Picking a free kick taker

When picking this player does he need to have a good finishing attribute or is the only requirement a good free kick rating? I have a DC with a free kick rating of 19, but a finishing rating of 8 and he is generally not an offensive player at all.

Does the 19 rating at free kicks make him a threat to score from set pieces for me?

Good question! Answer: Yes, other attributes do matter when designating the free kick specialist in your team.

Since not all free kicks are direct, crossing is a useful skill to have.

Additionally according to the manual, if the distance is more than 10 yards or so, the player's long shots stat will have a bearing, as will technique. High composure and concentration are also key mental attributes.

So that 19 on its own won't bear much fruit, except perhaps at lower levels of the game.

A good defender will have good concentration and composure anyway, so if he also has some technique - I'd try him out for sure.

This particular player has a concentration rating of 17, composure of 12, technique of 11, long shots 8, and finishing 8. So based on your comments and those ratings, you wouldn't think he would be a gifted scorer from set pieces.

The reason I ask however, is he is far down my list of takers, and in my most recent game all my others were subbed out so he got a chance late in the game for a 25 yarder. He smashed it home off the bar and in! I was like WOW maybe I have been missing something here for a lot of years???? Maybe I will give him a few more chances.

On a related note, wouldn't it make sense to have an option to separate a direct free kick taker and an indirect taker? All my best crossing guys are horrible at scoring so I can specify them in the list, which causes me to miss out of some potential dangerous situations and crosses when it is indirect.

I'm pretty sure Les Girondins is right; Daniel Alves scores about 7-12 free kicks a year for me with a free kick rating of 17, while others only score a few with ratings 19 and 20 but lower long shots/composure stats. Alves has great ratings (for a defender) on all of those shooting stats, that's probably why he scores so much.

Another (very) important thing is that he has the attribute 'curls ball', which allows him to knock the ball past the wall easily and his long shots are often extremely hard for goalies to cope with because of that.

On a related note, wouldn't it make sense to have an option to separate a direct free kick taker and an indirect taker? All my best crossing guys are horrible at scoring so I can specify them in the list, which causes me to miss out of some potential dangerous situations and crosses when it is indirect.

Yes, I wish we could do this, and/or also possibly designate a 'close' and 'far' free kick taker (e.g. when Roberto Carlos took far-out free kicks and David Beckham close-range free-kicks at Real Madrid).

I always pick free kick takers assuming they will be shots on goal (on FM 07 at least, even from distance, they go for goal unless in a crossing position) so I got the attributes needed for these direct free kicks/shot at goal.

These are free kicks and long shots. If you have crossing in mind then naturally you'd want to look at Crossing.

Flair (and perhaps Creativity) is always handy, but for me are only used for 'tiebreakers' (when two players have the same free kick and long shot ratings).