The September Player of the Month SBCs have landed in EA SPORTS FC 27, and they are the first content of the title asking for genuinely serious money. There is no squad to build any more — just a number to hit — and it ranges from 18,750 to 1,300,000 depending on the league. The gap between the cheapest and most expensive EA FC 27 POTM squad this month is roughly 68x, and it does not track card rating at all: the 91-rated winner is cheaper than the 89.
Published: 5 October 2026. Current phase: FC 27 Season 1, which runs 17 September – 22 October 2026, about ten days after the 25 September global release.
Quick answer: FC 27's POTM squads are Item Score SBCs, so the only requirement is a score total plus `OVR Min: 45`. In the cheapest viable fodder — 84-rated golds at roughly 650 coins, worth 830 score each — Pascal Groß costs about 14,950 coins, Donyell Malen about 70,850, Michael Olise about 548,600 and Raphinha about 1,018,550. Public solvers quote roughly 20% more at live market depth. Olise is two ratings higher than Raphinha and about 45% cheaper. All four is about 2,543 cards and 1.65 million coins at the floor, closer to 2.0 million in practice.
The short version of everything below:
- Score targets: Groß 84 at 18,750, Malen 85 at 90,000, Olise 91 at 700,000, Raphinha 89 at 1,300,000.
- Rating no longer predicts price. Raphinha's target is 1.86x Olise's despite being a worse card.
- 84s are the efficiency winner at about 0.78 coins per Item Score point; bronzes and silvers are around 10.0, roughly 13x worse.
- Break-even test for any other rating: only buy it if its price is at or under 0.78 × its Item Score. At current floors, nothing else passes.
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What is a POTM SBC in FC 27, and why does it feel different this year?
Player of the Month is EA's monthly award cycle across six supported competitions — Premier League, LaLiga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and Liga F (fifauteam POTM tracker). Each winner becomes an untradeable special card obtainable only through a Squad Building Challenge, normally for around a month. That part has not changed since FC 26.
What changed is the submission. FC 27 replaced squad-shaped challenges with score-shaped ones, and EA's support documentation is blunt about it: "In EA SPORTS FC™ 27, some SBCs use Item Score instead of requiring you to build a Squad." (EA Help, SBCs). EA's FC 27 Ultimate Team Pitch Notes described it the same way at announcement: "Instead of building a full squad around Chemistry, position, or a squad overall rating requirements, you'll see eligible Items from your Club and select which ones you want to submit." Duplicates count too: "You can also submit multiple versions of the same Item, including duplicates, towards that score."
One naming note if you are searching for help: the Pitch Notes called these Streamlined SBCs, EA Help now calls them Simplified SBCs, same system — broken down in full in FC 27 Streamlined SBCs explained.
The consequence for POTM is big. No chemistry puzzle, no position hunting, no rare-player requirement, and partial progress saves, so a 700,000 target can be fed over several days. Every POTM squad this month carries one condition — `OVR Min: 45` — so almost anything in your club is eligible. The challenge stopped being a brain teaser and became a purchase.
Which September POTM SBCs are live right now?
Four of the September winners have gone live between 1 and 5 October. The table shows each score target, the theoretical cheapest cost in 84-rated gold fodder (830 Item Score for roughly 650 coins), and what the public solvers currently quote using real market depth.
| League | Winner | Card | Item Score target | 84s needed | Theoretical cost at 650 | Solver quote, 5 Oct |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Premier League | Pascal Groß | 84 CDM | 18,750 | 23 | 14,950 | ~17,300 |
| Serie A | Donyell Malen | 85 ST | 90,000 | 109 | 70,850 | ~82,160 |
| Bundesliga | Michael Olise | 91 RW | 700,000 | 844 | 548,600 | ~675,050 |
| LaLiga | Raphinha | 89 ST | 1,300,000 | 1,567 | 1,018,550 | ~1,229,810 |
| Liga F | reported as Clàudia Pina | not confirmed | not confirmed | — | — | — |
| Ligue 1 | not announced | — | — | — | — | — |
Targets and solver quotes are cross-checked across fut.gg, easysbc, futbin and futmind; the 84s-needed and theoretical columns are our own calculation from the live Item Score values. Read the gap between the last two columns as the honest cost of market depth — you cannot buy 844 cards at a single floor price, so plan for roughly 20% above the theoretical number. Console and PC diverge too: one solver put Malen at about 81,600 on console against 87,000 on PC.
