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FIFA 2004 CAREER WALKTHROUGH
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= Author: DG Dobrev =
= Date started: 16.01.2004 =
= Date completed: 06.02.2004 =
= Version: 1.0 =
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Copyright notice:

I believe this is not the first FAQ/Walkthrough you will use. This
walkthrough is not written for commercial purposes: it is a pure sample of
a way to share game experience. So, the only thing you are allowed to do
with it (based on the copyright laws) is to make a copy for your own use.
By reading this walkthrough you hereby accept never to use it for your own
benefit, never plagiarize it, as well as all other things stated in the law
books. Read them! It will be most useful for you :-)

If you need anything from this Walkthrough for another work based on FIFA
2004, you are obliged to e-mail me and then credit me in your own FAQ.

iron_feather@mail.bg

This is my mail. Feel free to write anytime.

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Table of contents
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. Career mode in FIFA 2004 - the true fun indeed!
2. Picking up a team. Information and considerations.
3. The 5-year managerial quest for prestige.
3.1. Team strategies.
3.2. Transfer strategies.
4. An example of a 5-Year career.

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1. Career Mode in FIFA 2004 - the true fun indeed!


Hi, folks! If you happen to wonder why I decided to write such walkthrough,
here's the simple, but hard fact: a lot of people play FIFA 2004 just
because of fact, that their favorite teams are there, and are able to win
the EFA trophy, or the Champions league or whatever other cup you think of
(included in FIFA 2004). Yet... I was amazed that very few people are
actually ready to take a third division team in England, for example, and
actually bring it to the FA Premier League, win it, and finally reach the
Champions League on their final, 5th year, and win it too.

I know this may be a little hard, since you're starting an amateur team.
This is why many people just shun the lower leagues. But I will tell you
this: there is no greater feeling than starting a rookie team and making it
the fear of Europe in the end. This takes time, I know. Still, this is a
simple way of experiencing everything in this game.

So, if you haven't tried the career mode, I strongly encourage you to do
this. If you prefer to stick to the tournaments, I believe this walkthrough
is not for you.

If you are ready for the new experience in this game - the career mode, you
are heartily welcome to proceed reading the next chapter of the
walkthrough.

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2. Picking up a team. Information and considerations.


2.1. FIFA 2004 Creation Centre.


Before selecting the team that you'll be using throughout your game, I
strongly encourage you to download the FIFA 2004 creation centre version 2.
Why? This will not spoil your experience, but FIFA 2004 is by no means
complete in terms of players in some teams.

Why is that? I don't know, but I can give you an example. I'm a fan of
Bolton Wanderers for 12 years now. In FIFA 2004, Youri Djorkaeff and Henrik
Pedersen were missing (and not only them, but let's pretend we haven't
noticed), and were kind of "replaced" by Dean Holdsworth and Bo Hansen.
These people left Bolton quite a time ago. In FIFA 2004, Henrik Pedersen is
here, along with most of the people in the Bolton squad... But Mario
Jardel, Ibrahim Ba and Youri Djorkaeff are out of the team once again.
Nice... Why spoiling the experience with an incomplete team of players?

So if you see something like that, use the FIFA 2004 Creation centre to fix
the problem. I myself have added these 3 players: Ba, Jardel and Djorkaeff
to the Bolton team and tried to make them as real as possible.
Example: Mario Jardel is great striker, so he'll be getting high Shooting
Power and Shooting Accuracy marks (around 75-85). In addition, he's great
with the ball heading, so he receives at least 80 heading (I put 85). To
compensate for this, he's a bit slow: his pace mark should be low (I put
55), and so on. Finally, he ended up with an evaluation mark of 85, which I
believe suits his skills as a veteran football player.
Almost the same goes for the other veteran. Youri Djorkaeff: his heading
skill should be low, and compensate this with Shooting Accuracy and
Shooting Power marks (remember the goal for Bolton against Blackburn (ended
3-4 in favor of Bolton), as well as a high passing mark. His final
evaluation mark was 65. Maybe it is a bit low, but anyway, he was extremely
useful for me.

Generally this is it. If you like to make the game a bit more interesting,
add yourself to the game by replacing a pre-existent squad member. Put your
marks accordingly to your needs, but I strongly urge you to be wise. Don't
put extraordinary skill marks for yourself.
Example: I decided to play Torquay in the England's Third division. I used
the Creation centre only once: I swapped the Goalkeeper, Arjan van Heusden
with myself, without changing any of his marks. This way I made myself a
goalkeeper of Torquay with an overall skill evaluation of 49. And believe
it or not, I think it suits me. I'm a good goalkeeper, but I will never
become a professional one. I have other ideas for my future that do not
include football and goalkeeping.

So, this is all about the Creation Centre. I urge you to use it ONLY to
enhance the game or enhance YOUR OWN experience. If you happen to wonder
where to get it, I believe that was the website:

www.fifasoccer.ru

had one uploaded. If not, use any search engine and find yourself one. It's
not that hard.


