The WSC Pro-Rel Experiment: a FC 26 Career Mode RTG

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Finding interesting and creative ways to play EA FC Career Mode can be very hard. Every year, people scour the leagues of the game to find new teams, interesting challenges, and creative ways to play.

I am a FC nerd. I have been playing this game religiously since FIFA 07, back when I was a wee 7-year-old just starting to fall in love with the game. By about 2015, when I was in high school, I started to get bored with your usual FIFA saves. Playing with the fun teams simply was not fun anymore.

Around that time, I found out about a YouTuber named Cutzy who had been doing “Youth Academy Road to Glory” career modes for a couple years. The parameters of his saves were simple: take an English club from EFL League Two to the Champions League final. Along the way, only use players generated by the game, either through the youth academy feature or the regenerated players of retirees. Simple enough.

And so, by FIFA 17, a lot of my career mode saves were rooted in these generated players. That was nearly a decade ago, and that is how I have played the game since. However, after five or six years of that consistent set-up, having done saves in leagues across the world from Mexico to Argentina, Australia to India, Germany to Italy, and so on, I began setting up custom databases for myself to use to play even more daunting and creative saves.

Before you think to yourself, “why not play modded?” My computer cannot handle modded FC. It can barely handle a normal Football Manager database and save, but that is its own story…

When Westchester SC were announced in the summer of 2024, I immediately had the idea of using Westchester on FC 24 in a “Create-a-club” save. To do so, I moved all of the MLS clubs to the EPL and EFL Championship, created WSC in EFL League Two, and ran a “normal” Road to Glory with the club. For the first time in years, I allowed myself to use real players alongside youth academy products and “regens.”

In that save, my first signing was Kemar Lawrence, who had been playing in the Romanian league at the time. To my chagrin, I was right on the money. Kemar became the first WSC signing ever just a few months later. Along the way, I did some research on local soccer players and came across some others that I signed for WSC: Dante Polvara of Aberdeen (who is from Pleasantville, NY), Pierre da Silva of Cusco FC (who is from Port Chester, NY), Will Sands of the Columbus Crew (now the New England Rev, the younger brother of James Sands, from Rye, NY), and Luca Koleosho of Burnley (from Norwalk, CT). Each of these players, except for the aging Lawrence, remained a part of that save until the end.

However, the end was not the same fulfilling end as most of my other saves. Usually the goal would be to win the UCL. However, with FC 25 releasing the same week I began the final season of that save, I made the cardinal rule that, for the first time in years, I set a deadline and decided that would be the final season. Despite our best efforts and the star academy product Ethan Anderson, a 25-year-old American LW by the end of the save, we could only muster 3rd in the American Premier League (behind Inter Miami and NYCFC) and a semifinal exit in the UCL to Bayer Leverkusen. We did win the FA Cup (or US Open Cup, I guess?), but I was not fulfilled.

So last year, my second save on FC 25 was me running back that same idea. This time, however, I did not place any American teams in the English leagues. Instead, the database I set was simple. Westchester would need to climb the English leagues to become the best team in the world.

With only regens and academy products allowed, this save would prove more daunting and challenging. However, after twelve seasons of building the best team possible, we won the treble, only losing one game along the way in the Premier League as we hoisted the league, FA Cup, and UCL. The stars of the show were 6’5” ginger American DM Cody Adams (who had come through at RB Leipzig, oddly enough), Haitian LW Pascal Delatour (95 rated in the last season, an academy product that played in ten seasons of the save), American RW/AM Luke Tremblay (another 90+ academy boy), and Mexican ST Juan Carlos Villalba (no relation to JC Obregon, sadly, but 92 rated and a killer signed out of free agency in season five).

The new challenge…

Following the end of WSC Season One a few weeks ago, along with the start of the current MLS playoffs, I have decided to do another WSC save on FC 26. However, this time, I will be using a heavily modified custom database. Since I am playing with custom squads on the console, there had to be a victim. It was the German leagues, where this save will be housed.

Thus, all eighteen Bundesliga teams, plus twelve from Bundesliga 2, will be moved to the MLS and operate as a “German Super League.” To occupy the eighteen Bundesliga spots, I have replaced each Bundesliga team with each of the eighteen teams that have qualified for the 2025 MLS Playoffs. The remaining twelve MLS teams have been swapped with twelve Bundesliga 2 teams. For the other six Bundesliga 2 teams (in this save, they are Magdeburg, Elversburg, Furth, Dresden, Munster, and Karlsruhe), I have adapted squads.

In building this custom database, to add an extra challenge, I have added in all of the former MLS players abroad to their former MLS clubs. For instance, Taty Castellanos is on NYCFC, Tyler Adams is on NYRB, and so on. Additionally, any USMNT or Canadian internationals who have not played in MLS have also been added to an MLS team. Some noteworthy examples are Christian Pulisic to Philly, Malik Tillman to San Diego, Flo Balogun to DC, Jonathan David to Montreal, and Promise David to Toronto.

Since all of the former MLS clubs were now super loaded with players, and since all of the German teams left in Bundesliga 2 felt random, I built regional “USL” teams on the six remaining Bundesliga 2 teams. Remember, it is impossible to modify these teams on console, so in-game their names will stay German, but they will be represented as such.

Elversburg will be “Sacramento Republic,” with some of the players from the LA Galaxy, LAFC, San Diego, San Jose, and Toronto (who could not fit into the Northeast team, which was fully loaded). Furth will be “Colorado Springs Switchbacks,” with some of the players from Portland, RSL, the Colorado Rapids, Vancouver, and Seattle. Dresden will be “Detroit City,” with some of the players from Chicago, Minnesota, Columbus, Cincy, and Nashville. Magdeburg will be “Hartford Athletic,” with players from NYCFC, NYRB, New England, Montreal, and Philadelphia. Munster will be “Charleston Battery,” with players from Inter Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Charlotte, and DC United. Lastly, Karlsruhe will be “FC Tulsa,” with players from Austin, Dallas, Houston, Sporting KC, and St. Louis.

WSC squad on FC 26, as of 11/1/25: https://sofifa.com/squad/2324642 

Lastly, it is worth noting that I have made a custom Westchester SC squad based on the FM26 ratings of Westchester SC, which is on SoFIFA. For anyone interested, that squad is linked in this post. However, I will not be using a custom or realistic WSC squad in the save, as the potentials of each player would be unrealistically high and the save would not be a challenge. Thus, WSC will be placed in 3. Liga, one level below all of the custom American squads above, with a modified 3. Liga database where each team loses some of their best players. Why? Had one of those teams gone up to Bundesliga 2, they would be able to actually compete with the American squads, and, in my opinion, there is no fun in that.

Below, I will also be posting the year one squad for Westchester SC in this save, as generated by the game. Our best players, at least for now, are pacy Italian LW Fabio Schillaci, 6’7” Swedish ST Henry Omsberg, and American CB Bruno Theall.

See you at the end of season one!