Ultimate Team is a brand-new game mode to FIFA 09, released March 19, 2009. In FUT, you have the freedom to create a squad of players you accumulate through opening “packs” or trading with other players through the online trading system. Coins are the currency in the game which are given as a reward after games and can also be accumulated through trading. You can buy packs which contain random players, staff, training cards, consumable cards, or collectibles. This page elaborates on the types of cards below.
Players
Players can be obtained through opening packs. There are three types of players: bronze, silver, and gold. As you might imagine, the gold players are the best players, and the bronze are the worst. Although you can hope for sheer luck and pull a Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi in a pack, it's highly unlikely. It's very easy to give in and pay a hefty fee to open a pack when your return will usually not reach the amount you paid, so know you will likely be disappointed before deciding to buy a pack. Players can be traded for coins or other cards via the FUT Trading Center. Also, players can be trained permanently with training cards all the way up to overall level 99, but players who had a higher overall than others before they were trained will naturally be better even when the two are trained to the same overall level.
Consumables
There are four types of consumable cards. Healing cards are used to heal your injured players. When a player is injured, he is issued a number which is higher if the injury is more serious. A healing card also has a number, which subtracts from the injury number which must be at zero or lower in order to heal the injury. Contracts are used to keep your players and staff with your team, who have a certain number of games they can play before they are dismissed from your team. You can use contract cards to increase this number and keep your player or staff member, but keep checking to make sure nobody is at 1 game remaining before playing a game. Gameplay cards are very useful, varied cards which can do things such as taunt the opposing keeper, make the ref lenient or strict, or give your players a boost in many different attributes for the game or half. These are incredibly useful when competing in a tournament. Finally, Team Talks are used to increase the morale of your squad. Your morale will go down after loosing games and you cannot expect to play well if your morale is low, so do not underestimate the usefulness of these cards.
Staff
There are 5 possible staff members which you can use to bolster your squad. The Manager determines how effective your contracts are and also your chemistry, more on chemistry can be found in the links below. The Head Coach makes your training cards more effective when used on field players. The Goalkeeper Coach speeds up training of goalkeepers like your Head Coach affects your field players. The Fitness Coach increases the effectiveness of your fitness training cards, which alter the fitness stat of your players. Lastly, the Physio speeds up the recovery time of your players by making your injury healing cards more effective.
Training Cards
Training cards are used to change the stats of your players. There is an alternate type of training cards which change your formation, and you can use these to your advantage in chemistry. The stat training cards can be attained through trading or packs, like any of the other cards. As you increase the individual stats; pace, shooting, passing, dribbling, heading, morale, or fitness, the overall level will increase. Training cards either train individual players or the entire squad.
Another type of training cards is the formation changing card. You can apply a formation card to a player or manager to change his preferred formation to the one that the card is meant for. However, keep in mind that there are player versions of this card, and manager ones, you cannot use a player card on a manager or vice versa.
Collectibles
Your Collection is just that, a collection of players, kits, and team crests. By adding these "collectibles" to your collection, you will be rewarded with coins, and will receive a significant bonus reward of 1000 for 7 card pages and 5000 for 14 card pages. This makes collecting a valuable money making asset, as people might list players for 200 or so, when you could add that card to your collection for 400 and profit, and not to mention the big bonus for completing pages. Note that even though FUT09 is sort of unpopulated now, this remains a good money-making method as players are still listed low enough for you to profit on by collecting them. More on money-making, and collecting in particular in the links below.
Other FUT09 Pages