EA Sports says FC 27 will finally stop rewarding players who let AI handle defending, with Gameplay Director Kantcho Doskov and Senior Producer Sam Rivera telling PCGamesN at Gamescom that defenders will now need to be manually switched to and controlled in order to win the ball, in a report published September 15, 2026, ahead of the game’s early access launch on September 19. “So defensive AI cannot be relied on like you used to in the past,” Doskov said. “You have to actively switch to the defender closest to the ball and either try to intercept the pass or try to tackle the ball. You can’t put your controller down anymore.”
Here’s the context: For several years, the FC and FIFA community’s biggest gameplay complaint has centered on AI-controlled defenders performing tackles, jockeying, and positioning without any player input, and doing it more reliably than a human pressing buttons. That dynamic effectively punished players who wanted to defend manually, since letting go of the stick and trusting the AI was the objectively better strategy. The community has repeatedly asked EA to flip that incentive structure, rewarding active defending and making AI reliance a liability rather than a shortcut.
Honestly, the mechanical explanation EA gave is specific enough to take seriously, even if the framing carries some familiar risk. “What we had to do actually is go to the extreme, which means increasing the tackle range for manual defenders or user-controlled defenders, increasing the interception range, but at the same time decreasing those same ranges for AI players,” Rivera said. That’s a real design lever, not just marketing language, and pushing both ends of the range simultaneously is a more aggressive approach than EA has described in past pre-release cycles. Rivera also said, “It’s definitely a more drastic change, and it takes time to craft the entire defensive experience,” which reads as an acknowledgment that previous attempts at this fix didn’t go far enough.
The specific changes described in the interview break down into a few clear parts:
- Manual tackle range – increased for user-controlled defenders, making a well-timed switch-and-tackle more likely to succeed.
- Manual interception range – also increased, rewarding players who actively move a defender into a passing lane.
- AI tackle and interception range – both decreased, so a nearby AI-controlled player is no longer expected to win the ball on its own.
- Switching requirement – players must select the defender closest to the ball themselves rather than assuming AI proximity will produce a result.
What remains unclear is whether this holds up once millions of players are running different connection qualities, controller inputs, and skill levels against each other. The PCGamesN report itself notes that similar promises have accompanied the last several FC releases without translating into the intended in-game reality, and Doskov and Rivera’s confidence is, by definition, untested outside of internal builds and Gamescom demos. Whether the AI range reduction is subtle enough to still look natural on screen, and whether manual tackles reliably avoid the frustrating rebounds that have defined recent entries, are questions only a live launch can answer.
What to watch: FC 27 enters early access on September 19, 2026, and that’s the point at which EA’s stated design intent gets tested against actual player behavior at scale. Doskov and Rivera told PCGamesN they’re eager to see the community’s reception once the game is out, which suggests EA itself views this as an open question rather than a settled win. Post-launch reaction, particularly from competitive players who’ve built their game around AI-assisted defending, will be the clearest signal of whether the range adjustments actually changed the meta or just changed the marketing.
Are you willing to relearn your defensive habits if it means manual tackling actually works, or does this sound like another pre-release promise FC has made before? Let us know once you’ve had hands-on time with FC 27’s early access build.
