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Too many good regens from 'average' footballing nations.


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Does anyone else not get the impression that there are far too many players outside of Italy, France etc with brilliant PA's?

I am mid-way through my 3rd season now so I've had just two youth intakes yet I find some average footballing nations with a ridiculous amount of high PA regens, here are just a few examples:

South Korea/

Regens with PA's of 150-159: 6

Regens with PA's of 160-169: 5

Regens with PA's of 170-179: 1

Libya/

Regens with PA's of 150-159: 2

Regens with PA's of 160-169: 1

Regens with PA's of 170-179: 2

Kenya/

Regens with PA's of 150-159: 1

Regens with PA's of 160-169: 3

Regens with PA's of 170-179: 3

Egypt/

Regens with PA's of 150-159: 28

Regens with PA's of 160-169: 15

Regens with PA's of 170-179: 9

Regens with PA's of 180-189: 0

Regens with PA's of 190-200: 1 (This infuriates me.)

And then here are some figures from some of the better footballing nations:

Spain/

Regens with PA's of 150-159: 14

Regens with PA's of 160-169: 4

Regens with PA's of 170-179: 2

Regens with PA's of 180-189: 1

Germany/

Regens with PA's of 150-159: 4

Regens with PA's of 160-169: 5

Regens with PA's of 170-179: 4

Italy/

Regens with PA's of 150-159: 10

Regens with PA's of 160-169: 4

Regens with PA's of 170-179: 3

Regens with PA's of 180-189: 2

And can anyone please tell me why the USA produce such great regens?

Regens with PA's of 170-186: 6

And they always start with high CA's, what's with that?

And then if we look at it by a few regions:

North Africa/

Regens with PA's of 150-200: 150

Central Europe/

Regens with PA's of 150-200: 161

South America/

Regens with PA's of 150-200: 156

East Asia

Regens with PA's of 150-200: 35

Now you may argue that there are these players scattered all over the world with high potentials but never reach it, yes, whilst true though this is never going to be such an issue in FM due to it being so much easier to hit max CA. And anyway, to suggest Egypt for example produce anywhere near that many players with those sorts of potentials is absurd, Egypt whilst deemed a big African nation are not going to produce that many great players, in recent years I've heard of the likes of Zaki and Mido play in the premiership, these were not superstars by any means. I've had my worries about smaller nations producing great players over big nations since the last patch of FM11 where a stupid amount of superstar Africans started appearing but the problem still persists for me.

I don't suppose anyone who's a good few years in (10-20 years) could prove to me this isn't such an issue by showing me some of the top players in their game? It kind of ruins the idea of a long term save for me if there are going to be so many smaller nations producing great players.

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I have no problem with good players being produced any and everywhere. I think George Weah was Libyan? Also you only have to look at some of the African nations including Ivory Coast and Ghana to see that in real life at least that good players are coming from anywhere that football is popular. Egypt getting one of the worlds best future players is no different to Weah coming from where he did surely?

However I do agree that lesser countries should not be producing as many good players as established and richer nations. Quite simply the money isn't there to train 1000's of youngsters in some countries and neither is the training facilities or coaching. Sadly if you dont have countries as playable then the game seems to forget these facts. I have only got to 2016 but a problem on my game is that players join or start at big clubs but never reach their pa because they simply dont get given experience. For example, Jack Robinson is still not a regular for Liverpool even though I think he is now 22. Sadly this has held back his chances of being a top player and giving England a top class full back for years to come.

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Aye but that's one big, big player in many, many years. And this potential superstar player coming out of an African nation so soon is no shock to me as African regens are far too good.

The simple fact is these nations shouldn't have so many players with such high potential, for example Libya, are five players with the potential to be first team players in the EPL going to appear in the next two years? Unlikely.

Why is it that the nation (Spain) who are destroying at youth level and producing so many incredible players stuck with so few players with potential compared to nations who have no notorious youth etc?

If someone proves Egypt have more youngsters with potential than Spain I'll eat my foot.

