How To Make A Personalised Football Card

So you’ve seen the videos of football fans going crazy over their personalised football card. You think it would be an awesome gift for someone, but you want to make sure you get it right.

If that's you, you're in luck. Because this post is your Ultimate Guide to making a real life football card. Straight from the experts who have turned over 200,000 fans into stars!

If you'd like to read this guide and build your gift at the same time, please click here to open our Football Card Builder in a new tab.

Because after reading this guide, you’ll know exactly:

1. What a personalised football card is

2. How to pick a football card design

3. How to choose a CardsPlug style

4. How to upload the perfect photo

5. How to enter your stats

6. How to add extras to your card

Let’s start with what a real life football card actually is. If you know this already, feel free to skip to section 2!
 

1. What Is A Personalised Football Card?

In a sentence, real life football cards take the cards you see in games like FIFA22’s Ultimate Team mode and makes them real. 

Even better, they are fully personalised by you. So any fan, gamer, or young footballer can feel like the stars they see on the game.

For CardsPlug, it all started in 2017 when we saw lots of pro football players parading real life cards based on the game. 

We thought every fan should be able to get a football card. So we brought them to the masses with our easy online card builder!

Now you know what a real life football card is, let’s start on how to make one.

2. Picking A Football Card Design

Here at CardsPlug, we have over 50 designs to choose from.That might sound like a lot, but don’t worry. This section will help you make the perfect choice!

Our most popular designs are the ones inspired by those in FIFA22. And at a basic level, different card designs represent different types of footballers and fans. 

Here’s a quick rundown of five really popular designs: 

At the end of the day, you know the person best. And with this extra football card knowledge, you’ll make an amazing choice!

3. Choosing A Football Card Style

Once you’ve picked a design, you then choose what type of card you’d like to build. Our most popular choices are the Standard and Metal options.

Both of these are shaped exactly like the ones you see in games like FIFA Ultimate Team. So seeing one with your face on is an amazing surprise!

The only difference between these two is the material. Our Standard cards are made from specially chosen Foamex (not cardboard!). While our new Metal range is the world’s first and only football card forged in100% metal. 

4. How To Upload The Perfect Photo

The most personal parts of any real life football card are the name and picture. You’ve probably got the name sorted. But how do you upload the perfect picture?

This is probably a good time to mention that CardsPlug’s graphic designers will remove the background from your photo and enhance it to perfection. But the better the original photo is, the better your card will look. 

Here are some pointers: 

1. Use a high quality version of the photo. This means original photo files from a camera or a smartphone. Rather than copies you might send or receive on Whatsapp. The reason is that apps compress picture quality to save memory. Try for a file size over 100MB if you can.

2. Make sure their head and shoulders are clearly in view. If they’re wearing a football kit, even better! That will make it look even more realistic and awesome.

3. Avoid busy backgrounds or movement in the photo. Some photos can be quite blurry or have backgrounds where it’s hard to make out the main character. For the best results, go for a clear and simple image of one person.

For a full guide on uploading the best image, you can read our Good Photo Guide. Don't sweat it though. If you follow the easy rules above, your image will be great. And if it isn’t, our friendly support team will reach out and let you know.

Now that’s sorted, let’s look at getting your stats right!

5. How To Pick Your Personalised Football Card Stats

So we’ve looked at picking your card design and photo. The other key element of a real life football card is… the stats!

These are the numbers on the card that say a player’s position and rate a player’s skills out of 100 in various areas.

The big number at the top is a player’s overall rating out of 100. While the smaller numbers rate them in other skill areas.

For outfield players, the standard skills are: 

A CardsPlug is fully customisable. So you can change these skills to anything you want. For example ‘HAIR - 89’. But to be honest, most football fans like the standard ones best.

For big FIFA and gaming fans, stats are a massive area of debate. But all you really need to know is this that high = good, low = bad, and anything above 90 is world class.

It goes without saying most people will be pleased with high stats. But it’s up to you how you choose them.

If you’d like to put a bit of thought into the stats, you can. or if you’d like to be quick, you can put 99 for everything or use CardsPlug’s randomize feature.

Buying for a Goalkeeper? Goalkeepers have different stats to outfield players. So if you choose GK as your position, CardsPlug will change them for you automatically!

6. Adding Extras To Your Football Card

When it comes to displaying your football card, you have a couple of options.

If you want to put it up on a bedroom or games room wall, you may want to add our magnetic Wall Mounting Kit.

Or if you'd like to display it on a table or bookcase, you can order our special Acryllic Stand.

Both of these were chosen especially for our cards. So you can be assured they will fit your card, look great, and are easy to use. Don't worry about ordering them yet, as you'll get the chance to grab them at checkout. 

7. Choosing A Shipping Option

Here at CardsPlug, we edit and produce every football card from scratch. Our standard service (3-5 working days plus shipping time) is pretty quick. But some fans are in a rush and might have a special day in mind. 

For this reason, we also provide a Super Fast Track service where you can get priority design and printing in 1-2 working days. You still need to keep shipping times in mind with this option. So we always recommend ordering early if you have a special occasion coming up.

Boom! You’re Now A Personalised Football Card Expert

There you have it, our Ultimate Guide to making a personalised football card. 

This guide went pretty deep, but there’s really no need to feel overwhelmed. After all, our easy football card builder makes it super easy to personalise a football card online.

What’s more, our dedicated support team is ready to answer any questions you might have. Because making football fans smile is all we do!

Ready to go? Go here to choose a Card Design and start bringing your football card to life.