Your Scouting Network and Youth System

Hi all,

One of my favourite parts of playing Football Manager is scouting for new youth players, finding great regens, and developing this talent into quality (I'm sure many of you share this interest). However, I have a terrible, almostnon-existent system to actually follow this aim.

Currently, all my scouting comes from me trawling through player search and teams (from Hadjuk to Bahia to ASEC to Dorchester) looking for talent. I then send a scout to check 'em out. This works sometimes, but i can't help but feel that it's not a very efficient system, and the next Ronaldo is going to slip through my fingers.

So how do you organise your scouting. How many scouts do you have, where do they go? How much do YOU actually do in terms of trawling. Any advice would help XD

i don't do too much trawling i send scouts to all the loaded countries, england, spain, italy and i also send one to brazil and argentina, france, germany and then i occasionally scout regions like east asia, the middle east, oceania and son on. I think its also important to send scouts to international youth competitions like the U20 Euro and WC.

If my scouts come back with highly recommended players i have a look at them myselves and decide whether i want them or not or whether i should just keep an eye on them and add them to my shortlist. I've found a few good players like this, in particular a brazilian DC who is already has three gold stars according to my coaches and scouts in CA and has the PA to be a leading Premier Division DC.

looking at the u-19 u-21 national squads was the main way I recruited youngsters on past FMs I don'tk now how effective it'll be with this one to be honest. I've never played a game long enough.

By the way there are a couple of really helpful threads about getting the most of your youngsters in the tactics and training forum. One was posted by catafan (game mechanics), the other by SFraser (general approach)

easy. load all players 16 and under from europe in the search, do a report card only scout on all of them, follow up any that are 5 stars or more

Personally I never use the player search.

Currently I manage Blackburn and have 8 scouts available, assignments are as follows:

1*next opposition.

1*N. Ireland, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Germany, Holland & Belgium

1*Italy, Croatia, Switzerland, Austria & Greece

1*Spain, France & Portugal

1*England, Poland, Hungary & Bulgaria

1*Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Estonia & Russia

That leaves 2 scouts which I'll come to in a moment.

For the country assignments I give priority to loaded nations & within the EU, however I still can't cover everywhere

I also aim to give scouts assignments that they can get round within a season. After the first scouting trip I balance the number of reports/quality of players against how long it took and may decide not to scout the country again for a few seasons.

Any players found are added to my shortlist.

The final two scouts I use in three different ways:

A) In depth reports of players that I take a serious interest in &

B) After about a season the scouts reports fall off the shortlist so these two scouts go back to look at the players

C) Scouting players at feeder clubs

I delete players off my shortlist when they reach 33 or when their PA is below 3*

After a few seasons I currently have just over 2,000 players on the shortlist which is where I look when I want a player.

When I scout loaded countries I mostly let my scout follow, not the usual competition, but the youth competitions. The normal competitions are followed by scouts that follow several countries.

Does anyone know of a quick way to update scout reports for players on your shortlist?

I usually have about 200 players on my shortlist, and each season I have to go to each player and get an updated player report for each of them. As you can imagine this is quite time consuming.

It would be good if you can allocate players to a sub-shortlist, and assign a scout to provide a report on all the players in that sub-shortlist.

Does anyone know if you can do this? If so, how?

Does anyone know of a quick way to update scout reports for players on your shortlist?

I usually have about 200 players on my shortlist, and each season I have to go to each player and get an updated player report for each of them. As you can imagine this is quite time consuming.

It would be good if you can allocate players to a sub-shortlist, and assign a scout to provide a report on all the players in that sub-shortlist.

Does anyone know if you can do this? If so, how?

You can select a whole bunch of players with the shift key, and then right click to scout.

You can select a whole bunch of players with the shift key, and then right click to scout.

OMG! That hadn't occurred to me. Thanks for that. It'll save heaps of time at the end of each season.

@AndyPass

Try CTRL+A. It's a time saver.

Would they be divided over a bunch of scouts or will one scout do all the scouting if you control A + scout?

Would they be divided over a bunch of scouts or will one scout do all the scouting if you control A + scout?

It's just a shortcut to select all players. You still need to tell one of your scouts to do the scouting.

If you want to divide it up use the Shift tip that was posted previously. Or filter down your short-list.

For example: One scout takes all the keepers and then you assign a different scout to all the defenders etc.

Never use player search, so I have to employ 14 scouts, and send them to every nation in "Assign to --> Nation" list.

In the competitions scout, I never found any quality player, just give up.

I have a surprisingly similar view to scouting players that Cougar2010 does. I however restrict my scouts search's to have a maximum age of 21. By the time they are 21 I will either have them in my team or they will be at a big enough club that they come to my attention without my scouts needing to point me there.

I have 18 scouts in total of which 1 scouts the next opposition and 10 scout nations or regions and pick up the initial talent. I than have 4 scouts who monitor those players by scouting them again every month after they have been found. If they don't meet my reqirements or haven't improved in any way I'll drop them off the shortlist or take further interest in them. The remaining 3 will scout major youth competitions and National Teams U19's/21's incase my initial 10 scouts managed to miss something.

I have a shortlist after three seasons that has about 500~ players on it who are potential targets should I need them.