Attributes are responsible for determining a player’s quality, and knowing them well can give you the opportunity to choose your team more efficiently. In this new series presented by Silvio Teixeira – also the author of tête-à-tête – you’ll have the opportunity to go deeper on each one of the game’s attributes according to the new FIFA 16 rules. Welcome to “Learning about FIFA 16 attributes”.
Learning about FIFA 16 attributes: Aggression
The first impression we have on aggression is that it is a typical attribute of tall and slow players, but hold on, the player with the highest aggression in the game is called Jaime Vardy (IF), with 97 of aggression and he’s the type of player who would hit his mother. However, he has only 76 of Strength (he does hit a lot, but he’s not strong) and insane 92 of pace. Maybe you don’t really know him for the fact that he is actually a silver player who recently received an 82-rated Record Breaker IF card.
So let’s unveil the myth and clarify that aggression is the attribute which determines the player’s power of will or commitment to a match. You know when your team loses but you still feel like they fought bravely until the last whistle was blown, everyone would give their best no matter what? This is pretty much what aggression means. Naturally it does mean you’ll cause more fouls and get tired faster in the last minutes of the match. A typical aggression-based action is when you go “shoulder-to-shoulder” against someone, with high aggression our player has the initiative to push the opponent strongly (as far as his strength allows him to) and this determines the winner of the challenge. Another important moment for aggression is when you jump in order to dispute a header. If you play football you know exactly what this is, you jump placing your body against the opponent (if you’re a defender), if you manage to hit the ball with your head, great, if you don’t at least you’ll have to displace the other guy so he can’t perform the header correctly. In this case Aggression needs to work alongside Jumping and Strength.
Players with high aggression offer some risk while inside the area because they can cause a lot of penalties without you pressing a single button, and that could possibly end with you smashing a controller, so be careful when you choose centre backs like this. However, generally, defending midfielders, attacking midfielders and strikers with high aggression can be excellent options, or at least having them on the bench for the second half, they can really be a game changer sometimes.
Importance by position
- Great Importance | CDM
Medium Importance | CM, CAM, ST, CF, RF, LF
Low Importance | LB, RB, LM, LW, RM, RW, CB
The way I see it, the most important thing in this case is that the defending midfielder has high aggression, because he’s a defending player that is usually outside of the area, preventing the opponent from getting there in the first place, while the full backs are the ones I reckon don’t need this attribute much, there are other attributes of more relevance for them, which doesn’t mean they couldn’t use a certain level of aggression. For the remaining players there’s a medium importance, that is why I like bringing aggressive players on the bench that I’ll only use in case I’m losing.
Considering only “regular” players (non-IF), these are the ones with the highest aggression stats by category (gold, silver and bronze).
Players with High Aggression
- Gold | Jermanie Jones (94), Pepe (94), Papadopoulous (92)
Silver | Kendall Waston (94), Steven Lenhart (94), Alan Gordon (92)
Bronze | Lucasz Burliga (92), James Keene (91), Gary Deegan (89)
Such as in the list of fast players, here in aggression we also have a great amount of players with 85+ in all categories. With that being said we raised the filter to 90+ in order to verify which league has the most aggressive players, that resulted in the BPL winning with 8 players total.
Making good use of aggression
– As we’ve mentioned before this attribute needs to work alongside two others, so do look out for Strength and Jumping (if you prefer to be aggressive while in the air) for better results.
– Due to the fact that in this FIFA the referee will blow the whistle at almost anything, I suggest you do exactly the opposite with your centre backs, find players with low aggression because the chances of them causing a penalty are already too high.
Squads with high Aggression
In order to choose players with high aggression you’d be better off using the BPL as basis for it has the most aggressive players. We’ve got two quality aggressive strikers up ahead, no need to check their other attributes. Fellaini as a CAM, Tiote and Cattermole for the two CDM positions and this way you’re free to choose your LM/LW and other defending players as you like, although do consider using less aggressive centre backs like Mertesacker, Ogbonna and Steven Caulker, for example.
Curiosities
– If we use Strength as a tie breaker, the player (non-IF) with the highest aggression in the game is a silver, Kendall Waston with his insane 94 of Aggression and 94 of Strength. A crazy guideless train coming in your direction. Would you try to stop it?