Youth Guide

Youth players are the make or break of your team. When you get into the later seasons and your players start to retire, where are the new players going to come from? If you are a large team, you could buy new players, but it is much more effective to raise players from a young age to have the skills you want so you can fit them into your team immediately. If you are a small team, producing good youth players is a good way of making money, and a few may stay in your team.

In this guide I am going to go through the steps to make your youth academy producing talent!

note: click on images to enlarge

1) Update your youth facilities.

The buildings do the following:
- Own grounds with changing room: No notable effects.
- Own grounds with building: Reduces the number of dropouts by 20%
- Youth house: 20% more players sign up to your youth programme
- Youth boarding school: +20% better personal qualities among youth players (i.e. leadership, attitude etc.)
- Luxury youth boarding school: +10% faster learning skills, +25% more highly talented players sign up
- Youth performance centre: +10% faster learning skills, +10% more players sign up for training

Having the top facilities can make the difference between having a great youth team and having a mediocre team. Since the development is also faster, it means your players get better, quicker.

2) Hire some decent talent scouts.

Ideally you are looking for these scouts. Level 6 with “Encyclopaedic knowledge of major youth talent worldwide.” With these you get many fully talented players, but they are rare. I was in my 11th season, when, like a bus, two came along. Save your game before you bid for them and bit a lot, as many other clubs will be after them.

At the start however, settle for level 4 and 5 scouts to start getting your youth. I recommend scouts with “Knowledge of the goalkeeper/defender/midfield/attacker talent” as you get quite a lot of players with this. Other good scouts are scouts such as “Knows the S.American youth market.”

3) Hold youth player days and send scouts to tournaments.
Early in the season, perhaps around October/November, you will get a messagebox saying that there is a youth tournament and you have to select staff to go. I recommend just sending scouts and talent scouts, as assistant managers and yourself have important jobs to do. You can get excellent players doing this, although sometimes you get beaten to all the players.

Secondly, if you click on an empty date, you can have a Youth Player Day once a season. I find that you get better talent if you do it in the first few months (July/August) of the new season.

4) Hire some decent youth trainers.

You can hire one coach. Level 6 is the best, but other level coaches can do the job. Here you see one that improves tactical training – this is the value underneath the players’ name. (up to a maximum of 8) This enables the player to learn new tactics and implement them quicker. However, a coach that improves the speed of training may be effective as well.

5) Give the important players a mentor.

As you can see to the bottom right, I have assigned Steven Gerrard to teach this youth player technique. This will increase the speed at which he learns it. Also, hire the youths a private tutor if they are a decent talent, otherwise they may quit football because of bad marks.

Make sure that you get good combinations of skills for the maximum possible bonus. See the skills guide for more information of good combinations.

Now watch the players come in! Whether you are Manchester United or Morcambe, you can hope for a good influx of youths that will assure the clubs’ future for generations to come.