Barca = No Reserves

After spending years in FM playing English (and German once!) lower leagues (why? I dunno...) I was inspired by a friend's old FM2005 Barca save he showed me this past weekend.

The question I have is this - when managing English clubs, if I discover (or buy) promising youth, at around 16 or 17 I move them to the reserves, get them on the first team when I have an opportunity, have them mentored, all to get them playing at a higher level.

It seems, however, that you don't control the Barca second team like you do in England - obviously some vagary of La Liga rules of whichc I'm unaware.

How do you develop your youth to toughen them up and test them against higher competition without just sending them on loan?

You can move your youth players into the Barcelona B team. I forget their name, it's Barcelona Atletic or something like that. I assume this works the same way as sending your players to a reserve side in England, as you can include them in your first team as well, the same way you can include reserve players in your first team when playing in England. Also, with Barcelona I think you have a lot of feeder clubs you can send youngsters on loan to to try and toughen them up.

In Spain, reserve teams play in lower leagues and are affiliates in the game.

I think in Spain the Reserve teams act as separate teams, at least in the game, where Barcelona B play in a lower league with their own manager - you can actually take over B teams when you begin your game, or during of course.

I haven't really managed in Spain so some of this may be wrong, but i believe you can move players between B team and senior team as you please.

The advantage with this system is that players don't really need to go on loan to a lower league club, unlike in England where the top clubs will often send their players to League One or the Championship. Barcelona have their reserve team play at that similar level anyway. Problem i suppose is you can't tutor these players while they're in the reserve team, and if they stay with you for tutoring then they can't play reserve games in between the rare senior match (assuming they aren't good enough to play regularly).

I don't really have an answer so it'll be interesting to see how people who do manage in Spain approach this setup.

Might be worth enabling 2 or 3 more divisions to make sure your reserve side is playing week-in week-out. Can also send players to the U-18s, much as in England

Might be worth enabling 2 or 3 more divisions to make sure your reserve side is playing week-in week-out. Can also send players to the U-18s, much as in England

Yes, I managed in Spain for a season and the B team was useless because they didn't play.