2.2. Selecting a team. Information and considerations.


I strongly urge you to play the career mode at Semi-Pro difficulty. I think
it is the best one of all, if you really want to enhance your game
experience. With some restarting (hmm, who doesn't) you may even be able to
win, for example, the League cup and the F.A. cup while still in Third
division, while striving for promotion to Second Division.

NOTE: If you start a Premier League team or other good team (Real Madrid,
Barcelona, AC Milan and so on) I recommend Professional difficulty. Otherwise
it's just too easy.

Still, nobody stops you from selecting a higher difficulty, though. If
you're good at the higher difficulties, go for it. As for myself, I
switched to professional difficulty as soon as I reached the Premier League
(meaning the year 4 of my managerial quest), because my team was really
good and was quite capable of standing his own in Premiership. This was a
result of good transfer decisions and selection of players, and for all
this, I'm going to write a lot about the transfer periods and how to use
them best to your advantage: mainly because you start quite low on cash,
especially in Third Division (Torquay started with 1.5 M).

It's time to pick a team. I strongly suggest that you pick a lower division
team. If you happen to wonder why, the game experience is best this way.
Advancing through leagues will keep your interest up and going at all
times, and you'll hardly ever get bored (believe me; I get bored very
quickly when a game starts to get repetitive). If you pick Real Madrid,
unless you're this team's biggest fan, you won't be able to "survive" more
than 2-3 years: you'll get bored.
It is up to you. I picked Torquay, since the team's colors are yellow and
blue, which happen to be my favorite colors :-) I had no other reason to
pick this team :-))

After you've picked the difficulty and the team, it's time to start the 5-
year quest for managerial prestige!!!

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3. The 5-year managerial quest for prestige.


There's nothing much to the Career mode: each year you're given 4
objectives, with each objective evaluated in prestige points. There are 2
800-point objectives and 2 200-point objectives. There are also several
400-point bonus objectives, which give you certain benefits if you complete
them (Win the league, win a domestic cup, qualify for EFA, and so on).

Oh. I almost forgot. You must have at least 1000 prestige at the end of the
league matches in order to complete successfully the year. I'm confident
you will do well.

We have started talking about prestige, as you see :-)
The first year you will start with 1000 prestige. You will use it during
your transfers (transfer market), during the training of your team members
(team training), and of course, for individual training of selected team
members. The better you do the more prestige you'll be able to spend on
training and transfers the next year.
And now - the teams.

3.1. Team strategies.


It's time to talk about your team. Your main objective concerning your team
is to keep it in shape. In FIFA 2004, your players get tired after every
match. They recuperate over time, of course, but don't think that you'll be
able to play with your star team throughout the entire game. Your players
get tired, as I said which reduces their performance throughout the game.
Don't be surprised if a player with 100 points on fatigue gets extremely
tired in the 30th minute of the game.

3.1.1. How do I keep my players in shape?

First of all, you mustn't allow them to get very tired. A tired player
recuperates slowly; sometimes it may take 2-3 weeks, depending on the team
training you've assigned and the number of matches in a week: if they are 2
your players will get tired quickly especially if you use the same team for
both matches.
The second thing is to plan your matches firsthand. If you have a single
match for the week, check your players' status. If most of them are tired
(I'd say over 30 fatigue), or very tired (over 50 points fatigue), I
recommend you assign no training and let them rest. Still, if you have a
tough match this week, assign normal training.
If they're ok, assign normal training by all means. They must still be in
shape regardless of the situation, or they'll get quickly tired in the
match and suffer greater fatigue penalty after the match is over compared
to the situation where the players have trained.
Example: In semi-pro difficulty, players who have received normal training
in a week with only one match, may suffer no more than 30 fatigue. The next
week, if you still have them on normal training, and there is also only one
match, their fatigue will drop to about 5-10, which is means they're ready
to participate in the next match also without problem, and still be at
their best.

Sometimes, you'll have 2 matches for the week, and sometimes, both of them
will be important (like both EFA and Domestic cup matches in one week),
which means you'll have to take certain precautions. The first one is to
assign extra training. The second is to check the fatigue value of your
star people. If they're at 0-10, they'll do well in both matches. If it's
10-20, they won't be at their best in the second game. If it's over 30,
don't use them in the second game, or they'll be tired in the first half of
the game already.
If you happen to wonder what I do in a case, where a star player is very
tired (over 50) and there are serious matches ahead, here's my trick:
1. Assign extra training.
2. Put the star player as a substitute in the first match. I use him only
if the things go bad, or the match goes to penalties.
3. If his fatigue is about 40 or under 40, I put him as a start team
player. Otherwise, I put him as a substitute and use him in the second half
only.

3.1.2. How do my players advance?

A player advances when you assign individual training for him. You can
train sprints, shooting, passing, heading, tackling, technique, goalkeeper
ability, goalkeeper skill. According to your player's current overall
evaluation statistic (for example, 49), his training will cost some
prestige (roughly 50 prestige for 1 training for player under 50, 100 for
player under 60, 250 for player under 65-70, and so on). Still, you'll soon
see the results. For example, I'm in the 4th year with Torquay, just
entered the Premier league (this is the second time I do career mode with