Did you find it useful? Conversely, do you think it was missing something that you’d have liked me to include?

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