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FIFA 22 Best Pre-Contract and Free Agent Signings: Where to find the best free transfers

The sweetest things in life are always free

For a few years in FIFA, pre-contract signings were incredibly overpowered.

After just half a season, your mediocre mid-table team could pillage the benches of Europe’s top clubs and stack their squad with players that would usually be far outside of their financial capability for the upcoming year.

In FIFA 22 pre-contract signings are much rarer, but can be just as powerful when taking your team to the next level.

This year, teams are much, much more proactive in tying down their wantaway talent before they leave for nothing. So while lots of fantastic players have just months left on their deals, most, if not pretty much all of them will likely sign on the dotted line before you even have a chance to tempt them away.

However, even though the best pre-contract signings in FIFA 22 require a lot of luck, there will hopefully still be some interesting deals to strike in the first season.

As for free transfers, they’re just as fickle and you will likely have to wait until you’re a few seasons deep before finding anyone worth snagging.

How to make pre-contract signings in FIFA 22

To contract a player to your club for the upcoming season without paying a transfer fee, you have to find a player whose contract expires at the end of the current season.

Then once you reach the January transfer window, you can approach them from your Transfer Hub and directly offer them a new contract.

You can tell which players have just a few months remaining on their contract, because when you search their name in the transfer tab, it will say “Contract Expiring in [however many] months” under their match fitness and morale.

To identify which players have their deals up in the summer, go to your Global Transfer Network Scout Instructions in the Transfers tab of the Career Mode menu.

Set Position, Attributes, and Age to Any, then reduce the Contract field to 0-1. This will give you an updating list of the players with less than a year on their deal.

If you get players in there who don’t have the “Contract Expiring…” tag, it means their contract either expires in the following winter, or they renegotiated their terms after they were added to your list.

Another thing you need to bear in mind, is that you can only sign players older than 23 on a pre-contract deal.

In January, all you need to do is select the desired player in the Transfer Hub and go through the normal contract negotiations.

However, while this mechanic was very overpowered in previous FIFA games, it seems to have been quite aggressively nerfed in FIFA 22. Most players with only a short time left on their deal seem to renegotiate well before the transfer window when you can approach them.

This is especially true of improving players and can be a bit frustrating. The best thing to do is track all of the players you’re even slightly interested in, then cross your fingers and don’t look again until the first day of the January window. Then after Christmas, open up the transfer menu and see who’s still available.

While most of the players you can sign on pre-contracts tend to be on the wrong side of 30, you can still add some 80+ rated players to your squad this way.

How to sign Free Agents in FIFA 22

Just like pre-contract signings are mostly re-signed by their current clubs, the best free agents get snapped up almost instantly.

To get the top deals, you will need to search the free agents pool on literally the first day or first couple of days of any transfer window.

If you see a player you like, you’re able to go through the normal contract negotiations without jumping through any more hoops.

However, the real utility of the free agents pool isn’t to sign genuine players, but powerful regens FIFA populates your save with as older players retire.

Once you’ve completed a couple of seasons, scour the free agents pool immediately on the first day of the new season to see if there are any good new players with good stats to be found - there are some real gems sometimes.

The best pre-contract signings in FIFA 22

Like we mentioned, it’s very likely that most of these players will have signed a new deal with their clubs by the time you’re allowed to approach them. But add any that you’re interested in to your transfer targets and you could get lucky - there are some great players potentially up for grabs.

