How to find the best regens out there?

Hi,

how do you guys find great regens? I have played a few seasons, but I haven't found the best regens. Many of them are good, and I can make some money on them, but I haven't found the ones who can strength my squad or start 11. Usually I have the best scouts scouting a country where the maximum age is 18.

Is there a better way to scout? Maybe with some other scout/search criterias?

/Zsolt

I usually have at least 2 scouts per region (not including asia or africa, the latter because I don't want african players in my teams), where maximum age is 21. This is because the game generates regens who are 19 or 20 quite often, especially in East Europe (for me at least).

I don't just blindly sign everyone with high potential though. I go through scouting reports, to make sure players aren't horribly injury prone, inconsistent or awful in big matches. Then I check attributes to filter out midfielders with very low passing, defenders with very low tackling etc, as these will most likely never reach a high enough level for me to be comfortable with having the player in my system.

And then finally, I usually only buy the prospects who are relatively cheap, compared to their potential of course. If I find a perfect match for my team, I will probably go out of my way to get him, sometimes overpaying. Otherwise, I try to stick to prospects I can get for less than 1mil Euro, to keep the economic risk/reward reasonable

Less than a million? I haven't found any world class regens that have been cheaper than that. WonderKids are bloody expensive. And any world class regens are normally worth millions even when 16-18.

As well as sending scouts out, I like to occasionally look at international u17 teams, big club youth teams and the like. That said, my scouts find me excellent prospects, and I already have one 15 year old at the club who's nowhere near the rest of the team in terms of talent, but can hold his own in the premiership, has a decent goals/games return and will turn into an absolute beast of a player. Average 175 minutes per goal, with 3 goals from 3 starts and 9 sub appearances and a 6.79 average. His first three games yielded two of those goals and an assist though!

edit: He cost me 15 mil though, to be fair!

I usually have at least 2 scouts per region (not including asia or africa, the latter because I don't want african players in my teams), where maximum age is 21. This is because the game generates regens who are 19 or 20 quite often, especially in East Europe (for me at least).

So, you dont scout nations, but regions instead?

I scout nations (depending on how many scouts I have, one scout can have up to 10 assignments) for players aged 19 or younger. Then I go to the player search and use my filter 'Cheap Talents' (aged 19 or younger, value less than 1mil). I then sort the listed players by star-rating and use my costumised view "Talents" (contains character, key attributes, position, age, etc..)

I view the player profiles of interesting-looking players and make a bid for them, should their attributes and stats convince me.

I have found scouting regions to be most succesful. Have found 4 wonderkids in the past 2 seasons, they didn't come cheap though. All 17-18 year old and 3 of them were £12m + other one was £8m.

use the search function, use your scouts and look at internation competitions and see who plays well etc.

The funny thing was that I found my best regen after a media comment stating that I was interested in him. I wasn't aware of the lad at all as I normally don't have a scout dedicated to Belgium but rather central Europe (3 roaming around). Checked the guy out and was REALLY suprised

Well the 1 million thing isn't set in stone Like I said, if a prospect really fits my system, I will pay more. But for prospects I'm unsure about, I don't think it's worth it shelling out much more than that, just to hope they develop. Because in my experience, most often they don't, and all I can get in return is some money when I sell them.

And I don't scout nations mostly because I have to manually restart the scouting mission everytime it's done that way hehe. So it's me being lazy

I remember at Go Ahead Eagles one of my scouts gave me a report on a young player I should get. I though he looked ok, but i was on a small budget and thought it was too much of a risk. Anyway it was like the scout wouldn't leave me alone and kept sending me reports about how well he played in a game. I bought him in the end and he was awesome. So I think getting the scout to watch the player play is helpful too.

Haha, no african players saevel? That's a rather racist transfer policy, isn't it?

jk. Good tips, anyway. Remember to check the U18 leagues in the best footballing countries, at least if you've loaded them up. Regens that "have potential" past 20 years are usually not worth buying.

Oh, and keep an eye on germany U-teams. Because they're not allowed to use the national team for anything at all, a lot of the best talent go into the german U-teams. And even though FM doesn't have a license for germany, it's still an awesome footballing nation.

