You can recruit a ton of different players to join your Blitzball team after you’ve completed the events at Luca. Many of these players are stronger than the Besaid Auroch team members that you start the game with, and while you have a limited number of roster slots that you can fill, you can slowly dismiss the terrible players that you have as you find stronger ones.
Many of the best Blitzball players are not available when you first gain the ability to initiate Blitzball tournaments. For that reason, you may want to consider holding off on recruiting players or playing Blitzball tournaments until after you have obtained the Airship. Once you have the Airship you can fly all across Spira recruiting and contracting players.
While some of the players listed below can be recruited as soon as you speak to them (free agents), some of the best Blitzball players are actually those that play for the other teams (the Luca Goers, the Al Bhed Psyches, etc.). The only way to recruit these players is to wait for their current contract to expire and hope that the team they play for does not renew their contract. There is a random chance that the team will let the contract expire and allow one of their team members to become a free agent, allowing you to recruit that player and have them join your team.
One effective strategy that you can use to obtain a player from another team is to track when their contract is about to expire. When they have 1 game left on their contract, save your game at a Save Sphere, play a Blitzball match and see if their team neglects to renew their contract. You can speak to them to find out how many games they have left on their contract. Just reset your game and try again if they’re resigned.
You want your forwards to have high Shooting (SH) and Endurance (EN) stats, your mid-fielder to have a high Passing (PA) and Endurance (EN) stats, your defense to have high Attack (AT) and Block (BL) stats and finally, for your Goalkeeper to have a high Block (BL) stat.
There are also a few “hidden stats” of sorts that gives some players and advantage. This includes a RNG (Range) stat, RCH (Reach) stat, and a MOR (Morale) stat, all of which are hidden from view. Most importantly, however, is the SP (Speed) stat which changes how fast a character can swim through the water. Ronso are extremely slow whereas Guado are quite fast. Brother is one of the fastest players which makes him extremely valuable.
The following section contains tips on building an ideal team with specific characters. You can certainly win a Blitzball tournament with a number of different team combinations if you choose. These characters have relatively strong statistics no matter what level they are though and can make playing Blitzball much easier.
Use the descriptions and screenshots below to help you locate each of the players. As mentioned above, you may have to wait for some of them to come off of a contract before you can hire them on to your team. This will be indicated in the descriptors below. Be ready to snag them if they don’t end up being renewed by their initial team.
The players are listed in order starting from the strongest / most ideal for each of the positions. You can substitute this character with others listed depending on each characters availability if the most strong player is under contract. More important than stats though is to go into Blitzball tournaments with proper strategies for winning. Be sure to check out the Blitzball Strategy section for more information:
Press the 
Button when you’re near a player to recruit them to your team.
The positions you will need to recruit for include:
- Left Field (LF)
- Right Field (RF)
- Mid Field (MF)
- Left Defense (LD)
- Right Defense (RD)
- Goalie (GL)
Your left and right fielders are your primary attackers and shooters. They will be responsible for getting your points for you. You can swap the LF and RF positions without issue but the list below provides some guidelines on strengthing each side to the maximum potential.
World Champion. She is difficult to obtain though as Dark Valefor may be guarding the entrance to the village of Besaid (depending on how far in the game you are and what version you are playing). Check the Dark Aeon section for more information on Dark Valefor and how to defeat it.
Your mid-fielder is going to be in the center of the action all of the time. You want them to have strong endurance (EN) so that they can barge through other players and strong passing so they can help carry the ball up the field for your attackers.
High attack (AT) and high block (BL) is all your defenders need. They are a last line of defense before your goalie and, hopefully, will not be seeing much action.
As mentioned above, it is entirely possible to successfully come in first place in tournaments and league matches with almost any character. Enlisting these characters will help but a successful strategy is the most important step. Check out the Blitzball Strategy and Tips section for some added information.
