£2m....... 24 hours later, goodbye promising youngster!

I am absolutely gutted! I signed a 15 yo Brazillian for my Sevilla side on a 3 year contract. Interest in him was high so i got in early. Brazillian youth playes have to wait until they are 18 before joining a club in Spain. Then me, being the idiot that i am, thought the 3 year contract would start when he joined! So 3 years later when the transfer window opens he joins. The next again day he leaves on a free and won't negotiate to sign on again! Easily the best £2m i've ever spent. He looks a good prospect but his stats have barely improved in the last three years. So hopefully he never becomes a great player!!

That seems very wrong to me, like you said surely his contract should start when he signs for you I mean you were not paying him for 3 years while waiting for him to arrive.

yeah that does sound very odd, contract should start when he arrives not before.

Contract should start from the day he joins you. I'd raise this in the bug forum and upload a save before he jpins you

Also, legally they've got to stay in Brazil until they turn 18 (unless you can find some loop hole like Fergie with with the da Silva twins), but if their club doesn't have good training facilities, they will stall. That's why I wouldn't go down that route myself.

Unfrotunately i don't have a save from before he signed, as i thought it was me just being stupid! So i was right to think his contract should start when he joins?

Unfrotunately i don't have a save from before he signed, as i thought it was me just being stupid! So i was right to think his contract should start when he joins?

Yes you were completely right.

Oh wow I've been signing young Brazilians for many years on my game but always just assumed this was how the system worked... I've generally been trying to get them on 5 year deals (so that I have at least 1 year to play with when they join) and hoping their egos haven't risen so much that they won't sign an extension ~6 months after joining. I really hope this is fixed, it'll save me a lot of stress!

I am absolutely gutted! I signed a 15 yo Brazillian for my Sevilla side on a 3 year contract. Interest in him was high so i got in early. Brazillian youth playes have to wait until they are 18 before joining a club in Spain. Then me, being the idiot that i am, thought the 3 year contract would start when he joined! So 3 years later when the transfer window opens he joins. The next again day he leaves on a free and won't negotiate to sign on again! Easily the best £2m i've ever spent. He looks a good prospect but his stats have barely improved in the last three years. So hopefully he never becomes a great player!!

Loads and loads of problems with buying youths from countries with rules like that.

Same with pre-contracts and agreeing to buy players at the end of the season.

Any contract clauses you give him will start from the moment you offer the contract, not when he signs for you. Means your youth has already had 3 seasons of 15% wage rise, for example.

Or if you offer a player £1m after scoring 20 goals, and he's scored 19 for his old club, his first goal for you will activate the clause.

Interesting because I have just brought a wonderkid goalkeeper from Argentina who is 16 and can not join me for 2 seasons so I hope I have no problems with him.

Also, legally they've got to stay in Brazil until they turn 18 (unless you can find some loop hole like Fergie with with the da Silva twins), but if their club doesn't have good training facilities, they will stall. That's why I wouldn't go down that route myself.

Fergie didnt find a loop hole. Fluminense let them leave. The Brazilian league finished in December 07 and they joined in January 08. But they still couldnt play until they was 18. What would Fluminense gain by keeping them for only a few months. They just let them come to us so they could train with us an aclimatise for a few months. Seeing as they are our feeder club and we pay them money, the just did us a favour. No loop holes needed.

The problem is... contracts in fm are handled by date signed and not duration. if it was duration.. it would probably be the correct way. you just need to offer a longer contract. i learned it the hard way.

The lesson here is not to poach youngsters from Brazil when they're so young. You never know how they will turn out at 18. Most of the time they don't improve much at all.

The problem is... contracts in fm are handled by date signed and not duration. if it was duration.. it would probably be the correct way. you just need to offer a longer contract. i learned it the hard way.

This may be where you went wrong. There isn't really such a thing as a "3 year contract" in FM. We set expiry dates, not lengths, which is to stop exactly this issue.

Except we don't?

We offer a 3 year contract, which means the players should be joining the club on a 3 year contract.

It's a massive, massive bug.

thinking of this it has happened me aswell, i didnt lose my player though but he joined and his contract was up in 12 months when he joined, strange

Except we don't?

We offer a 3 year contract, which means the players should be joining the club on a 3 year contract.

It's a massive, massive bug.

Not a bug at all.

When you are offering a contract it doesnt say "1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Years" it says 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015.

I think I'm being obvious enough.

It says years on mine. You don't get the end date until the contract is signed and the player is at your club.

Just when offering contracts to non-EU player specifically? Cause in my memory its always been "Contract Length: 20XX" I even remember this being the same in CM 99/00.

Did they change it in FM11?

It says years on mine. You don't get the end date until the contract is signed and the player is at your club.

When I approach this player (for example), who cannot join the club until 2027, I only get options to offer him a contract for the years beyond that. There's definitely something wrong with the situation in the OP.

Is there a different version of the game that lists it as the length of the contract rather than the date?

Strange. This has never happened to me and i sign a lot of young players from south america.

When I approach this player (for example), who cannot join the club until 2027, I only get options to offer him a contract for the years beyond that. There's definitely something wrong with the situation in the OP.

Is there a different version of the game that lists it as the length of the contract rather than the date?

Must admit I haven't yet played this game (it's installing now), but I'm guessing that there could be an option in Settings to change this?

Must admit I haven't yet played this game (it's installing now), but I'm guessing that there could be an option in Settings to change this?

That must be the case. A bug with the way that setting works, then? Assuming a setting exists (which, judging by Ackter's posts, it does).