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I think you should rather look at CA than PA. Why shouldn't Africans have the POTENTIAL to be as good as Europeans? The superiority of European football is a result of more money and better training conditions rather than biological superiority. So if African players have good training conditions (e.g. because they transfer to Europe), why shouldn't they be able to become as good as Europeans?

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I think you should rather look at CA than PA. Why shouldn't Africans have the POTENTIAL to be as good as Europeans? The superiority of European football is a result of more money and better training conditions rather than biological superiority. So if African players have good training conditions (e.g. because they transfer to Europe), why shouldn't they be able to become as good as Europeans?

Because they've already done most of their development and it probably hasn't been as good as that of the players in Europe. Take Drogba, for example- he moved to France when he was 12. Would he have been a world class forward if he hadn't developed as well for the next four years? El Hadji Diouf also moved to Europe as a young teenager. By 16, you can generally place an upper limit on a player's future ability.

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Weah was Liberian and he was a once-in-a-lifetime talent, more or less the exception that proves the rule...

FM produces an insane and completely unrealistic amount of decent-good newgens for countries that have NEVER been half as "fertile", for reasons I don't quite understand.

Egypt is laughably productive for no apparent reason, and many more countries are vastly overproductive in terms of both quantity and quality (Turkey comes to mind).

The fact most newgens have a low starting CA and/or are inherently flawed (another long-term issue that hasn't been fixed properly) doesn't change the scenario that much because, as we all know, AI managers are unable to take those factors into account, so they'll sign high-PA players anyway.

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See this thread: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/292492-Wonder-why-all-the-best-regens-come-out-of-Brazil

I think some of the disproportion comes from the numbers discussed in that thread needing to be realigned: Holland etc need a boost, Egypt and Mexico in particular need to be cut down. But I think overall there are just too many high_PA regens in the game: I'm 4 seasons into my game and have done a little bit of looking at PA distributions: more than 3/4 of the countries whose leagues I haven't loaded have 7 or more of their top 10 PA players be players generated since I started the game. In the leagues I'm running (30 nations), the imbalance is less tipped in favor of regens.

I don't know whether this is something consistent enough to call a bug: maybe someone with more time than me could run a long-term test and see whether the number of high-PA players coming out of non-loaded nations is Always a lot higher than those countries's PA-distributions in the original db. If so, this could be something to address in the next patch.

The fact that many of them come from outside of the major footballing nations is only a part of the wider problem.

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As I'm currently playing a save in which I've only managed in South Africa and South Korea, I can only say that I wish they produced those players in my save :(

I do agree there seem to be a high number of regens coming from countries with poor footballing records IRL, I think what needs to change is that these players should only come along once in a generation. For example, in my Chelsea save there were 2 regens from Libya with 180-200 PA, and another 3 with 150-180. That's insane for Libya. I'd much rather see one regen with a 180-200 PA being produced, then nothing close to that for at least 5 or 10 years, as that would be more realistic and make the game more challenging (as it's much more difficult to find one great regen than look at a nation and see a number of great regens). Just a thought anyway.

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It's PA people! How do you know there aren't a dozen kids with Messi's POTENTIAL running around on the streets of Cairo? It is just that these kids never get a chance and never go to Europe, hence only a very few lucky ones make it (if any). In case of Spain the ratio of noticing such a talent is much higher...

BTW Egypt has 82m people contrary to Spains 46m so in game terms they should in fact have a higher chance of getting high PA kids, and I fully reject the notion that any race/nationality should/can have a higher attribute than another race/nation. The possibility of the potential materialising is a completely different story, which is based on facilities, football culture, etc.

Hence I see no issue with this. High-PA players could be anywhere in real life... it's a question of finding them. Now the arguement could be that it should be much harder to scout (find) such players on the streets of Accra than in youth facility in Madrid. I completely agree with that. However the OP is bringing PA value which is only available in the editor and is information that is not available in real life, therefore we cannot judge if it is realistic or not.

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Strange... South Korea and pretty much all of Asia have produced nothing but rubbish 6 years into my current save... I haven't seen a top Australian player in FM since FM09. Apparently SI think that Harry Kewell was a fluke and will never happen again. To restate the point; in some 50+ seasons since FM09 I haven't seen a World Class Australian. Odd...

