Increase distance between the defense and midfield lines and start rewarding manual defense

[ruby zinc]

I want to start by congratulating EA — you’ve managed to trick us once again and sell us a lies that quickly turned into disappointment. You looked us in the eye and claimed we didn’t need to worry about losing coins in the market, yet from the second day of release, you flooded the store with tradeable packs, effectively killing the market

You promised that manual defending would be rewarded, but the reality is the opposite. Not controlling defenders or CDMs is actually more effective. Content creators are advising players not to manually trigger defenders because doing so leads to punishment. I’ve faced opponents who didn’t even touch their midfielders — they simply ran with their CAMs or strikers, abused auto-press, and waited for counterattacks. Is this manual defending? NOT

This is a deeply flawed state of the game. We’re rewarding passive defense while punishing players who actively try to defend. I don’t think defenders themselves are the issue. The real problem lies in the overpowered dribbling. When a mechanic is being abused, it’s a clear sign that it’s broken and needs urgent fixing. Right now, players who exploit this mechanic are rewarded, while those who take initiative in defense are penalized. Nerfing dribbling would shift the balance and start punishing passive defenders who rely on AI assistance.

Another major issue is the lack of spacing between the defensive and midfield lines. In front of the penalty area, these lines are stacked with no gap, forming an impenetrable wall of eight players. And if you somehow break through, you’re met with unnatural, overpowered goalkeeper movements. For me by reducing the gap between defense and midfield line you promote AI defending, and that was not the purpose.

I don't even want to start talking about how women are overpowered in this game. This is really disgusting in fotball game that because of broken meta mechanism I see more often women in the squad who would be beat by random u15 team than Halland

[fossil elm]

💯% agreed

The defending has been nerfed to the ground. Please make defending equally powerful compared to attackers.

Game has just become an unrealistic goal fest for skill and pace abusers as defending has been severely nerfed

Only sweats are playing the game now as they continuously abuse the right stick. No casuals want to play this fidget spinner unless defending is fixed

[potent oriole]

💯💯

[boreal saffron]

There is something about manual defending that have been added to the tracker, hope they'll listen w the next patch...

[last cosmos]

I agree with you ✅✅✅✅