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Dream League Soccer 2020 Training Guide: A Complete Guide to Training Your Players

First Touch Games is probably best known to gamers as the company behind the Dream League Soccer franchise and a number of other soccer-based titles including Score! Hero. The company’s latest entry in the DLS series, Dream League Soccer 2020, is now out, and once again, the premise remains the same — all of the league’s football associations have been disbanded, and their players have been spread out across different teams and different divisions. You will start out running a lowly team in the lowest of all eight divisions, and with more than 3,500 FifPro-licensed players, your objective is to keep moving up from one division to the next until you reach the very top.

Although you won’t have much to work with apart from your super-skilled team captain when you start out the game, there are multiple ways in which you can train your existing players and improve their ratings or stats, either on a temporary or permanent basis.

This is the one of the best ways to improve your overall team rating and, therefore, improve your chances of moving from one division to the next, so make sure you read this Dream League Soccer 2020 training guide for more information on how you can train your players, as well as other relevant tips that could help you maximize those training sessions.

1. Understand Each Player’s Ratings

Before we go to the actual training process, we should make you aware of the ratings system in Dream League Soccer 2020. All players have eight different ratings, with non-goalkeepers rated in terms of their Speed, Acceleration, Stamina, Conditioning, Strength, Tackling, Passing, and Shooting. You will also be able to see the player’s nationality, height (in centimeters), and whether they’re left- or right-footed on the upper part of each player’s card, right above the ratings. The average rating, on the other hand, is located on the lower right corner, right beside the player’s position and first and last name. These are the main things you need to take into account when viewing a player’s card.

dream league soccer 2020 player ratings

Talking about the key ratings for each player based on position, defenders generally need to have good Strength and Tackling stats. Secondary to these, having good Stamina and Passing could help make defenders more effective in their roles. Midfielders are usually more gifted when it comes to their Passing, with attacking midfielders respected for their Shooting ability and defensive midfielders having higher Strength and Tackling ratings than standard midfielders.

Lastly, Forwards naturally need to be good in Passing and Shooting, with Speed and Acceleration also coming into play as secondary stats. For all non-goalkeepers, Stamina and Conditioning matter in one way or another, as this prevents them from getting gassed too easily (thus requiring a substitution) or getting injured and possibly missing a fixture or two, or even more if you aren’t lucky.

For Goalkeepers, all the ratings are the same except for the last two — in lieu of Passing and Shooting, keepers are rated based on GKH (Goalkeeper Handling) and GKR (Goalkeeper Reflexes). Of course, these are the two most important ratings to consider when it comes to your Goalkeepers, but a few of the other stats matter more than others. Speed could be used in conjunction with GKR to help make your keeper an effective shot-stopper, and it would help if they have good Stamina and Conditioning ratings as well, thus ensuring they remain effective for all 90 minutes of the match.

Now that you know how each player is rated, we shall move on to the different ways in which you can improve these ratings. If you read our Dream League Soccer 2020 beginner’s guide, you may be familiar with some of them, but since this guide is all about training, we won’t mind breaking things down in greater detail in the next few tips.

2. Form Boosts – Use Them Only If You’ve Got More Than Enough Gems

The first way to improve a player’s ratings is to tap on the player of your choice and choose the Form Boost option on the bottom right of the screen. As the game suggests, this is a temporary boost in player stats, and can only be purchased by using your Gems — the game’s premium currency. As such, you may want to save this option for emergencies, which would normally mean a particularly tough opponent you need to defeat in order to achieve one of your club’s objectives for the season. It’s also best to use Form Boosts only if you’ve got more than enough Gems; they may not look that expensive, but if you consider how hard it is to earn Gems in DLS20, repeated Form Boosts could add up and take their toll on your resources!

how to improve player ratings in dream league soccer 2020

The reason we stress this is because Form Boosts are only good for one match, and no more than that. Spending 5 Gems allows you to increase a player’s overall rating by one point, 8 Gems lets you increase it by two points, and 10 Gems results in a three-point boost. It’s also important to use your Form Boosts only on one of your better players, and to make sure it’s someone who needs the boost; say, if you’re trying to reach the minimum goals required as per your team objectives (as seen in the Statistics section), you should use a Form Boost on your best Forward.

Related: Dream League Soccer 2020 Advanced Guide: How to Take Penalties, Avoid Offside Violations, Heal Injured Players, Upgrade Facilities

Granted, this feature more than comes with its share of cons — it’s a mere one-match boost and it costs premium currency, pretty much. But if there’s anything good about Form Boosts as compared to the other ways to train your players, it’s that you can actually choose the player whom you want to improve. As you’ll learn in the coming tips, that luxury won’t be available to you when you choose the other options!

3. Hire Coaches To Help Your Players Reach Their Full Potential

On the lower left of the main Team Management menu, you’ll see a tab that says Coaches, and by going here, you’ll be able to permanently improve your players’ ratings and help them get closer to their highest possible overall rating, as the game would helpfully advise you. While these are far more expensive than Form Boosts, the operative word here is “permanent” — if you have enough gems to purchase one of these coaches, you can improve your players for the long haul if you get lucky! (We will expound more on this later, within this tip.)

how to hire coaches in dream league soccer 2020

Before we break down the costs per coach (per rarity) and discuss what’s in it for you, let’s look at the three different types of coaches based on the stats they improve. A Technical coach can improve Ball Control, Distribution, Shooting, and/or Tackling, a Fitness coach can improve Strength, Stamina, Speed, and Acceleration, and a Goalkeeping coach can improve Shot Stopping (aka Goalkeeper Reflexes) and Handling. Each coaching option will also have their own Breakthrough Rating, which represents the chances of a trained player getting a huge boost in stats thanks to some “bonus development.”