FIFA 22 Pre-contract Signings
Player Name Age Team Position Overall Potential
Luis Suarez 34 Atletico Madrid ST 88 88
Paulo Dybala 27 Piemonte Calcio CF, CAM 87 88
Paul Pogba 28 Man U CM, LM 87 87
Angel Di Maria 33 PSG RW, LW 87 87
Luka Modric 35 Real Madrid CM 87 87
Lorenzo Insigne 30 Napoli LW, CF 86 86
Edinson Cavani 34 Man U ST 85 85
David Silva 35 Real Sociedad CAM, CM 85 85
Thiago Silva 36 Chelsea CB 85 85
Franck Kessie 24 Milan CDM, CM 84 86
Marcelo Brozovic 28 Inter CDM, CM 84 84
Felipe 32 Atletico Madrid CB 84 84
Matthias Ginter 27 Borussia Monchengladbach CB 84 85
Josip Ilicic 33 Bergamo Calcio CF, ST 84 84
Fernando 33 Sevilla CDM, CM 84 84
Dries Mertens 34 Napoli CF, ST, CAM 84 84
Ousmane Dembele 24 Barcelona RW 83 88
Andrej Kramaric 30 Hoffenheim ST, CAM 83 83
Antonio Rudiger 28 Chelsea CB 83 84
Juan Cuadrado 33 Juventus RB, RM 83 83
Sergio Asenjo 32 Villarreal GK 83 83
Alex Witsel 32 Borussia Dortmund CDM, CM 83 83
Niklas Sule 25 Bayern CB, RB 82 87
Alessio Romagnoli 26 Milan CB 82 83
Isco 29 Real Madrid CAM, CM, LW 82 82
Alexandre Lacazette 30 Arsenal ST 82 82
Jesus Corona 28 Porto RM, RB, RW 82 82
Yuri Berchiche 31 Bilbao LB 82 82
Gareth Bale 31 Real Madrid RM, RW 82 82
Lorenzo Pellegrini 25 Roma CAM, CM, CDM 81 86
David Soria 28 Getafe GK 81 82
Darwin Machis 28 Granada LM, RM, ST 81 81
Andrea Belotti 27 Torino ST 81 82
Adnan Januzaj 26 Real Sociedad RW, RM 81 81
James Tarkowski 28 Burnley CB 81 82
Hector Herrera 31 Atletico Madrid CM 81 81
Jiri Pavlenka 29 Werder Bremen GK 80 82
Denis Zakaria 24 Borussia Monchengladbach CDM, CB 80 86
Jonathan Rodriguez 27 Cruz Azul ST, LW 80 80
Jason Denayer 26 Lyon CB 80 83
Corentin Tolisso 26 Bayern CM, CDM 80 81
Andreas Christensen 25 Chelsea CB 80 85
Thomas Strakosha 26 Latinum GK 80 83
Luiz Felipe 24 Latium CB 78 85
Nicolas De la Cruz 24 River Plate CM, CAM, LW 78 84
Robin Le Normand 24 Real Sociedad CB 78 83
Cesar Montes 24 Monterrey CB 75 83
Jeremie Boga 24 Sassuolo LW, LM 77 83
Luis Romo 26 Cruz Azul CDM, CB, CM 77 82
Zack Steffen 26 Man City GK 77 82

The best free agents in FIFA 22

Again, as we said above, these players are often instantly re-assigned to new clubs, but it can be worth searching on the first day of your save if you need some extra talent.

FIFA 22 Best Free Agents
Player Name Age Positions Overall Potential
Toby Alderweireld 32 CB 83 83
Grzegorz Krychowiak 31 CDM, CM 80 80
Artem Dzyuba 32 ST 78 78
Magomed Ozdoev 28 CDM, CM 77 78
Aleksandar Dragovic 30 CB, RB 76 76
Viktor Claesson 29 CAM, LM, CM 76 76
Daler Kuzyaev 28 CM, RM, CDM 75 75
Vyacheslav Karavaev 26 RB 74 75
Laszlo Kleinheisler 27 CAM 73 73
Jakub Brabec 28 CB 73 73
Sebastian Szymanski 22 CAM, RM 73 81
Milos Degenek 27 CB, CDM 73 76
Matvey Safonov 22 GK 72 82
Daniil Fomin 24 CDM, CM 72 77
Andrey Mostovoy 23 LM, RM 69 75
Andras Schafer 22 CDM 68 79
Fran Karacic 25 RB 68 73
Michael Woud 22 GK 65 75
Elijah Just 21 LW, RW 65 76
Nando Pijnaker 22 CB 64 74
Marko Stamenic 19 CM, CDM, CAM 63 80
Charis Chatzigavriel 17 GK 58 84

For more on who to sign in your Career Mode, here are our lists of the best wonderkids in FIFA 22, the best strikers in FIFA 22, and the best CAMs, CMs, and CDMs in FIFA 22.

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About the Author
James Billcliffe avatar

James Billcliffe

Guides Editor

With 7 years' experience, James (he/him) suffers so you don't have to, creating expert guides for the toughest games and reviews for the biggest blockbuster releases. He has a Master's degree in Journalism and a BA in Linguistics that he never got a chance to flex until Wordle came along.

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