How to Choose the Best Players for your UT Squad in FIFA 13

So you're starting a new FIFA 13 Ultimate Team squad and you're trying to decide how to make a team that should be able to destroy anyone unlucky enough to be matched with you. This may seem like no easy task, but making the best possible squad is not as difficult as it sounds. Making a great team involves having great players who play well with each other.

First Step: Decide on a League/Nationality

 
Chemistry is extremely important in Ultimate Team, as you want to have players who will find space for eachother, make runs, and move the ball quickly and fluidly.
Commit to one thing: either have all of your players from the same league, or same nationality. When you're deciding on players you're going to want as many players from the same league AND nationality, for perfect chemistry.

Choose a Formation

This should be done first for two reasons. One, you don't want a bunch of players with different formations, killing your chemistry.  And two, some formations don't have certain positions, and you need to know which players you're going to be looking at.
All formations with 4 defenders seem to work well, as well as 3-5-2.  My personal favourites are 4-1-2-1-2, 3-5-2 and 4-3-3.

Find Your Players!

Now that's all decided, you can begin deciding on which players you want to buy.  I always like to know I have the best possible player in each position.  To do this I use the Ultimate Database:
http://ultimatedb.nl/

If you're unfamiliar with this website, it's a database of all the players in the game, with their detailed stats that you cannot see while in FIFA 13. This includes things such as their detailed stats (strength, free kick accuracy, ect), skill and weak foot *, offensive and defensive work rates, traits, and more.

To find the best player for you, go to the website, click player database, and fill out as many fields to narrow the search results as you can.  Then sort the results by price to see the best and most expensive players on top. I have been building a bronze English squad, primarily in the third English league. Here's what my search page looked like:

I decided on Grabban to be my primary striker as he seemed to have the best balance in terms of speed and shooting that I wanted. I also was able to see that he's a 3 star skiller, which is decent, and he has stats that I am happy with.  Of course there were more expensive players who were better, such as his in-form, but they were out of my price range.

Now that I have a striker, I should find some CBs. I decided on a 3-5-2 formation, so I am going to need 3 of them.  I did another search, except I know I like my center backs to have some speed to them. I set the database to only show me players who have a pace rating higher than 65.

All of these players seem great. I decided to have the first 3 as my starters, and I bought a few of these other players as my substitutes.

Eventually you'll fill out every position.  Buying all the players can take time, as there isn't always an auction for your player in the correct position, at a reasonable price. Be patient, don't blow your money!

Here's the squad I ended up with:

All of my players are very quick, especially the wingers, strikers and center backs. My strikers and midfield can all shoot well enough, and my defenders and CDM can all defend and head well. I used the database to find a good free kick taker for my team. I also have a few players on my watch list who I will buy once I can afford them. In my very first bronze tournament I entered with this squad I won with almost no problems.

Be smart when you buy players, don't just do random auction searches! Find out what the best players available to you are, and jump on them!