“It’s evolve or die, really, you have to evolve, you have to move on otherwise it just becomes stagnant.” Do you know which great philosopher said that? No, not Kant, not Marx, not Aristotle, but Craig Charles.

Look him up. The Friedrich Nietzsche of modern times.

Evolution ensures we stay ahead of the curve and anyone who’s stayed loyal to EA Sports in the wake of FIFA’s departure will be well aware of a critical new feature to their all-new EA FC games.

EA FC’s ‘Evolutions’ was introduced last year and improved for EA FC 25. The Ultimate Team feature allows gamers to customise and upgrade cards from their club throughout the year to cultivate iterations of that player owned by very few.

With EA pulling out all the stops to retain the interests of UT loyalists via endless promotions and array of card types, the commitment to an Evolution can provide the satisfaction of a homegrown star starring on the biggest stage. Cards can blossom from insignificance into cheat codes and there’s an endless list of possibilities.

Here’s a rundown of some of the best EA FC 25 Evolutions you can create.

There have been adjustments to the feature introduced to Ultimate Team last year, with ‘Evolutions’ now involving partial upgrades and the capacity for users to change the cosmetics of cards.

The overall premise of Evolutions hasn’t changed drastically, with players needing to be assigned to an Evolutions slot in order to kick-start their journey to a healthy upgrade. Gamers must then complete in-game challenges with their evo players in order for the card to earn permanent stat and overall rating upgrades.

There are requirements which means that not every player in the game can evolve as part of the feature, with some evos requiring coins/points to start. You can only submit one Evolution at a time and that player becomes untradable once designated to a slot.

You will also encounter time limits when attempting to complete a card’s evolution, but you will receive all the upgrades for the levels you’ve completed if your Evolution timer expires.

While each Evolutions slot comes with a requirement or two, EA supplies new Evolutions often and there are thus thousands of players who are eligible for the paths released so far.

We’ve picked out ten stellar options for gamers to consider, with the size of the rating upgrade not necessarily playing a role in our thinking. Statistical alterations are a big factor, with players earning monster boosts in areas of need which sees them evolve into more complete cards.

The ‘No Pressure’ slot is going to cost you – 100,000, to be exact – but hey, coins are pretty easy to come by and some of the upgrades players earn when designated to this slot simply can’t be ignored.

We’ve picked out Eduardo Camavinga, Lamine Yamal, Kyle Walker and Tijjani Reijnders as excellent options for this Evolutions path. All players will be upgraded to an 86, with Camavinga, for example, earning healthy pace and shooting upgrades to render him a more formidable midfield option. Reijnders’ 86-rated card, meanwhile, comes with 80+ ratings for five of the primary six stats and his pace is boosted by six. The ‘Hey Jude’ path is a cheaper route to take with the Dutchman, with the +9 shooting upgrade surely tempting a few.

Yamal already has a 95-rated Ballon d’Or card and an 86-rated La Liga Player of the Month iteration which can be unlocked via a Squad Builder Challenge. However, this will cost you upwards of 300,000 coins, so the ‘No Pressure’ path supplies an easier and cheaper alternative to getting your hands on an 86-rated Yamal card.

Few have enjoyed a bigger real-life leap in 2024/25 from 2023/24 than Liverpool’s Ryan Gravenberch and the newly released Ballon d’Or path means you can evolve the Dutchman’s 78-rated base card into an 86-rated phenom. This upgraded card is a part of the ‘Gullit Club’ with all six leading stats being 80+.

‘Les Blues’ ranks among the best free Evolutions paths, and there are, of course, a litany of Frenchmen you can designate to this slot. Ibrahima Konate is an excellent option, but if you’ve drifted away from creating a Premier League team and instead ventured into the realm of calcio, Juventus’ Pierre Kalulu earns a +7 boost of his overall rating, evolving from a 78 into an 85 with 86 pace! Whack an Anchor chemistry style on him and you’ve suddenly got an impenetrable centre-back which costs very little.

You could also commit Manchester United Women’s Melvine Malard to ‘Les Blues’ and render her card much more desirable. The 82 non-rare becomes an 85-rated beast down the left flank with 89 pace and all but her defending rating being 80+. The joystick merchants could be swayed by Malard’s leap to four-star skill moves.

There are a couple of Premier League strikers to target as part of ‘The One Hundred Club’ path released in November. Kai Havertz already has an 89-rated Champions League card worth in excess of 400,000, but you could earn an 86-rated version that’ll undoubtedly appeal to the masses – especially with CM being an alternate position. The evolved Havertz remains 6’4 but with 90 pace and improved shooting.

You can also utilise this path as a way of developing Jhon Duran into an unstoppable force. The Aston Villa man would blossom into an 80-rated striker – up from 74 – but you can then go in different directions to upgrade the brutish forward further – potentially up to an 86 with the ‘No Pressure’ path.

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