The Liga F winner is being reported as Clàudia Pina by leak accounts and community trackers, but that award was not confirmed in-game when this was written — treat the name and any target as unverified. The Ligue 1 winner has not been announced at all; on last year's cadence that lands in the second week of the following month, which makes mid-October an estimate, not a date.
Expiry matters more than usual because the targets are so large. All four live squads are non-repeatable and trackers showed 24 to 26 days remaining on 5 October, so the set closes out in the final days of the month. You have under four weeks, and Season 1 itself ends 22 October.
Why is Olise 91 cheaper than Raphinha 89?
Because Item Score targets are set per SBC, by hand, and nothing forces them to scale with card rating.
Olise is a 91 and asks for 700,000. Raphinha is an 89 and asks for 1,300,000 — 1.86x the target for a card two ratings lower. In 84 fodder that is 844 cards versus 1,567, or 548,600 coins versus 1,018,550. Both methods agree on the verdict: on solver quotes it is 675,050 against 1,229,810, an extra 554,760 coins for the worse base rating, which makes Olise about 45% cheaper than the card beneath it.
That is the most useful thing to know about this cycle. Players assume FC 27's score targets scale with rating the way old squad-rating requirements roughly did. They do not. Check the number, not the card.
The same applies at the bottom end: Groß is 23 cards and under 15,000 coins, less than 3% of Olise's cost. If you just want the content ticked off, he is effectively free in FC 27 terms.
What is the cheapest fodder for a POTM score SBC?
84-rated golds, and the margin is not close. We published the full rating-by-rating Item Score table on 26 September in the FC 27 Item Score table, and the conclusion has held through the first POTM cycle: an 84 carries 830 Item Score and sits on the same compressed market floor as an 82 or an 83, so it costs roughly 0.78 coins per point — the best ratio available.
Everything else is worse, in some cases absurdly so:
- Bronze and silver: about 10.0 coins per point. The worst thing you can feed a score SBC. Filling Olise with bronzes would run to roughly seven million coins.
- 82s and 83s: 1.9 and 1.6 coins per point. Same 650-ish floor as an 84 but only 340 and 410 score — the same price for less than half the value.
- 85s: about 0.90 coins per point. The only other rating worth considering.
- 89 and above: roughly double an 84 per point, and 91s are far worse again.
The rule that falls out of this survives price movement, so memorise it: only buy a rating if its price is at or below 0.78 × its Item Score. That is a ceiling of 1,645 coins for an 85, 321 for an 83 and 266 for an 82. At 5 October floors none of those clear — 85s sit near 1,900 and low golds will not go below quick-sell value. Hence 84s, until the floor itself moves.
That is also why the solver quotes sit above our floor math: clearing hundreds of 84s pushes the price up as you go, and the fodder market is already hot — EA acknowledged in its launch dev notes that FC 27 coin balances are running well above FC 26's (FC 27 coins running 50% higher).
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Should you buy cheaper cards or fewer cards?
This decision did not exist in FC 26. Score SBCs charge you twice: once in coins, once in clicks.
Take Olise's 700,000 target. In 84s it is 844 cards for 548,600 coins; in 85s, 334 cards for 634,600. The 85 route costs 86,000 coins more and saves 510 individual market purchases — about 169 coins per purchase avoided. In 83s it is 1,708 cards for 1,110,200 coins, the worst of both worlds.
Put a clock on it. At a brisk five seconds per search-and-buy, 844 cards is around 70 minutes of uninterrupted market work — optimistic, since it assumes the floor holds and nothing gets sniped. 334 cards is closer to 28 minutes. If coins are the scarce resource, take the 84s; if your evening is, the 85 premium is one of the better conveniences in the mode.
