For the first time ever, you can add footballing legends like Luís Figo and Julie Foudy to your Manager Career team in EA SPORTS FC 26. It’s a feature fans have requested for years, a chance to blend eras and build a true fantasy squad. But there’s a major catch: you can’t just scout and sign them. Instead, EA has locked these coveted players behind the game’s new universal Season Pass, requiring a significant grind to get them into your offline saves.
This system fundamentally changes how you acquire top-tier talent in what was traditionally an offline sanctuary. To get players like Miroslav Klose or Park Ji-sung onto your team sheet, you’ll need to engage with the Season Pass progression system by earning XP, a mechanic that pulls from every mode in the game, not just Career.
The Season Pass: Your New Gatekeeper for Legends
In previous titles, the Season Pass concept was largely confined to Ultimate Team. In FC 26, it has become a universal progression track that governs rewards across all major modes, including Manager Career, Player Career, and Clubs. While you’ll still earn cosmetic items like retro kits and Create-a-Club assets, the headline rewards for career players are the Icons and Heroes themselves.
EA has made the controversial decision to place many of these legendary players on specific tiers of the Season Pass. This means that to unlock, say, Gianfranco Zola for use in your Manager Career save, you must first reach the required level in the pass by accumulating enough XP. Once an Icon or Hero is unlocked through the pass, they are added to your roster pool, allowing you to deploy them in any new or existing Manager Career. The Ultimate Edition of the game grants three ICONS at launch to give you a head start, but the rest must be earned.
This integration creates a strange loop. The most desirable new content for offline single-player fans is now tied to a system that strongly encourages online engagement and, potentially, spending money to accelerate progress. It’s a fundamental shift that blurs the line between the self-contained world of Career Mode and the live-service ecosystem of Ultimate Team.
How to Earn XP for Your Career Mode Icons
Unlocking your favorite legends is purely a numbers game: you need XP, and lots of it. The Season Pass is a linear track of levels, each requiring a set amount of XP to complete. As you hit new levels, you claim the associated rewards. If an Icon is waiting at Level 30, you need to complete all 29 prior levels first.
The Multi-Mode Grind
Here lies the core of the controversy. While you do earn XP by playing Career Mode matches and completing new 'Live Manager' challenges—special objectives like recreating a historic treble or surviving a relegation battle—the rate of progression may not be enough to complete the pass on its own. The source of this frustration is that the XP system is universal. You earn it from playing Ultimate Team, Clubs, and Volta as well.
The system appears designed to encourage players to venture outside of their preferred mode. If you’re a Career Mode purist, you may find your XP gain is significantly slower than someone who splits their time with Ultimate Team, where XP-granting objectives are often more plentiful. This structure can make you feel forced to play modes you have no interest in, just to unlock content for the mode you actually love.
EA SPORTS FC™ 26 in-game screenshot
Free vs. Premium Tiers
The Season Pass features both a free and a paid (Premium) track. While EA has not fully detailed which specific Icons will land on which track, it’s standard practice for live-service games to place the most desirable rewards on the Premium path. This creates another layer to the system. Even if you grind enough XP, the specific Icon you want might be locked behind a paywall.
You can potentially earn enough in-game currency to buy the pass without spending real-world money, but this adds another time-consuming objective to your plate. For players who just want to enjoy an offline career, this feels like a bridge too far, turning a relaxing simulation into a checklist of chores.
Which Legends Are Locked Away?
While the full list of Icons and Heroes available through the Season Pass will evolve with each new season, we already have confirmation of several names that will be part of this new system. These are players who, in any other year, would have been cause for major celebration.
The initial batch of confirmed legends you'll be grinding for includes attacking maestros, midfield engines, and defensive rocks from different eras of football. Players like Portuguese winger Luís Figo, German goal machine Miroslav Klose, and Chelsea legend Gianfranco Zola are among the first set of rewards. They are joined by South Korean icon Park Ji-sung, German playmaker Toni Kroos, and USWNT pioneer Julie Foudy.
EA SPORTS FC™ 26 in-game screenshot
This is only the beginning. If this model proves successful for EA, it’s highly likely that even more sought-after players like Ronaldinho or Johan Cruyff could be placed deep within future season passes, further intensifying the pressure to grind or pay each season.
A Great Idea with a Frustrating Execution?
There's no denying that adding Icons and Heroes to Manager Career is a fantastic addition. It opens up countless possibilities for dream teams and new narratives. Imagine building a modern squad around a prime Toni Kroos or having a super-sub like Miroslav Klose to bring on in a tight cup final. This is the kind of feature that can breathe new life into a mode that has felt stagnant at times.
However, the implementation is deeply problematic for a significant portion of the player base. Career Mode has always been the one place where you could escape the monetization and live-service pressures of Ultimate Team. It was a self-contained football sandbox. By tethering its most exciting new feature to the universal Season Pass, EA has pierced that bubble.
EA SPORTS FC™ 26 in-game screenshot
The system feels designed to push offline players toward the game's revenue-generating modes. It preys on the fear of missing out, suggesting that if you don't engage with the entire FC 26 ecosystem (and potentially open your wallet), you'll be locked out of the best new content for your preferred mode. It transforms a long-awaited feature from a gift to the community into another cog in the monetization machine.
Closing Take
The ability to use Icons and Heroes in Career Mode is, on paper, one of the best updates FC 26 has received. It’s a genuine wish-fulfillment feature. Yet, its connection to a grind-heavy, multi-mode Season Pass sours the experience considerably. Unlocking these legends is possible without spending money, but it demands a level of commitment that feels at odds with the traditional spirit of Career Mode. You can finally coach your heroes, but you have to work on EA's terms to earn the privilege.