Why? It has to do with the formations and tactics and how they work as you unlock them. Forget a starting XI, you’ll want 27 players in order to field a proper squad with all options available to you. What might startle you is how many players you need to round out your team. That’s a core element of many sports games these days. It’s probably not going to be a surprise to learn that FIFA Mobile wants you to start with players of modest talent and continually improve your squad using a card-based system. This is a group of up to 32 players, ensuring you can always challenge someone you (sort of) know to a friendly Attack Mode match, as well as participate in League Championships and Tournaments against other Leagues. While not a separate mode per se, you’ll also unlock the ability to start or join a League. It starts out fairly difficult right off the bat, so you’ll probably want to build your team up to an overall rating of at least 70 before jumping into a Season.
This is a little trickier than passing but still not too difficult overall, and you should get the hang of it quickly. To shoot, you simply start on the player with the ball and swipe toward the goal, with the speed of the swipe controlling the shot’s power and the direction of it controlling … well, the direction of the shot. Passing can be done by either tapping on a player without the ball, in which case the current player will get it to him by ground or air, depending on the distance, or by tapping on a spot on the pitch to play a pass into space.
The important things to remember here are how to pass and shoot. Your team will operate this way by default. The first and most basic way is to let the AI control where the players move when they have the ball, with you stepping in to use taps and swipes when necessary. While we’d argue that FIFA Mobile still doesn’t quite deliver a console quality experience in terms of its actual match play, at least it gives you two viable options for controlling your team.