When talking about Coach rarity, there are three types available, starting with Common, which would cost you 25 Gems and improve two random stats by two points each for one player, with a 5 percent Breakout Rating. Next up is Rare, which will set you back by 50 Gems and allow you to train two players, increasing three random stats by three points each, with a 10 percent Breakout Rating. Lastly, Legendary Coaches cost 225 Gems a pop but are able to train three players, provide a four-point increase for all four stats covered (or fewer, if it’s for Goalkeeping), with a 20 percent Breakout Rating.

As we mentioned in the beginner’s guide, there are a couple caveats to keep in mind when using Coaches. Everything is mostly random once you choose a coach — unless you’re training Goalkeeping, only random players will be selected to take part in the training session. But we did say “mostly” random earlier — that’s because the game will usually focus on your weaker players, guys you may no longer need once you’ve acquired a far more skilled athlete who plays the same position!

Unless you’re flush with premium currency, we would strongly advise you against paying 25 Gems for another go at a training session with a Coach, as there is a way to get free Coaches, which we will be explaining in the very next tip. Instead, we would suggest saving up your Gems for those Rare and Legendary sessions, as these would mostly come in handy once your club’s roster is filled with far more talented players than the ones you started with.

4. Release Your Weaker Players To Get Free Coaches

Yes, that is exactly what you need to do if you want to get some Coaches for free, and if you come to think of it, it’s a win-win situation. As your weaker players are usually the ones who get prioritized when it comes to the Coaches you hire, you can essentially get rid of the surplus by releasing players who have no chance of starting for your club unless someone gets injured. Preferably, you want to prioritize players who are stuck in a positional logjam — for example, you may have three goalkeepers or three left-backs — certainly, you wouldn’t need one of those guys as an insurance policy in the event the starter gets hurt, right?

how to release a player in dream league soccer 2020

Now typically, you will be getting Common Coaches early on once you release the biggest scrubs on your team. However, the rarity of the coaches you get when releasing a player will all depend on the rarity of the player you are releasing. That means once you’ve put together quite a formidable lineup and have considerably moved up to one of the higher leagues, you can easily end up with multiple Legendary Coaches if most of your players have an average rating of 85 or higher!

While it is possible to upgrade your facilities and add more players to your club than the standard limit of 20 you start out with, we don’t recommend doing this just yet. Work the transfer market and use the Scouts and Agents — if you can afford them — to get as many players as you need to be competitive in your current division and improve your chances of achieving your objectives for the season. There’s no real need to upgrade in order to have more player slots, though if you choose to go this route, that would, at least, mean more chance to release weaker players and convert them into Coaches.

5. Use The Heal Option To Help Tired Or Injured Players Recover

Technically, healing is not supposed to be the same thing as training. But given that it’s very much possible for players to suffer injuries during matches or get too tired at the end of a match because of low Stamina and/or Conditioning, we believe it would also be very beneficial if we talk about the Heal option, which appears for players whose green bar (seen at the bottom of each player card) isn’t quite at 100 percent.

Regarding the cost of healing, it will all depend on how injured or tired a player is — the less the green bar is filled up, the more it would cost to get them back to 100 percent in time for the next fixture. Sometimes, it’s going to cost just a couple of coins if the green bar is almost full, and as long as you aren’t repeating this process before each and every match, your Healing expenses likely won’t break the bank. Of course, you want all of your players to be at 100 percent form — no injuries or fatigue, in other words — and this feature could help them return to tip-top condition without any time to spare.

6. Reach The Objectives To Earn More Gems

Last, but not the least, let’s talk about the best way for you to earn more Gems without having to spend a single cent of your hard-earned money. While there are affordable packages that could give you 100 Gems for just $2 or its local equivalent or 445 Gems for $8, you could add to your premium currency by completing the objectives listed in the Statistics section of the My Club menu.

dream league soccer 2020 objectives

As we said in the beginner’s guide, “Statistics” isn’t really the best way to describe this part of the menu, but for what it’s worth, this is where you can view the objectives — again, your first set will include finishing 8th or better in the Academy Division, reaching Round 2 of the Global Challenge Cup, winning 4 games in the Academy Division, and scoring at least 15 goals in the Academy Division. All these quests will reward you with 10 Gems each for completion, but if you exceed them before the season is over, you’ll get new ones that may offer bigger rewards.

And this is where we end our Dream League Soccer 2020 training guide. If you happen to know other useful tips and tricks when it comes to training players in the game, feel free to drop us a line in the comments below!

Robertson

Friday 24th of March 2023

I want legend player for free

Brad

Wednesday 11th of March 2020

Con- is for control (as in ball control) and is NOT conditioning (which would be the same as stamina) , and it is important for midfielders and forwards