Two friction points came up repeatedly in community discussion of this month's squads on r/EASportsFC, paraphrased rather than quoted since these are individual players' posts. The submission screen tends to surface the worst fodder in your club first, so sort deliberately before you start tapping — feeding bronzes by accident is a 13x mistake. And cards sitting on your transfer list are not conveniently available at submission, so pull everything back into the club first. Already mis-fed a squad? Read the FC 27 wrong-player submission issue before starting the next one.
Are POTM cards score-boosted as fodder?
Probably not, and this is worth flagging because the opposite is widely assumed.
Players have carried over an expectation that a special item contributes more Item Score than a base card of the same rating. One solver's data for the Premier League winner puts the POTM 84's grading score at 830 — identical to any other 84. If that holds, special items get no score premium at all, and an untradeable POTM in your club is worth exactly as much to the next SBC as a 650-coin gold. We could not corroborate it against a second independent source, so treat it as indicative: plan on your POTM being a squad player, not boosted fodder.
Which September POTM is actually worth it?
Rank them by what you are buying, not by rating.
- Groß (18,750). Do it. Under 15,000 coins and 23 cards for a special item is the cheapest content in FC 27 right now, regardless of whether a Premier League CDM fits your side.
- Malen (90,000). Reasonable. About 70,850 coins and 109 cards is roughly an evening of casual play's worth of fodder for an 85 ST.
- Olise (700,000). The real decision of the month. 548,600 coins at the floor, about 675,000 realistically, is a serious commitment — but it is the only one where card quality arguably justifies the spend, and it is nearly half the price of the squad beneath it.
- Raphinha (1,300,000). Hard to defend on coins alone. Over a million coins and 1,567 purchases for an 89 is a fan purchase, not a value one, especially with a 91 sitting right next to it for 45% less.
And the timing problem nobody is pricing in: Season 1 ends 22 October 2026, nine days before Olise expires. Empty your club into Raphinha now and you will be fodder-poor exactly when Season 2 content and the next upgrade SBCs arrive — we ran those numbers in the Season 1 Upgrade SBC coin-return breakdown and the Level 30 by 22 October math.
Short on fodder rather than short on strategy? Item Score turned SBCs into a straight coins-for-rewards conversion, so a balance is now the only thing standing between you and a POTM card.
- EA FC 27 Coins — Comfort Trade with paced delivery, so a POTM-sized balance arrives without a wall of odd-looking transfers.
- EA FC 27 Evolutions Boost — pathways cleared for you while your coins go to the squads that matter.
- EA FC 27 FUT Champions Boost — pro players run your weekend so the rank rewards fund the next cycle.
- All EA FC 27 services — the full FC 27 catalogue in one place.
Frequently asked questions
How much does the FC 27 Olise POTM SBC cost? About 548,600 coins if you fill the 700,000 Item Score target with 84-rated cards at a 650-coin floor, which is 844 cards. Public solvers quote closer to 675,000 at real market depth. Using 85s instead costs around 634,600 but needs only 334 cards.
Why does Raphinha cost more than Olise when he is a lower rating? Because Item Score targets are set per SBC and are not tied to card rating. Raphinha's target is 1,300,000 against Olise's 700,000, so the lower-rated card is the more expensive squad by over 500,000 coins.
What is the cheapest card to use in a FC 27 POTM SBC? 84-rated golds. They carry 830 Item Score for roughly 650 coins, about 0.78 coins per point, the best ratio in the game at current floors. Bronzes and silvers are around 10 coins per point.
Do duplicates count towards an Item Score target? Yes. EA confirmed in the FC 27 Ultimate Team Pitch Notes that multiple versions of the same item, including duplicates, can be submitted towards the score.
Can I complete a POTM SBC in stages? Yes. Item Score challenges save partial progress, so a 700,000 target can be fed across several sessions. Watch the expiry — trackers showed roughly 25 days left on Olise's squad on 5 October, putting it in the final days of the month.
Are POTM cards tradeable in FC 27? No. POTM items are untradeable and obtainable only through their SBC, normally available for around 30 days.
