Best Youth Teams

An idea I have had for a while now is to play as a team and rely solely on players who have come up through your ranks. I don't know why but it just niggles at me to see teams of superstars who win everything, to me this just loses the feel of a club. Plus the 1967 Celtic side won the greatest prize with players all born thirty miles from Celtic Park so there's something to try and achieve.

I want everyone to chip in with ideas on how to do this, an ideal club to begin this challenge with and any transfer rules we can come up with. If I take a mid table EPL team such as Sunderland obviously I cannot sell all my foreign players and then play my youth team as I would just be relegated and sacked.

ajax would be a good team to start with.

Thanks for the quick reply Edle. I was just thinking how quite a lot of Dutch teams would be a good choice. I am however using the demo of the game untill my full copy arrives. Therrefore I am either limited to those options or I wait a couple of days until said copy arrives.. predicament.

Athletic Bilbao,Auxerre,Ajax,Roma,Feyenoord,Sporting Lisboa.

not orginal i know but arsenal? there youth could pull there weight even in the epl with the right set up

Ajax is a good shout, to be successful you're probably going to have to pick a team outside of the top leagues (Eng, Spn, Ita, Ger) as otherwise it would probably be too difficult to qualify for Champs League while trying to blood a large amount of youngsters.

On the side of other rules perhaps you could relax it a bit and not make it so that every player has to come from your youth academy. You could either:

Allow yourself to sign players that have come up through other youth systems in your local area or who have been born in that area, OR

You could allow yourself to only sign players who have come through the youth systems of your feeder clubs.

Personally I think the feeder clubs idea is the best one as it acknowledges the way football operates in the 21st century but still allows you to stay true to the ethos of raising and developing players within your clubs own system.

Edit: If i was to pick a league actually I think Russia or Turkey would be a good choice as they are quite strong leagues but already have very strict rules on the number of foreign players as they aren't EU members

I generally always do this, although not to the extent of building a team only from the youth ranks. I do add to my youth ranks early on though, lots of 16-19 year old signings. I almost never buy instant first teamers / key players, nor do I buy any players from across the globe (or across the channel, in most of my saves ).

Playing like this, any club you pick is manageable. I never played any different, nor could I ever bring myself to do it differently.

Not that I've ever had a CL winning squad this way, though.

Ajax is a good shout, to be successful you're probably going to have to pick a team outside of the top leagues (Eng, Spn, Ita, Ger) as otherwise it would probably be too difficult to qualify for Champs League while trying to blood a large amount of youngsters.

On the side of other rules perhaps you could relax it a bit and not make it so that every player has to come from your youth academy. You could either:

Allow yourself to sign players that have come up through other youth systems in your local area or who have been born in that area, OR

You could allow yourself to only sign players who have come through the youth systems of your feeder clubs.

Personally I think the feeder clubs idea is the best one as it acknowledges the way football operates in the 21st century but still allows you to stay true to the ethos of raising and developing players within your clubs own system.

You have brought up a few very good points here Depps, also thanks for saying why rather than just shouting teams at me which helps the discussion element, greatly.

A quick question about feeder clubs, am I correct in thinking that you have a feeder club whihc is normally a few tiers below you? Such as Wycombe as a feeder club to a team of say Man Utd' size?

I like that idea and if I can do my best to gain such a club which is quite decent it should prove to a fun game. Your last point especially intrigues me and I found myself nodding through it

Ajax has come up a lot so I have just fired up a quick game and gone to check their squad, this being the demo of course I cannot play as them or have a perfect view of their squad. I can however see that a few key players were born in Amsterdam and many more were trained in Holland.

I have given it a bit more thought and if I am allowed to use players born in a thirty mile radius of where my eventual club is based or pops up as a regen in a club less than thirty miles away I could have a few interesting clubs to choose from the following places:

London - Lots of clubs would equal lots of youth to delve into. A hard league to gain access into Europe from though.

Amsterdam - As said above Ajax have decent youth to begin with but under 30 miles you can tap into Feyenoord, Uterect, Az, Den Haag etc

Brussels - Anderlect. Quite an easy league plus a fair amount of home grown talent. Again, Belgium is small so there are a few decent clubs in poaching distance.

Wouldn't Barcelona be the most obvious choice, though? They could build a solid homegrown squad first season and still compete for the trophies with proper management.

If you're considering top tier clubs, that is.

