Why lowly countries prefer with playing grey players even though they have enough players

In my 12.2.2 game I managing Guam u23. I have Mongolia u23 as an opponent. In database there is 51 mongolian u23 players (genie scout info). But AI manager not played with them and they put all grey team against me. and even though I had national pool of 1 (eligible for u23) player I decided to choose not grey guamean players (I look out all teams and tried to build my best squad - from 185 players) but National A team (main team) not playing with them... And all choosing grey squad (6 non grey)... (even database had 468 players)

Info: 0 regens... all are real players in the game time database...

i was wondering that myself, i have seen some fantastic newgens in africa, yet they are not making appearances for internationals at any level

Real players in the db are there because they are in the squad of clubs loaded. They may well not be the best in the country. It would be very weird to play an international where a team plays a squad of 18 appaling players because they are the only 18 active in the save, where the country standard would be much higher.

Of course, AI not selecting clearly superior players is an entirely different point, but I would prefer to see grey players of the correct standard picked over poor "real" players who would never be in a national team IRL.