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FIFA 21 SBC players: Cheap high-rated players for completing SBCs

These were the cheapest, high-rated players on the FIFA 21 transfer market that were surprisingly great for completing SBCs.

Jamie Hore's Avatar

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FIFA 21 

  The FIFA 21 servers have been taken offline, meaning this content is no longer accessible in-game.

While many Squad Building Challenges in FIFA 21 were designed to test your knowledge of the clubs, leagues, and nations of its thousands of players, others gave you the chance to earn rewards based solely on how many high-rated players you were willing to part with.

The likes of the Puzzle Master SBC and the First XI SBC tormented FIFA players’ brains with their complexity, however, other puzzles preferred to test players’ willingness to part with their clubs’ top ballers. This was particularly true with SBCs that rewarded you with special cards – like Road to the Final, Player of the Month cards, or Icons.

So, if you wanted to get your hands on those cards, you needed some high-rated players to trade in. If your club was looking a little thin on the ground for anything 83 and over, have no fear, as these were the best high-rated Ultimate Team cards you could scoop up from the Transfer Market for cheap to complete most of these top-end SBCs.

It’s worth noting that the FIFA 21 servers are no longer online, meaning the SBC and Ultimate Team functionality is not available to complete in-game. Nevertheless, here’s what we did back in the day.

Cheapest FIFA 21 players for SBCs

What traits caused a player in FIFA Ultimate Team to be given the label of ‘SBC fodder’? Well, a combination of a high overall rating but an uncommon nation, obscure league, or undesirable stats that resulted in a low price on the transfer market, that’s what.

These were the players that didn’t really earn you a big payday by selling them, didn’t help in dishing out a lot of chemistry in your squad, and certainly weren’t a useful player for winning matches.

However, they were extremely useful for completing SBCs with high rating requirements. Below, we’ll run through the cheapest options at the time for each overall rating between 83 and 90. If your SBC was reliant on a lot of chemistry, these were not the best options though. They were usually from obscure countries and leagues, and often played in awkward positions.

FIFA 21 cheap 83-rated players

The following players were the cheapest 83-rated options for SBCs in FIFA Ultimate Team. You would look to snipe these players for between 1,000 and 2,500 coins.

  • Aitor (La Liga, Spain)
  • Kieran Trippier (La Liga, England)
  • Muniain (La Liga, Spain)
  • Pau Lopez (Serie A, Spain)
  • Thomas Strakosha (Serie A, Albania)
  • Duvan Zapata (Serie A, Colombia)
  • Lukas Hradecky (Bundesliga, Finland)
  • Filip Kostic (Bundesliga, Serbia)
  • Kevin Trapp (Bundesliga, Germany)
  • Charles Aranguiz (Bundesliga, Chile)
  • Martin Dubravka (Premier League, Slovakia)
  • Steve Mandanda (Ligue 1, France)
  • Anthony Lopes (Ligue 1, Portugal)
  • Dusan Tadic (Eredivisie, Serbia)
  • Oscar (CSL, Brazil)
  • Rafa (Liga NOS, Portugal)
  • Ever Banega (Saudi Pro League, Argentina)
  • Gonzalo Higuain (MLS, Argentina)
  • Carlos Vela (MLS, Mexico)
  • Edin Visca (Super Lig, Bosnia Herzegovina)

FIFA 21 SBC players: A player wearing a blue kit slide tackling a player with a yellow kit.

FIFA 21 cheap 84-rated players

For the cheapest 84-rated players in FIFA Ultimate Team, you would have expected to pay anywhere between 5,000 and 6,500 coins.

  • Oyarzabal (La Liga, Spain)
  • Saul (La Liga, Spain)
  • Jose Maria Gimenez (La Liga, Uruguay)
  • Josip Ilicic (Serie A, Slovenia)
  • Lautaro Martinez (Serie A, Argentina)
  • Salvatore Sirigu (Serie A, Italy)
  • Roman Burki (Bundesliga, Switzerland)
  • Raphael Guerreiro (Bundesliga, Portugal)
  • Wilfred Ndidi (Premier League, Nigeria)
  • Kasper Schmeichel (Premier League, Denmark)
  • Raul Jimenez (Premier League, Mexico)
  • Rui Patricio (Premier League, Portugal)
  • Thomas Partey (Premier League, Ghana)
  • Idrissa Gueye (Ligue 1, Senegal)
  • Jesus Corona (Liga NOS, Mexico)
  • Pizzi (Liga NOS, Portugal)
  • Grimaldo (Ligs NOS, Spain)

FIFA 21 cheap 85-rated players

There were some of Ultimate Team’s top players, and that meant parting with a fair amount of coins to grab these players. The cheapest 85-rated players in FIFA 21 could be grabbed for between 10,000 and 12,000 coins at the time, depending on your platform.

  • Miralem Pjanic (La Liga, Bosnia Herzegovina)
  • Parejo (La Liga, Spain)
  • Gianluigi Donnarumma (Serie A, Italy)
  • Milan Skriniar (Serie A, Slovakia)
  • Christian Eriksen (Serie A, Denmark)
  • Dries Mertens (Serie A, Belgium)
  • Lorenzo Insigne (Serie A, Italy)
  • Luis Alberto (Serie A, Spain)
  • Sergej Milinkovic-Savic (Serie A, Serbia)
  • Diego Godin (Serie A, Uruguay)
  • Peter Gulacsi (Bundesliga, Hungary)
  • Serge Gnabry (Bundesliga, Germany)
  • Bernd Leno (Premier League, Germany)
  • Hakim Ziyech (Premier League, Morocco)
  • Memphis Depay (Ligue 1, Netherlands)

FIFA 21 SBC players: Several players in a red kit trying to take the ball from a player in white.

