A little clarification with contracts please?

Hi. So I'm playing as F.C. København and I was just informed that Real Madrid (and Juventus) have offered a contract to a 17yo somewhat mediocre regen youngster of mine. This player has 2 years left on his original, unmodified youth contract and now the contract offers have gone straight to him and I am apparently getting paid nothing in return and it says free on the last screenshot down there. He was not listed as available for transfer but his asking price was set to $0 for some reason... What am I missing? Why did this happen and how can I stop it happening in the future?

I understand that one can offer a pre-contract to players with less than 6 months left on their current contract (unless that extends to two years for youth?) and also that some contracts can be unprotected but I was under the assumption that although you could offer a contract to players with unprotected contracts, the team that "owns" the player would still get money for the transfer (also I don't understand how I can tell if a contract is unprotected or not and why one becomes unprotected???)

I also lost Jesper Grønkjær in much the same way but I don't know how much time was left on his contract, plus he was getting old and costly so I'm not too bothered.

Make sure you offer all the regens that you want to keep a full time contract - once they have accepted that then they are yours even if they dont sign them until they turn 17/18 (not sure on all the different countries rules on minimum age players, but its 17 in england).

Leaving him on his youth contract effectively says you dont want him.

He had a youth contract, which is a amateur contract. So any club can offer him a proffesional deal anytime (though you should have had some compensation.

You can offer youth players pre-contracts to prefent this

I think you dont get any compensation because he went past the point at which he could be given a proffessional contract.

Ok so why didn't I get any compensation? And does signing a youngster to a full time contract have any adverse effect on their training? They train harder I think, so why not sign all of them to full time contracts?

Also I guess I've never come accross this because my youth have always been bad

Oh and how in the world am I supposed to know when he goes past the point he can be offered a professional contract? And what does that mean? I can still offer him one (which I did, which he will no doubt reject.)

If you offer a contract to a player under the age of 17 it will go into effect after his 17th birthday. So he remains training with the youth untill then

If you offer a contract to a player under the age of 17 it will go into effect after his 17th birthday. So he remains training with the youth untill then

This.

And if you want to know when they turn proffessional, what your assistant reports - he will tell you that the player is eligiable for a proffessional contract.

Personaly, I sign them up in advance.