FIFA 22 dev shuts down secret defending exploit rumors

EA SPORTS have moved to pour cold water on one of FIFA 22’s hottest Ultimate Team rumors so far – the existence of a defending exploit. 

The game was released on September 27 for early access copies of the Ultimate Edition, meaning a group of players have been testing out the new FUT Champs qualification, Division Rivals rewards, and Squad Battles.

When you’re confronted with the task of winning a certain amount of game’s to enter FIFA 22’s most lucrative competition, Weekend League, many people will take any advantage they can find.

After all, it’s a game of fine margins.

FIFA 22 meta defending loophole?

Over on Reddit, the rumor mill has been turning once again, with a section of the community believing there are secret positional advantages granted to some defenders.

“It seems like fullbacks that have a secondary position as CB do not have a positioning penalty applied to them. However, there are not a lot of fullbacks that have this flexibility,” a user posted, claiming just a handful of cards can be used in this so-called exploit. Among them were Arsenal’s Kieran Tierney and Bayern Munich’s Lucas Hernandez.

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After seeing the posts, the FUT Weekly Podcast tagged one of the developers, Tom Caleffi, for confirmation.

In simple terms, this would mean – if true – that a speedy right-back or left-back could slot into the CB position without any repercussions. In previous games, this was made possible, though the game’s dev team worked to combat it with the FIFA 22 gameplay pitch notes.

• Read More: Best FIFA 22 custom tactics, meta formations & player instructions

In there, they stated: “Defensive work rate and tiredness has a significant impact on the defensive positioning of players.” This means that those played out of their position will not be as defensively sound as previous years.

These new theories making waves on Reddit have, though, been debunked.

Dev responds

Caleffi couldn’t have been more clear with his response. He said: “I can confirm this is incorrect. In FUT only the position shown in the item itself is considered for the Centre-back vs Full-back logic.

“Other positions not shown in the item do not affect this logic in FUT.”

For those worried about another gameplay issue, i.e. the automatic switching player feature not functioning as normal, Tom confirmed EA are looking into the matter. It will be fixed in a future FIFA 22 patch.

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So, there you have it – rumors of these exploits for defending are not actually true.

That said, there’s a chance that some fullbacks (particularly the faster ones with better recoveries) may still be effective in central defense. If you’re looking for a fast CB, though, we’ve got a quick recommendation…Maxence Lacroix from Wolfsburg.