FIFA 12

Anyone serious about getting this achievement without spending MSP or breaking the EA TOS needs to play smart to maximize their chances.

Earning coin
By far the best approach to earning coin is to play the Featured Cups due to the higher rewards on offer, however when the featured cups are not available, or when they are at too high a difficulty for you the Gold Regional Cup is only Professional difficulty, with a payout of 1400 coins. In an hour you will be able to win this without too much trouble with a very high success rate (if I can do it anyone can), earning ~3500 coins depending on performances.

Play all tournaments in a single playthrough (i.e. do not back out of the tournament ladder screen after a match), otherwise the game increases the difficulty 1 level when you return to the tournament for some reason. This is presumably a bug, happens with every tournament.

Gold Regional Cup rules require that you form a team from a single league, so it is easy to assemble a squad of decent (but cheap) players (avoid famous players, sell them for coins as it is a player's celebrity that adds value on the market rather than their stats in FUT), this should be your fall-back tournament whenever a featured cup is not available/suitable for your skill level.

Recommended Tournaments
Match reward = (Completion Bonus + Skill Bonus), paid every game played. Skill bonus's are an average based on my experience in the competitions.

1. Gold Regional Cup, Pro [x0.6, x0.6, x0.7, x0.8] -- (325 + 200) per match + 1400 bonus = 3500 coins.
2. Underdog Cup, Semi-Pro [x0.3, x0.4, x0.4, x0.45] -- (325 + 100) per match + 800 bonus = 2400 coins.

Featured Cups
Look out for special events, these award a higher completion bonus per match, and often have a good prize pot too.
French Flair, Semi-Pro -- (500 + 200) per match + 1500 bonus = 4500 coins, open 11 Nov to 18 Nov 2011
Challengers Open, Semi-Pro [x0.5, x0.6, x0.7, x0.8] -- (500 + 200) per match + 1000 bonus = 3800 coins, open 21 Nov to 1 Dec 2011
Messi Cup, Semi-Pro [x0.5, x0.6, x0.7, x0.8] -- (500 + 250) per match + 4000 bonus = 7000 coins, open 24 Nov to 27 Nov 2011 -- Grind the hell out of this one folks!

Aim to win one tournament a day, if you've playing well throw in a few extra games, but play for the long term and don't burn out by playing too much. You'll get frustrated and end up making stupid mistakes that cost you the cup win bonus -- been there, done that.

Half-playing/boosting
If you are a bit tired of the grind, but still refuse to pay MSP for the achievement you can play any Semi-Pro tournaments, scoring 3 or 4 goals in the first half shouldn't be a problem for most people, just play a couple of strikers with 85+ pace and you should be able to run through the defense with little problem. Once you have a hefty lead just leave the game playing itself in the background. At this level the opposition will likely get 1 or 2 goals maximum, meanwhile you can do something else (like write a solution on TA for example)

I find this works well in the Underdog Cup, usually done while I'm reading forums late at night. I use up all the contracts on whatever crap players I've picked up in packs who don't fit into my Gold Regional Cup team. Putting the star players of my Gold Regional Cup team in the reserves so that their stamina returns to 99 ready for my next run in that competition (thus avoiding the need for rotation or using fitness boosts)

Spending coin
Do not buy any packs except during a "Happy Hour" where there is a confirmed increase in the odds of getting an "In Form" player. This achievement is purely luck based, so it is sensible to only spend your hard earned coin when the odds are shifted into your favour, sure you may get lucky normally, but more often than not you will turn 15000 coins into cards worth 5000 coins :(

Player packs versus Jumbo Premium packs
Player packs contain 1 guaranteed rare player, Jumbo Premium packs contain 7 guaranteed rare cards, but some/all of these may not be players. We don't know how many cards there are to work out which is better, nor do we know how the cards are allocated to the packs. I've not see a Jumbo pack that didn't contain at least 2 rare player cards before I heard about this happy hour and started saving my coins.

My plan is that each time a Happy Hour rolls around with increased TotW odds I will buy 3 Gold Premium Jumbo packs + 3 Gold Player packs (assuming these player packs are always added to the store). This works out to 81000 coins for the 6 packs. Any players worth more than 2000 coins will be sold, and the rest kept towards the £85 million club value achievement. market prices are only going downwards, thanks in no small part to achievement hunters flooding the market with the crap they didn't want as they chase this stupid achievement, so don't hang on to any players who still retain some market value. You can buy them back later once you've got your TotW player, most likely for a fraction of the price you sold them at.

