eFootball 2022 Dream Team Guide: Team Building (Part One)

So if you’re like me, you’ve been frustrated by the recent soccer offerings from Konami and EA. As an offline player/casual online player, I’ve been itching to get my hands on an updated Master League from Konami as eFootball PES 2021 Season Update is nearly two years old, and EA’s career mode in FIFA 22 has too many deficiencies such as poor AI both on and off the pitch. Well, when it comes to eFootball 2022, there are really only two ways to play the game. There is the offline versus the AI, which is basically a glorified demo, and this other mode called Dream Team. Well, what exactly is this Dream Team mode and is it enough to keep playing a game that is still a bit rough around the edges. Well, thankfully, I have put together a handy eFootball 2022 Dream Team guide that we’ll flesh out over a few parts to help you understand and hopefully get better at the mode.

eFootball 2022 Dream Team Guide

What’s Dream Team?

In Konami’s own words:

This is where you can build your original team by signing your favorite players and managers. When you are ready, put your team to test by taking part in various events or fight for promotion in the Division-based eFootball League.

Konami’s Dream Team is a rival to FIFA’s cash cow, Ultimate Team (FUT). With eFootball 2022 being a free offering, Dream Team is how Konami plans on making revenue, at least initially until Master League and/or edit mode are introduced via some sort of paid DLC. Through the likes of player purchases, which we’ll detail later, Konami is hoping that they can generate enough income and buzz to attract new players while also keeping the existing base satisfied. Similar to FUT, Team of the Week/Season, and legendary players such as Diego Forlan and Pep Guardiola are also available to help connect with our past by sprinkling in a few great players from yesteryear.

Building A Team

Before we get into too much detail about how to acquire players, it’s important to channel our inner Drake and “start from the bottom.” When you first start the mode, you’re given a team of 23 generic players along with a generic manager. Giving off default Master League squad vibes, Dream Team is all about building your team by acquiring players/managers, training them up, and taking them on the pitch to win some matches. Just like those original Master League lineups, these default players are rated pretty low, meaning that as you start accruing rewards by either completing objectives or splashing some real-life cash, you can quickly replace them with real life players through contracts.

Contracts are exactly what they sound like, an agreement between you and the player for a specified period of time. But instead of having to pay them a wage/salary, you only have to pay their value, think transfer price. Contracts are broken down into three categories:

1. Special Player List – These are your in-form (Team of the Week/Season) or special players (think Legends)
2. Standard Player List – These are your base players that currently play for one of the teams available in eFootball 2022. All of the players are real but some, due to licensing issues, might come from clubs that don’t have their kits in-game.
3. Manager List – These are managers from across the globe, some real and licensed and others not-licensed but tied to the club they are currently managing. Each manager has a specified tactic (playstyle) assigned to them (possession, long-ball, and so on) as well as bonuses that your players can accrue if their playstyle matches up with the player’s preferred playstyle (more on this to come)

In order to acquire these players, it’s important to first understand the in-game currencies. There are currently three types of currencies available in eFootball 2022:

The first two items on this list — eFootball Coins and GP — can be acquired through completing in-game objectives, with GP being of the free variety while eFootball Coins can be both purchased with real-life funds or for free through completing objectives, albeit at much slower rates and probability than outright purchases. eFootball Points cost money to acquire and come with an expiration date, so it’s important to remember to spend them before they expire.

In addition to the contracts listed above, there are also two other options which are important to understand:

1. Nominating Contracts – A nominating contract is your chance to sign a player from a pre-determined list broken down into four categories symbolized by star level, 2*-5* with 5* being the better-rated players and 2* being the lower end of the scale.
2. Chance Deals – Chance Deals allow you to sign a player at random from a specified list. For example, if one of the challenges is to beat the AI-controlled Bayern Munich, a chance deal could be a reward that would allow you to randomly pick a player from the current Bayern Munich roster.

You can see how many of these nominating contracts you have by looking at the top of the contracts screen:

Player Types

Now that you’ve gotten a firm grasp on contracts, it’s vital to understand what player types are before you start spending your hard-earned money and/or in-game currency. There are five player type categories:

1. Standard Players
2. Standard Foil Players
3. Featured Players
4. Trending Players
5. Legendary Players

Standard Players

These are your basic players with stats to reflect the current season. These players can be developed through level training and/or player progression and be acquired through GP, eFootball Coins, chance deals, and nominating deals. They are the most common players included in the game.

Standard Foil Players

These are exactly the same as standard players with the exception that there is a chance they come with a higher team playstyle. Unlike standard players, they can only be acquired through GP and/or chance deals, but like standard players they can be developed.

Featured Players

These are in-form players hand picked by Konami given their current performance. Their stats are improved upon when compared to the standard players, so you could theoretically see a featured Mo Salah have an Overall Rating of 95 when compared to his standard player rating of 93. These players can be developed but cannot be obtained through GP, only eFootball Coins, or points, or a chance deal.

Trending Players

Trending Players mirrors FUT’s “Team of the Week/Season” where a player who had a really good week and/or match will see a special ratings boost similar to featured players. Unlike the previously mentioned types, these players cannot be developed and can only be acquired via a nominating contract.

Legendary Players

Not only are legendary players comprised of elite current talent, they also include players that would be in the soccer Hall of Fame if one such existed (apart from the Premier League, which does have one). Legendary Hall of Famers are usually depicted via some random season, meaning that if you get a legendary Xavi, it could be 33-year-old Xavi as opposed to the player he was at the peak of his game. These players cannot be developed and can only be acquired through eFootball Coins, points, and chance deals. They are, by nature, the hardest players to acquire.

That concludes Part One, Team Building. In Part Two, we’ll go over the different modes available to play within Dream Team followed up by completing objectives (Part Three) before finishing with Player Training/Development (Part Four), and Tips for Building a Good Squad (Part Five).