The Meta, a term that has shaped the FIFA community and often divided it throughout the past few years. Using and abusing the game's most broken formations, mechanics, skill moves and finishes to play as good and efficiently as possible and to win.

What if I told you there was another way to be a good player and another way that's going to allow you to win most of your matches comfortably and climb all the way up into the elite division by playing simple and beautiful football? Today we say goodbye to the meta and we go back to the fundamentals of FIFA.

Today, I'm here to teach you old school FIFA, one fundamental skill for defending, build up and attacking each. Let's start off with defending.

Defending - Defend Multiple Options

When it comes to defending, one of the most important things is to be ready for anything the opponent is throwing you away. That's why a fundamental defensive skill lies in positioning yourself in a way that allows you to defend multiple options at once.

When you get better at anticipating, it can happen quickly that you fully commit towards one side because you think the opponent is going there. And if you're right, that's great because you're most likely going to win the ball. However, if you're wrong then you got a problem.

So, what you need to do is quickly analyze the different options your opponent has and take a position from which you can impact each single one. We are in a little bit of a tricky spot here as the opponent is able to play forward with tempo.

If we pause the scene here, there are two major options for the opponent. He can either pass the ball onto his other Striker, who's in a promising position or he can try and go into a dribbling himself to push inside the Box.

Our job is to position in a way that allows us to cover the passing option, but at the same time also keeps us in reach to a potential dribbling move. That's what the opponent decides for in the end as he pushes forward with a heel to heal. That's no problem though because we are ready for this option and so by cutting him off we are able to win the ball back. You just never want to leave one door wide open for the opponent and invite him to walk through.

Instead, keep both doors half open and close them right. When the opponent tries to walk through. It can be situations as simple as this one. The opponent has a passing option on the wing and we control our Center Back and instead of committing to covering the through ball or covering the short pass we just position in the middle of the two and this way temp the opponent.

He tries to go for the through ball and we intercept it easily. You're going to be surprised how often opponents play into your cards If you defend like this.

To make the most out of your positioning, it's also important to watch the opponent's ball contacts and to defend proactively. These are two more fundamental defending skills.

Related: How To Use German Cross To Score Easy Free Goals In FIFA 23?

Buildup - Watch Opponents Defender

Now build up is pretty much the other side of the metal compared to defending. When you defend, you try to figure out what the opponent is up to in his attack. When you're the one attacking, then you need to figure out what the defending opponent thinks you're up to.

How do you do that by watching his selected Defender? This is the fundamental skill for build up and many players have not mastered it yet. You can't be fully occupied by looking at your player when dribbling or looking at your teammates to scout good passing options. Of course, if you use FUT 23 Coins to get some good players, along with some strategy, you'll have a much easier time winning games.

The most promising passing opportunity does not mean anything if the opponent is selecting a close by Defender and covering it. So, make a habit of always having vision on that little white triangle above the defender's head, which player does the opponent have selected and how is he moving, what is he trying to defend... This will make it much easier to counter him.

In this clip, we win the ball in our own half and play our first pass forward right away. We can see that the selected Defender is aggressively pushing towards us and we're about to get pinched by just letting the ball bounce back first touch. We can get away from that pressure easily.

Now, the defender close to us gets selected and so we take the ball away with a ball roll upwards and then pass to our full back. We would like to continue the play forward but the opponent selects his Winger and covers that pass because we see that early. It's no big deal. We just turn around and pass back to our Center Midfielder.

Now, we are getting aggressed on once again and so we turn away in time and play back on the wing. And the opponent this time switches early and heavily commits to covering the next natural pass for us, which is towards our Striker. You can see though how a little bit later it comes back to the player because we don't fall for a strap as we are watching what he's doing with his selected Defender.

Our Striker now makes a run into the open space behind the fullback and that's the pass we play. You can see how easy it really is to counter your opponent by simply knowing what he's up to, so make sure to enter internalize this concept and you're going to lose the ball much less in build up.

Attacking - Increase The Speed Of Your Attack

I will say one thing right away for attacking. It is definitely the most meta dependent aspect of FIFA. Because without the strongest skill moves mechanics and finishes, you're going to have a harder time. It's as simple as that.

However, there is an important fundamental skill that has nothing to do with those. Increasing the speed of your attack when you're trying to create a chance, this has to do with passing, simple passing. And what you need to understand is that the more time you're giving the opponent to react to your latest action, the easier it's going to be for him to get into a good defensive position and correct mistakes.

So, when you do see an attacker being free in a good position and a passing combination opening up then play one touch football. Two touch is as slow as you can get. But one touch is still much better.

Here, we have a typical spot in which we're able to play from outside towards inside. As soon as I see my Winger coming back and then my two Strikers in the center being somewhat open, as well. I know right away that that is going to be our passing combination.

Now, it's time to execute quickly to make the opponent fumble his player switching and positioning, so we play two one touch passes and as you can see the opponent is still trying to defend against our first Striker while we are already one step ahead and have enough space to finish the chance with CR7.