Feeder clubs are like you said such as Utd and Wycombe or for an in game (and I think real life) example City and Oldham. However, feeder clubs don't necessarily have to be in your own country. For example Utd have a link with Antwerp in Belgium as a means of getting around work permit regulations (young non-eu players they sign can gain an EU passport in Belgium quicker than in the UK) and they have also sent a good few of their own youth products on loan there to gain experience i.e. Darren Gibson. On the continent the idea of feeder clubs has been around for longer and is far more widespread, some small teams really do act as another academy or reserve team for their parent clubs and some clubs have even set up clubs in other countries to develop talent their for the parent club (see Ajax Cape Town in South Africa).

When your managing a club in game you get the choice of what type of feeder club you want when you request one from the board (local, international, work permit and commercial I think) and you can build up a good network of clubs all over the globe and aim for areas that are likely to produce talented young players (i.e Brazil, Argentina, the big African nations). After a while you'll even find that the feeder clubs start producing player that play in positions where you yourself are short of talent.

Barcelona would be to easy Sporting Lisboa looks like a good choice

Sporting Lisboa looks like a good choice

Maybe depending on his luck... Im playing as Porto atm and the regen distribution in this save is awful. (in 3-4 years in my save Ill have a totally different world...) The Portuguese clubs arent getting any really good regens. None. :\

Leeds, everton or villa

"London - Lots of clubs would equal lots of youth to delve into. A hard league to gain access into Europe from though.

Amsterdam - As said above Ajax have decent youth to begin with but under 30 miles you can tap into Feyenoord, Uterect, Az, Den Haag etc

Brussels - Anderlect. Quite an easy league plus a fair amount of home grown talent. Again, Belgium is small so there are a few decent clubs in poaching distance."

Add to that:

Istanbul- you have three massive clubs Fenerbache, Galatasary and Besiktas who have great youth set ups plus numerous other smaller clubs

Moscow- Spartak, CSKA, Lokomotiv, Dynamo, FC Moscow all in the Russian top division with decent youth set ups

Belgrade-You have Red Star and Partizan who have great youth set ups and my personal favourite club to manage in FM, OFK Beograd who have a knack for producing great youngsters despite not having a big reputation outside of Serbia (Their name, Oladanski Futbol Klub, even means youth football club) and again numerous other smaller clubs.

I would recommend Athletic Bilbao. Because you don't actually have a choice, you have to sign Basque players.

@Oypus i think that rule has actually changed now in the game and in real life and they can sign any Spanish player under the age of 19 although ya it would still prob be the easiest way to do it if you want to go with the locals only rule as the game will regulate some of it for you. The one thing though is that you wouldn't be able to utilise foreign feeder clubs at all

According to wikipedia:

Still, in recent times, this policy has been somewhat relaxed and players with direct Basque ancestry or with no Basque ancestry but formed in Basque clubs have played for the team.

With a little practice, you'll get used to recognizing Basque names from the rest though.

Ah, I didn't know. I remember a couple of threads on here like last week which were about this, and they all said they couldn't sign anyone who wasn't. Was just going off of their word.

I guess the game allowing you to sign any Spaniard under a certain age is SIs version of relaxing the rules so as I guess its probably hard to program Basque grannies into the game...

Hmm Bilbao.. They don't exactly excite me. Maybe if I HAVE to sign such players then the fun is lost? Kinda like the opposite of craving something you can't have. We'll see if my game comes tomorrow, if so Ajax vs Anderlect. If not I'll have a look through the availiable demo teams, good night all x

If you want to be able to start slowly I would suggest Ajax for sure. They have the history and the pedigree. In fact I have a game on FM09 called Trifecta which has me doing exactly this with Man United, Barcelona and Ajax all at the same time.

I would suggest not selling your foreign players. Use your feeder clubs as a way of increasing the pool of players you can use (I always scout my Feeder Clubs for their new crop of youngsters) so that you can replace the bigger names in time once they retire. It's a long slow progress and one you have to really focus on. Every time the board asks you for your belief in your aims look at the lowest one (Title Challengers rather than Winners for example) as this will also give you added time to grow and develop your team.

I would also suggest that you take control of your Reserve and Youth teams. This makes any new players coming through your academy instantly like you as a coach as well as letting you dictate exactly how your youngsters develop. My games take forever because I do this. You have to really take an interest in your club's overall structure when trying to do this.

Bestie.

Thanks for the tips Bestie. Game hasn't arrived yet so it probably come monday. I will therefore set up a game as a practice before I can use the mighty Ajax.