Also, remember that wonderkid isn't something players are born with or destined to be, it's something they earn. Same goes for comparisons like "next ronaldo" or whatever. So a player with a decent PA that gets a few early first team appearances will easily become a lot better, or earn his wonderkid stars. You must have faith in regens for the regens, or talents at all, to become good.

I'm 5 years into my game now, and went and bought Mario Balotelli (PA -10) and turned him into a monster. Iker Muniain was bought up by Inter and left in their youth ranks, never got a game. He's ***** now.

Could be that he doesn't want players to be unavailable during the Cup of Nations?

Get many affiliates with "top youth facilities + youth academy" from inactive leagues or just search other clubs from active leagues that have such affiliates .

As really big teams I do the following:

1. Put 1 scout on youth leagues for each country you've loaded as playable.
   
2. Put 1 scout on each country that you've loaded players from, filter him to only look for players younger than 21 years.
   
3. Scatter some scouts around different "hot-beds" for regens like Scandinavia, South America, Central Europe, South Europe, UK/Ireland. Roaming but with same filter as #2.
   
4. Put 1 or 2 scouts roaming the world, with same filter as #2.
   

Set search filters from some of your good players but tone them down a little and set an age limit.

Asking your players who are in U-21 or U-19 etc international squads for recommendations can be useful as well, usually gives you the best 2-3 players in the squad, and they love it if you buy said player/s.

Only 1 or 2 have mentioned the biggest asset you have, the Player Search function

Edit the player search to show players under 17, sort by Attacking, Defending attributes and you'll catch 1 or 2 players straight away who are above and beyond their age range.

I picked up these 2 French regens by doing that.

I usually search for them myself, i dont trust scouts lol .. i use a few attributes as a starting point depending on what im looking for (goalkeeper, midfielder, etc..), if i see any potential in them, i ask my staff's opinion, if we all agree or if i'm the only one that thinks he has potential i sign him .. sometimes i just send my scouts to certain places just to keep them busy, i don't expect any good surprises to be honest

What about scouting stars? What do you look for? 3 stars?

From what I’ve seen so far, the scouting system won’t give you a definitive indication of a player’s quality. I have a scout with 20 in PA evaluation and 20 in CA evaluation and his reports show 2, 2.5 or 3 stars for players that are considered as wonderkids later in the game.

The scout seems to judge the player not only on his PA (like in previous versions) but also against your current players. If you have a great first team player like a striker and you scout a young striker that you think will become a world-class player you will probably get a 2.5 or 3 stars, which sounds good. Your scout will no longer give you a 5 stars report right away.

You need to actually take the risk of purchasing the player (like IRL), develop him, tutor him, and after a couple of seasons you will notice that his number of stars starts to increase; from 2.5 to 3. Up to you to decide that a hot prospect deserves first-team match.

Forget the wonderkid farm delirium like in FM 2005 five or 06 where you could blindly buy 5 stars prospects and get 3-4 years later a first-team of world-class player aged 18 or 19.

I’ve used FMRTE to find the players with most PA, scout them for a few weeks, signed them, and took care they train well, have a tutor and so on, and only now, 3 years later do I see their stars increasing, even though their attributes were improving since the very beginning. Only now do I get offers from other clubs interested to sign them.

Scouting is now far more realistic, because nothing will really tell you; buy him, he’s next CR. But you can use the following as a rule: If a prospect has 2.5 or 3 stars and is bellow 19, sign him. Your very staff won’t be able to tell you “He’s exceptional…”, and will probably tell you “Not far from reaching his maximum potential”, even if it’s not true. I had players tagged with “Not far from…” that still continue to improve 3 years after they signed for my squad and others considered as “correct” now seen as “promising”.

The top youngsters can cost an arm and a leg for smaller clubs. Try searching for young Germans usually 15 years old and try to snap them up as quickly as possible. Make sure you have very good scouts with really high Judging Potential stat.

Thanks for your great answers.

Does anybody have the link to a thread where the discussion is about developing regens/young players? I simply cannot find it with the search function!