Suggestion for improving the youth system

At the moment we don't reallly have much input into what sort of players our youth systems produce except by asking the board to improve the facilities. It would be nice if we could use the youth system to mould players into the type we want and imbue them with our own footballing philosophy the way Wenger does at Arsenal or Cruyff did at Barcelona.

I have two related suggestions for how this could be done:

1. The formation your youth team plays should determine what sort of players come through. For example if your youth team play 4-2-3-1 they should get more attacking midfielders than if they play 4-4-2.

2. The style of football your youth team plays should determine how attributes are distributed in the young players who are generated. A possession-based style would produce players with better technical attributes whereas a direct style would produce players with better physical attributes. A fluid philosophy would produce all-rounders whereas a ridig philosophy would produce specialists and so on.

This wouldn't allow you to produce better players - just players who fit your system.

At the moment we don't reallly have much input into what sort of players our youth systems produce except by asking the board to improve the facilities. It would be nice if we could use the youth system to mould players into the type we want and imbue them with our own footballing philosophy the way Wenger does at Arsenal or Cruyff did at Barcelona.

I have two related suggestions for how this could be done:

1. The formation your youth team plays should determine what sort of players come through. For example if your youth team play 4-2-3-1 they should get more attacking midfielders than if they play 4-4-2.

2. The style of football your youth team plays should determine how attributes are distributed in the young players who are generated. A possession-based style would produce players with better technical attributes whereas a direct style would produce players with better physical attributes. A fluid philosophy would produce all-rounders whereas a ridig philosophy would produce specialists and so on.

This wouldn't allow you to produce better players - just players who fit your system.

I absolutely love the 1st idea. :thup:

good ideas,

I love the idea of growing youth team players into stars

I like the 2nd idea, I just wonder about how it would be implemented. Even with State of the Art Youth facilities, each year there are probably only 1 or 2 that will play at premiership level, and maybe only one every 4 or 5 seasons that will make it into my first team regularly. Frankly, most of my youth players are really quite poor, so I don't know if I would notice that much difference between a terrible youth player whose been brought up playing one touch short passing football, and one whose been playing physical long ball, their attributes just won't be high enough to really make a difference.

That said I do like the idea and if it could be implemented to work for the few that will make the grade then it would be a good addition.

Not so sure about the first idea, that might be difficult to do, and as I'm quite fluid what formation I use (I probably have 3 or 4 that I standardly use depending on the players available and their quality) I wouldn't want a load of players only suitable for a 4-4-2 because thats the formation I've been using due to the players I have. You'd just end up with a cycle where the only players you have (obviously if you don't buy any...) are suitable for that formation. Might be worth players maybe having a preferred formation that they are used to playing in or somthing though, like if a midfield player is used to playing with an anchor man because that's how he played in youth football or something.

Regardless of the quality of the ideas in the OP, it is pretty damn obvious that youth/reserve team football and management is in serious need of a major overhaul. It is woeful in FM currently.

I like both the ideas in the OP.

Regardless of the quality of the ideas in the OP, it is pretty damn obvious that youth/reserve team football and management is in serious need of a major overhaul. It is woeful in FM currently.

Any suggestions?

At the end of the day reserve football is only there to keep backup players fit while the youth side is largely ignored by the average player and mostly full of newgens who are released at the end of their contract.

Although there are perhaps minor improvements that could be made I don't see what could be done with a major overhaul.

On a side note I've been playing in Italy recently and I would even argue that their way in RL (no reserve teams, limited overage allowed in U20s) is a better one.

I like the formation idea to bring in players suited to your system, then again, what if your formation starts falling apart after a few seasons so then you have to completely revamp it?

i sign all my youth players, but i cheat using the genie scout. i know it beats the objecct of the game, but the yuth players are very bad!!

I also think the players generated should reflect your current youth team. For example, if you have two goalkeepers coming up in the first year, then you are less likely to have any goalkeepers come up the next year because two goalkeepers was enough last year.

I don't think the first-team should have such a large impact on formation though. Youth teams sometimes play different formations to the first team. You should be able to control the general philosophy of youth teams to affect the regens. It should also be long-term - if you change the philosophy dramatically in one season, you should only see results several years later.

Some good ideas in the OP! And I agree with Fraser - the youth/reserve teams have been the same for far too long and need radical changes Imo.

What I would also like to see is a more realistic reflection of excellent youth academies. For instance, the Ajax Barcelona youth academies should produce more quality, good, and decent players. Many of the players that do not succeed at Ajax or Barcelona end up with decent careers at other clubs.

Right now there are now too many clubs with a max rating for their youth setup that do not really produce a whole lot of players in real life. Team such as Arsenal and Chelsea may buy a lot of young players and train them, but I struggle to remember a player that was completely trained by them. In the game though all four of these clubs have excellent youth setups. This to me doesn't reflect what they actually do in real life.