Do not ever purchase standard gold packs. You get only one chance at getting a TotW player for your 5000 coins. The Premium pack gets you 3 chances for 7500 coins. The Jumbo Premium is slightly better value, with 7 chances for 15000. There is really no point buying anything other than Jumbo Premium packs if you are trying to get a TotW player.

e.g. if you were to spent 75000 coins buying standard packs only 15 of the cards in your packs even had a chance of being a TotW player. If you bought premium packs with those coins you will have doubled the number of cards that have a chance of being a TotW player (30). If you had bought 75000 coins worth of Jumbo Premium packs then 35 of your cards will have had a chance of appearing as a TotW player. Given that the chance a rare card is a TotW player is likely incredibly low you really should be doing everything you can to increase the number of rare cards you buy for your coins.

Gold Premium Player Packs
These packs debuted on Friday November 25th, they contain 3 rare player cards, ruling out the possibility that you draw a rare contract/formation card. Even at a cost of 25000 these are a good purchase, guaranteeing that all three rare cards will be player cards is well worth the premium. I purchased 6 of these packs in the two Happy Hour windows on Nov 25th using the coins I'd saved up over the previous month and drew an in form Charlie Adam to finally put this horrible achievement to bed without spending a single MSP, which feels like a moral victory over EA to me.

What is Happy Hour?
"Happy Hour" is the name of a 1 hour promotional sale that occurs once (well twice, due to time zones) a week, in the past EA have increased the odds of obtaining a Team of the Week player in all packs opened during this hour, during this time they often also release special packs (e.g. Gold Player and Gold Premium Player packs).

Not all Happy Hour's come with an increased draw chance for Team of the Week players, when this happens you may hear the veteran FUT players complaining of a "Fake Happy Hour",

Keep an eye out for Happy Hour news by following TheRealGraoully on Twitter. This is the only place I've seen confirmation regarding increased odds (or not) of "In Form" players.

Past Happy Hours (all times UK)
Fri Oct 29th 18:00 & Sat Oct 30th 00:00 (Gold player packs only, no increased TotW chance)
Mon Nov 7th 19:00 & Tue Nov 8th 00:00 (Gold player packs only, no increased TotW chance)
Mon Nov 14th 19:00 & Tue Nov 15th 00:00 (Gold player packs only, no increased TotW chance)
Mon Nov 21st 19:00 & Tue Nov 22nd 00:00 (Gold player packs only, no increased TotW chance)
Fri Nov 25th 18:00 & Fri Nov 25th 23:00 (Gold premium player packs, double chance for in form Messi)

January Transfer Window Players
It's a lot easier to unlock this achievement since Feb 4 2012. Finding any of the following cards in a pack will unlock the achievement: FIFA 12 Ultimate Team January Transfers. These players are nowhere near as rare as the TOTW players.

Bronze Pack Glitch
People have reported unlocking this achievement having opened a pack that did not contain a ToTW player. Primarily these reports are when they had opened many bronze packs in succession. I once spent 20'000 coins on 50 bronze packs without triggering the achievement when I first heard about the glitch, so there was no guarantee you will trigger the glitch.

I wouldn't recommend taking this approach:
1) We do not know what triggers the glitch, be this something server side, or something that has happened on the user's console.
2) We do not know if the glitch has already been patched, or at some point in the future becomes patched.
Without knowing the trigger, you could buy 1000 bronze packs and still not get the achievement. Save your coins and buy the Gold Premium Player Packs when they are on offer.

Multiple Accounts
If you feel like taking your chances with EA's enforcement team. A faster method is available to you:

Using a second account create a new FUT team & open your free starter pack, quick sell all your players & trade the quick sell profit to your club in exchange for a low value card. Apparently you can "buy 2 premium gold packs an hour doing this".

To test this I started up a new FUT team on my US account. Quick selling the entire starter pack earned 385 coins and took about a minute from the moment I entered FUT, now add on some time for trading the coins to your main account & deleting the account once done. Being ambitious, let's say you make 30 transaction in an hour period, that's around 12000 coins you will have traded (in exchange for 30 bronze contracts lets presume). In the same time you could have earned a maximum 3500 playing offline tournaments, but had some fun at least:)

If you are willing to take the risk of EA taking action against your account, and are willing to endure this mind numbing boredom, this is clearly a very efficient method. Personally I won't risk it at this point, perhaps this will change if I am still drawing a blank come May 2012.

This achievement is How Great is That? for 20G

Requirement: Find a team of the week player in an Ultimate Team pack.

Look at the Team of the Week in Ultimate Team and then buy Gold Packs and just hope that you get one of those players.

This seems more like luck then having to do something specific, that can be controlled. Good luck!

