Jump to content

Living Off Youth


Recommended Posts

Given that you have the best possible training and youth facilities, coaches, and youth network, is it possible to run a successful club just by relying on players coming through your ranks?

I know most of us bring youths from all over the world and nurture those teenagers, but it seems to me that maxed out youth facilities and network produce too few good players. I know you can get a world class potential here and there, but they are pretty scarce, especially in countries with lowish fixed youth rating. What's more, even potential decent first teamers are very rare to come through the ranks.

Has anyone managed to build a club in the image of Bilbao, meaning relying exclusively on local players coming through your ranks (I know Bilbao sometimes poach Real Sociedad players, but it's still local)?

Link to post
Share on other sites

Now this would be an actual challenge as opposed to the usual crap youth challenges you see. I think though it be really hard to do. In FM11 I gave Crewe excellent youth facilities, in the hope they would become an Atletic Bilbao of England, however they failed to even produce the players to excel in League 2 and I don't think they ever got promoted. I holidayed the game for about 8 years and I don't think they even produced a top player that went to a bigger club.

Link to post
Share on other sites

hrbfcrule did this with IK Tord, I dont really have the patience to start that low when it comes to building out of the youth intake, so I'm playing Athletic but with the additional restriction to only sign players that comes into the game as basque to better mirror the clubs real life policy (on fm you can sign any spanish u16 player, which tbh is not really restrictive enough)
Link to post
Share on other sites

This is the exact challenge I'm doing right now. I created a club specifically for this, with perfect training and youth facilities, a modern stadium with big possibilities for expansion and a decent amount of money (to be able to offer decent wages to the academy kids) and I'm only allowed to use players from the club's own academy, meaning I can only sign players if they have been under contract with the club previously. I have to say that I did use Genie Scout at the start of the game to make the players more versatile because the game only gave me 18 players, all aged 16 and 17, and I had a season of almost 60 games coming up.

I started at Level 8 and I'm currently 1st in the Blue Square South after two successive promotions and I've just dumped Man Utd out of the FA Cup. I've won the FA Trophy two years in a row and I just lost my first league game ever, which also ended a 126-game unbeaten run. I'm looking forward to reaching the Football League (the players, now aged 17-19, are too good for this level) and being able to see how far this can actually go, because I imagine I will hit a ceiling at some point.

Link to post
Share on other sites

No matter how high you raise the levels of trainig and youth facilities. The game should not provide you with kids who are good enough to win anything in a good league. That's just not realistic and doesn't happen irl either.

Even Bilbao recruit at least from a certain area - and their purported efforts in La Liga puzzle me every year and probably cannot serve to argue that any club would fare as well with that approach if the facilities were just good enough.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...