Chelsea with excellent youth facilities.....you must be having a laughh! Yes I agree dezeman - but with a score out of 20 - then SI are shooting themsleves in the foot!

Team such as Arsenal and Chelsea may buy a lot of young players and train them, but I struggle to remember a player that was completely trained by them. In the game though all four of these clubs have excellent youth setups. This to me doesn't reflect what they actually do in real life.

Jack Wilshere has been at Arsenal since he was 9...

John Terry also springs to mind...

Regardless I like the OP's idea and think that the youth system definitely needs work.

its so annoying that when i have been playin a certain formation for many years , to then be informed the yougster that is the best product of my youth system in years plays in a position that is redundant postion to the formation i use.

You think the regular youth system is bad, just think how it is when you have no option to interact with it. MLS youth academies are just for show, can't interact with them in anyway way at all, not that I've found anyway.

So yes, I agree this is something that needs lots of work.

Martyr: the one thing you can do with an MLS academy is loan under-18 players to it (I did with Bill Hamid in my DC United game). But given the paucity of under-18s in the MLS, he is the only person I've managed to send there in 10 years. Which makes them fairly useless.

In the Baseball Mogul series of sports sims, the most recent I played (2004, I'll admit, it was a while back) allowed you to use a slider system to determine how much focus on each position you'd get, in terms of newgens. Crank up the slider to max on starting pitchers, and lower it on everything else, and you could expect to have a massive amount of starting pitchers, and little of anything else. A similar system could be useful in FM:

1) Implement general sliders for GKs, defenders, midfielders, and attackers. This would allow you to put a focus on each general area, while not giving you too much control over what gets produced (in others words, you can't specify that you want a pacey DR/MR/AMR to come through the ranks).

2) Take into account the amount of time the preferences have been set in a certain way. That way, you can't just switch what you want on the 1st of June and suddenly see results of that change less than a month later.

3) Reward relatively stable systems (ie. not changing from a focus on defence one year, to forwards the next, and back to defence, and so on) with a modifier that helps with the average quality of the players coming through. Doesn't need to be a large boost, but I think we can all see the results of stable youth systems, like that of Ajax, who tend to produce some very good players because they know from a young age the sort of formation and style they'll be playing later.

I also think the players generated should reflect your current youth team. For example, if you have two goalkeepers coming up in the first year, then you are less likely to have any goalkeepers come up the next year because two goalkeepers was enough last year.

I don't think the first-team should have such a large impact on formation though. Youth teams sometimes play different formations to the first team. You should be able to control the general philosophy of youth teams to affect the regens. It should also be long-term - if you change the philosophy dramatically in one season, you should only see results several years later.

Youth coaches can't control when good goalkeepers are going to come through though. I know in England, most academies have 3 or 4 13-15 year old goalkeepers (per age group, I mean) and generally give the best two scholarships- can they help it if they have three outstanding goalkeepers one year and none the next year? Goalkeepers happen to be the easiest to work with in this hypothetical, as they can't be retrained so easily.

As for "controlling the philosophy"- I'd like you to do this by selecting a youth coach to be an "Academy Director". He retains all the roles of a youth coach, but in addition, his ability has a direct impact on the quality of regens that come through, at least in terms of CA- after all, he's responsible for arranging who has coached them for the past 6 or 7 years, and who the academy takes in the first place. Furthermore, his preferred style impacts the attribute distribution of the youngsters that come through- an Academy Director who prefers short passing and technical football will lead to technically accomplished footballers coming through. It could even link in with the "formations biasing produced positions" suggestion.

What I would also like to see is a more realistic reflection of excellent youth academies. For instance, the Ajax Barcelona youth academies should produce more quality, good, and decent players. Many of the players that do not succeed at Ajax or Barcelona end up with decent careers at other clubs.

Right now there are now too many clubs with a max rating for their youth setup that do not really produce a whole lot of players in real life. Team such as Arsenal and Chelsea may buy a lot of young players and train them, but I struggle to remember a player that was completely trained by them. In the game though all four of these clubs have excellent youth setups. This to me doesn't reflect what they actually do in real life.

I think Chelsea are rated at 15/20, which seems fair. Arsenal are rated higher, but I don't think they're at the 20/20 level of Ajax, Manchester United and Barcelona.

Also, remember that a player only needs to sign for his club at or before age 15 to count as their product, as the game doesn't contain regens under the age of 16.

Arsenal-raised players to play in the PL recently:

Steve Sidwell

Jack Wilshire

Kieran Gibbs

James Harper

Justin Hoyte

Johan Djourou

Armand Traore

However, I agree that clubs with 20/20 don't produce players of high enough quality often enough.

