Following up behind the attackers, the Team of the Year midfielders are an interesting group. I would say two of the three players are already very meta in various forms, so it’s a question of whether you want to upgrade or not to the “end-game” versions of these cards.
Team Of The Year Midfielder Analysis – Kevin De Bruyne
Number Of Other Cards
- Base gold/Champions League – 91 overall – 185K
- Team of the Week 2 – 92 overall – 295K
- Team of the Year Nominee – 92 overall – 300K
- Team of the Group Stage – 93 overall – 470K
- Team of the Week – 94 overall – 760K
Chemistry Style Recommendation: Engine to solidify his pace, agility and balance. He’s already been a shooting and passing wizard since the very beginning.
Kevin De Bruyne does not see as much play as Kante or de Jong, but this version should change that a bit. He is going for between 2.5 and 2.9 million coins right now, according to FUTBin. The issue with De Bruyne cards for some has been he just does not have great pace. Tying together with that is his iffy agility and balance. I think that issue has been overstated since the beginning, but this card mostly nullifies that issue.
He has four-star skills, five-star weak foot, high defensive work rates and high attacking work rates. The defense on this card is decent for a CAM, so he really can be a two-way midfielder with these work rates if you want, but his bread and butter is still attacking.
Overall, with his base gold card now just being 185K or so, you can slap an Engine on him and get a lot out of that card still. If you want to upgrade to this version, I get why you would do it because it’s an amazing card, but I think you can get the essence of De Bruyne with the standard gold. Even if you go with this card, I don’t think he’s the most obvious meta choice as people don’t put as much of a premium on De Bruyne’s skills this year.
Still, his price is higher than I expected so far, so people are probably into this card because they’ve been waiting for a reason to use De Bruyne all season long.
Team Of The Year Midfielder Analysis – N’Golo Kante
Number Of Other Cards
- Base gold/Champions League – 89 overall – 245K
- Team of the Week 16 – 90 overall – 475K
- Team of the Year Nominee – 90 overall – 385K
- Road to the Final – 91 overall – 750K
Chemistry Style Recommendation: Marksman I think makes the most sense simply to max out his dribbling and make his long shooting more dangerous. You could perhaps focus on pace, but as a CDM I think he’s good where he’s at already.
Kante is the star of this release to me because he’s just so in the meta. He’s on so many teams, and I’m surprised his price is only 2.1 to 2.4 million coins right now. It may be because people have some Kante fatigue, or maybe it’s because CDMs don’t have as much cache, but the price seems low.
He has two-star skills and a three-star weak foot, but that’s been known all year. He has high defensive work rates and medium attacking work rates, so this version remains best at CDM even with the overall amazing stats.
Having 99 composure, 99 short passing, 99 long passing, 99 aggression, 99 stamina and 99 defensive awareness right out of the gates is simply incredible. He is the true lockdown midfielder and should be able to make things incredibly hard on opponents all day long. His base gold remains great as well, but 245K for that card is still a lot. So at least if you splurge on this card, you know you have the best of all worlds for the rest of the season.
Team Of The Year Midfielder Analysis – Frenkie de Jong
Number Of Other Cards
- Base gold/Champions League – 85 overall – 12.5K
- Ones To Watch – 86 overall – 155K
- Team of the Week 1 – 86 overall – 141K
- Team of the Year Nominee – 86 overall – 79K
Chemistry Style Recommendation: I would go Engine to make sure he’s able to control the pace of play while using elite pace to carry the game on both ends if need be.
Frenkie de Jong has been used a lot this year as well because his base gold remains easy to get, and he’s easy to link on many squads. This card is at 1.5 to 1.8 million coins, so he remains “affordable” in this form if we’re going by TOTY standards. I think he remains the “cheap” option for those who don’t want to splurge on Kante, which is also a role he should be used to this season in FUT.
He has four-star skills and a three-star weak foot to go with high defensive work rates and medium attacking work rates. Those traits make him better than Kante, so he does have that going for him. He’s also much taller than Kante, which has its own positives and negatives.
This is a massive upgrade over his base gold at this point as de Jong really has not received major boosts all season. That being said, his base gold is still a good defensive midfielder with pace, so you’ll still be able to get a lot out of it if you don’t want to upgrade all the way to this version.