"I bought a bronze pack at my friends yesterday and this achievement came up without a team of the week player in the pack. I'm not sure if any of the bronze players in it were in the team of the week or not but could it be possible that you can just get a normal card of a player in the team of the week."- Runcle

From Panzer:
Bronze:

Adams (55) – Brentford – npower League 1
Duplus (57) – EA Guingamp – Ligue 2 (NO ACHIEVEMENT)
Pittman (58) – Crawley Town – npower League 2 (CONFIRMED)
Martin (58) – Amiens SC – Ligue 2 (NO ACHIEVEMENT)
Lund (58) – Stoke City – Barclays PL
Parkes (58) – Leicester City – npower Championship
Jackson (59) – Northampton – npower League 2
T. Clarke (59) – Leyton Orient – npower League 1
Simpson (61) – Oldham – npower League 1
Griffiths (61) – Crawley Town – npower League 2 (NO ACHIEVEMENT)
Thomas (61) – Bournemouth – npower League 1
Vitiello (63) – Ascoli – Serie B
L. Clarke (63) – Chesterfield – npower League 1
Williams (63) – Sheffield Utd – npower League 1 (NO ACHIEVEMENT)
Miguel Llera (63) – Brentford – npower League 1 (CONFIRMED)

Silver:

Ngoyi (66) – FC Nantes – Ligue 2
Davies (67) – Stoke City – Barclays PL
Vilas Boas (67) – Rio Ave FC – Liga Portugesa
Djiby Fall (71) – Odense Boldklub – Superliga
Augustyn (71) – Vicenza – Serie B
Collins (71) – Ipswich Town – npower Championship

Bold = Holographic/Rare

Source: http://www.ultimatedb.nl/

Just unlocked this achievement after spending over 300 hours of trying!

As of the 8 February 2012, this achievement DOESN'T SOLELY UNLOCK WHEN YOU BUY A PACK WITH A TOTW PLAYER.

This achievement will now also unlock if you pick up a NEWLY TRANSFERRED player in a pack.

So, for example, if you now purchase a pack that contains a Chelsea new signing, Gary Cahill, or an Henry, whose now at Arsenal, this achievement will now unlock. This includes newly transferred Bronze and Silver players. Meaning you do not have to buy gold packs to get a player and then unlock the achievement.

You can find a list of newly transferred players here: http://ultimatefifa.com/2012/fifa-12-ultimate-team-january-t...

As you can see, that is an enormous amount of players. Normally to unlock this achievement, its about a 15 out of 100 000 chance of getting one. Now those odds will be reduced drastically thanks to this new adjustment.

I know strictly this isn't a guide, but its just worth pointing out that your chances of getting this achievement are now better with the aforementioned adjustment.

EDIT: It turns out that this achievement will also unlock if you pick up an UPGRADED version of an existing player, be it a Bronze, Silver or Gold player. Now your chances are even higher!

Adding my knowledge to this achievement
I can confirm that the achievement can be won through a regular 400 bronze pack.
How I got the achievement was to buy regular bronze packs for 400 then sell what was in them. You won’t be able to sell everything but rare bronze contracts sell for 250 or buy it now at 300, player fitness for 200 BIN, squad fitness for start price 1100 and BIN for 1300 rare bronze players have a look to see if they are worth a lot if they are not sell them for BIN250 discard the rest once you trade pile and consumables pile is full stop buying pack’s and wait until they have all sold and start again until you get the achievement. Injury cards (i.e. Arm leg ect) can be sold for BIN 400 but all injury’s can be sold for 500BIN
(Best done online)
But don’t buy packs online through Fifa ultimate team web app as people have got an inform player this way and not unlocked the achievement when going back to their console.
You won’t make much money doing it this way but I started with 20,000 spent 10,000 opening packs to fill trade/ consumables then by the time they had all sold was back up to 20,000. So you don’t make much money but don’t need to play and games.
The way I got the achievement was that I won a free bronze pack in a bronze pack opened it and it was not one of the gliched transferred players but Nicky Powell of Crewe Alex who is in this week’s team of the week
week starting 2,1,2012
Fell it was justice that I got the achievement with a Crewe Alex player as am a lifelong fan of them
Ps good luck because that is what this achievement is not skill. Pure luck

HI. i got this one today!!! i bough a jumbo gold pack and im relieved!! at first i thought i would never get this achievment, because, for the first 6month of game release i did literally spend a million coins soley trying to get this achievment and get my club value to 85 millions. i opened around 100 bronze packs and a shed load of gold packs and did not unlock the achievment. I clicked a link above which gave the names of players recently transfered and i am happy to announce the achievment popped for me. ( I DIDNT HAVE A BLACK IN FORM PLAYER) it must have been a player recently transfered, If you dont have this achievo. try now u should get it

UPDATE: The servers for this game are no longer online, so all online achievements in this game are now discontinued.