SCIAG, I like your idea for an academy director. I was thinking of somthing similar myself - the academy director would choose the formation and playing style of the youth team by default, but you would have the option to micromanage if you like.

Brend, I think my formation system would achieve the same thing as your slider system but in a more realistic way. In real life Barcelona and Ajax play the same formation at all levels so they can produce players who fit into the first team. I've also heard recently that the Argentine FA mandate a certain formation for all youth coaches to make sure they produce the right players for the national team.

x42bn6, It would be based on the youth team formation rather than the first team.

I kinda like that random players come through, i mean, sure it might mean you get a player for a formation you dont use, but that's not too wrong in my eyes.

Really like both the ideas in the OP.

Obviously it would be great to see them in FM11, but I think it's abit late.

To add to this, the idea of the youth systems, would it make sense to make it linked/similar to the scouting system where you can say position wanted, and then allocate scouts to look for young guns to sign for the youth team the following summer?

Martyr: the one thing you can do with an MLS academy is loan under-18 players to it (I did with Bill Hamid in my DC United game). But given the paucity of under-18s in the MLS, he is the only person I've managed to send there in 10 years. Which makes them fairly useless.

Maybe in some situations, but I have a 16 and 17 y/o that came out of the new seasons draft and can't send either of them to my academy, just says 'x can't be loaned to rapids academy at this time'. But even if I had the option the two players would likely just reject the loan, I can't even loan them to a semi-pro or pro teams I'm affiliated with because they just say 'sorry, don't wanna go there'.

Besides what's the point of sending your young guys there unless you really need the room on the team? Do youth coaches or other coaches affect the academies? I've nto seen anything that leads me to think they do, so if you have the room you might as well keep the youngsters around so they get decent training.

So yeah, MLS youth system needs to be fixed badly.

There are many ways of playing a 4-4-2 though, this formation could have varying affects on youngsters

Appreciate the points , hope academy / youth system gets a revamp.

I posted this a couple of weeks back in a different thread.

Another thing for me is that when you get your youth intake at the beginning of the year, they should only come with a 'recommended position' rather than a fixed position. You can then either ask your Assistant (or through another addition to the game, have a youth team head coach) to automatically train for their recommended position or you can set this yourself. Between the ages of 14-17 they will then 'learn' that position and this is what position they will be throughout the game. Maybe have a hidden position learning stat, so that some can learn positions more quickly than others and have multiple positions. You can still train them for other positions later in the game, but these will never be their most natural positions, only those learnt in their development age. Reason this appeals to me, is recently reading an interview from Tony Carr (West Ham's Youth Team Director) he mentioned that Rio Ferdinand came to the club as a Midfielder, but after seeing the German way of having a decent ball playing player as one half of your centre back partnerships, he reverted him to a Defender, and the rest is history.

good ideas

I find this intriguing.

The reason being, I often find myself falling into Barcelona fever when I start a new game. I have this snorter of an idea, "I will make my first team from the reserves and youth and play this attractive blend of football"

Lets face it, its a great idea, and a philosophy.

But its not a right, it needs to be sown into a club.

So, I like the idea, but I'd offer a slight change. Yes, the youth system and players in it should reflect your style of play, but only after a while of your individual managing of the club, and a very supportive chairman, and a distinct series of options that you must go through to set this up, including a dedicated youth team "manager" (hired, for example, in a similar way to the psyhio and scouts)

The youth manager will have an analysis of how they like to play football (physical, beautiful, direct) in very specific detail, almost in an interview type of manner, and then you can offer them the job.

After several years, during which you are kept well updated (system progressing well, the academy chap is scouting for talent. The scouting bit, lets face it, its very important)

And then you start to see your fruit bared.

This costs money, and this will be taken from your budget, and your chairman will expect you to be using the players (think Southampton, with this current Alan Pardew scenario)

Erm, thats about it from that. Like the idea

I've been championing this for a while;

I'd love to see an option where much like in FML you can choose to set up an academy around the world much like how we ask for a feeder club; the better your team is (in terms of reputation) the more reach you have.

It can also help develop talent around the world; if you set up a lets say 5 star academy in China, you can help develop the Chinese national players, and maybe be the reason why China becomes a football power.

Of course many will be setting up academies in Brazil; if you have good youth coaches and/or using Sciag's idea of an academy director who is familiar with the region and can develop talent, then your academy will be successful. If you set up an academy in Argentina/Brazil/Italy/France/Spain/Holland/wherever the big name kids come from and you set it up poorly, you won't get the good kids.

Of course you'll have to establish and put in enough time, effort and money to start developing quality players, you won't get wonderkids right off the bat.

Please SI; get this in

Some great ideas in this thread! I would love to have some more control for youth development, as it's something that really keeps you involved in longer games. My wish for the longest time has been an introduction of 13-15 year olds (even if they all are newgens).

Some very good ideas