FIFA 21 cheap 86-rated players

Special cards or Icon SBCs often featured squad rating requirements of 86 or higher, so these were the type of top players you needed to start filling them out. It was possible to nab these ones for between 17,000 and 21,000 coins.

  • David Silva (La Liga, Spain)
  • Carvajal (La Liga, Spain)
  • Jordi Alba (La Liga, Spain)
  • Alejandro Gomez (La Liga, Argentina)
  • Yann Sommer (Bundesliga, Switzerland)
  • Thomas Muller (Bundesliga, Germany)
  • David De Gea (Premier League, Spain)
  • Jamie Vardy (Premier League, England)
  • Rui Patricio [In-Form] (Premier League, Portugal)
  • Jordan Henderson (Premier League, England)
  • Marco Verratti (Ligue 1, Italy)

FIFA 21 cheap 87-rated players

For players with an 87 overall rating, you had to part with somewhere between 22,000 and 26,000 coins.

  • Luka Modric (La Liga, Croatia))
  • Sergio Busquets (La Liga, Spain)
  • Wojciech Szczesny (Serie A, Poland)
  • Ciro Immobile (Serie A, Italy)
  • Giorgio Chiellini (Serie A, Italy)
  • Heung-min Son (Premier League, South Korea)
  • Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Premier League, Gabon)
  • Bernardo Silva (Premier League, Portugal)
  • Hugo Lloris (Premier League, France)
  • Fabinho (Premier League, Brazil)
  • Andrew Robertson (Premier League, Scotland)
  • Jadon Sancho (Bundesliga, England)
  • Keylor Navas (Ligue 1, Costa Rica)
  • Angel Di Maria (Ligue 1, Argentina)

As well as these players from major leagues, there was also a handful of cheap 87-rated special cards available for less than 26,000 coins, but you would have likely struggled with chemistry:

  • Gabriel Arias [Team of the Group Stage] (CONMEBOL Libertadores, Chile)
  • Erik Sviatchenko [Team of the Season] (3F Superliga, Denmark)

FIFA 21 cheap 88-rated players

These 88-rated players were great for hiking up your overall rating for an SBC – if you had the funds. These were the cheapest options for you to buy from the Transfer Market at the time, as all could be poached for anywhere between 32,000 and 35,000 coins.

  • Eden Hazard (La Liga, Belgium)
  • Toni Kroos (La Liga, Germany)
  • Samir Handanovic (Serie A, Slovenia)
  • Kalidou Koulibaly (Serie A, Senegal)
  • Paulo Dybala (Serie A, Argentina)
  • Joshua Kimmich (Bundesliga, Germany)
  • Harry Kane (Premier League, England)
  • Raheem Sterling (Premier League, England)
  • Ederson (Premier League, Brazil)

As well as these players, there were also some cheap 88-rated special cards out there. They went for less than 35,000, but weren’t so good for chemistry:

  • Richard Ortiz [Team of the Group Stage] (CONMEBOL Libertadores, Paraguay)
  • Fabrizio Angileri [Team of the Group Stage] (CONMEBOL Libertadores, Argentina)
  • Anton Tinnerholm [Team of the Season] (MLS, Sweden)

FIFA 21 cheap 89-rated players

For these 89-rated players, you had to fork out between 37,000 and 42,000 coins.

  • Thibaut Courtois (La Liga, Belgium)
  • Karim Benzema (La Liga, France)
  • Casemiro (La Liga, Brazil)
  • Manuel Neuer (Bundesliga, Germany)
  • Sergio Aguero (Premier League, Argentina)

Here are two 89-rated special cards that you could also get in that price bracket, but they were often difficult to link:

  • Billy Arce [Team of the Group Stage] (CONMEBOL Libertadores, Ecuador)
  • Lisandro Lopez [Team of the Group Stage] (CONMEBOL Libertadores, Argentina)

FIFA 21 SBC players: Several players running for the ball, with a player in a red kit and another in a blue-and-white kit leaping into the air for a header.

FIFA 21 cheap 90+ players

There were only a handful of players rated 90 or higher that could be considered good value for SBCs during FIFA 21’s time in the spotlight. These would generally have set you back anywhere between 45,000 and 52,000 for these high-rated cards.

  • Marc-Andre ter Stegen (La Liga, Germany)
  • Sadio Mane (Premier League, Senegal)
  • Alisson (Premier League, Brazil)

While we always recommended turning to what was in your Ultimate Team club first, these were some high-rated yet affordable options for you to turn to if you needed a big player to pull the rating up or plug a gap.

If you were super sparse of high-rated players and needed to build from scratch, you couldn’t go wrong with building a La Liga or Serie A team if you needed a fair bit of chemistry as well.

Jamie has been with The Loadout since the very beginning, joining in 2019 as the site's first staff writer and working his way up to deputy editor. Wielding a degree in broadcast journalism and a deep knowledge of FIFA and EA FC, Call of Duty, and FPS games in general, he's the go-to guy for tips on how to solve SBCs in FC 24, observations on the current Warzone meta, and much more. He is also currently getting back on the Destiny 2 bandwagon ahead of The Final Shape release date and, while he's not proud of it, is still finding himself hooked on the lunacy of Palworld.