However, I think this thread is born out of the European complex. For some reason people who have no knowledge of the footballing world outside of Europe like to say that the rest of the world is terrible. Good players come from all over the World and the Premier League is testament to this. More interestingly this is based on what... Two seasons and a couple of countries. As a matter of statistics alone this could be a fluke. I've not seen any of this Korean, Libyan, Kenyan or Egyptian domination you speak of. I have seen a World Class Egyptian player, but that's not exactly implausible. 2 years worth of Regens is not a statistically significant sample and I would suggest simulating ~20 years and then comparing the numbers.

I'd also point out that there is no reason why Korea shouldn't produce World Class players... But hey...

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I'm surprised Norbaek hasn't shown his head in this topic yet. Every now and again, discussions breaks out regarding the PA of the Danish Ajax player Christian Eriksen. I'm not sure what his current PA is right now, but last year he was rated a -8 and later at a set number of 165. Many complained that these ratings were way too low for possibly the best Danish prospect. Many former greats have also commented on Eriksen and all agree that he shows enough promise -- they even compare him to some of the world's current best and how Eriksen is already (much) better at his age than that they were at that age.

Yet Norbaek and Reddiablo (the Danish and Dutch researcher) refused to increase his PA. The number of Danish players that has had a higher CA than 165 (the highest rating I am aware of that Eriksen got -- I'm sure he got something higher now) were rare. Few. Hardly any. This caused them to become sceptical about the skills of Eriksen. Is he really going to become better than just about every other Danish player ever? There have been plenty of very promising players that surely rivalled Eriksen at his age but where are they now? Most never reached that potential and were eventually scaled accordingly.

In other words, it's good to keep in mind how good other players of their nation were. Denmark is no weak nation in football by any means, despite not having a great competition. Eriksen could shine brighter than any other player ever in Denmark if he got a higher PA. But can he really? Apparently the two researchers, at the time, did not think so.

I think this is not necessarily a bad way to rate players from "weaker" countries. However, keeping close to this idea also makes it harder to rate players from stronger (or the strongest) nations, because it's easier to think they become a world class player while the chances of them never reaching the potential is equally as close.

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I have no problem with Korea producing world class players, I have no problem with Libya producing world class players, and I like the dynamic effect that the production of players has on the game, changing the face of football as nations rise and fall, I'd just like the process to be slightly slower. I find it unrealistic that Libya will produce a team full of world beaters within 3 years, but I'd have no problem with them slowly producing better and better regens, with the odd world class player, over the course of 5 or 10 years, becoming an established force in world football, but doing it slowly.

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Having played 30 seasons of FM11 and 7-8 seasons of FM12 so far, I wonder where those "world beaters" from Africa people speak of are... African nations never dominated the world then, and I cannot see them do that now either. It is curious to notice that everyone who speaks of these world class players use scouting tools...

My advice, stop using scouting tools because evidently they are worthless. At least, when you do, post a screenshot of the 195+ PA "world beaters" rather than just producing irrelevant numbers.

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I didn't notice this in FM11 I must say, only in FM12 so far. I used scouting tools because I'd noticed the trend, I don't use them to find players in the first place, not that it really matters. I also don't see how a load of screenshots would make any difference in this case?

I'm not saying they suddenly dominate world football, but they certainly do change the face of it, which I enjoy. I just think it should be a more gradual process is all. I love the dynamic nature of it, I'd just like it to happen slightly slower. I have no problem with world class players coming from anywhere, I'm just bothered that when they come from strange nations, instead of there being just one or two, there seem to be concentrated groups, as ArsenalFan showed.

Have just found a great looking kid from Uzbekistan that I'm looking forward to developing though.

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Just look at who reached the quarter finals at WC2010 and you will see african, s american and european nations in there, shows that good players are world wide, also nations around the world are investing in academies, serbia is a small nation but look at how many good players irl from there! Also uruguay! Copa america winners

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Personally i love that smaller nations can create top players, adds a bit of variety to the gameplay for me. But what i do hate is the ridiculous African bug.

Since FM10 there has been a stupidly high number of top class regens from Africa, and not even the bigger nations like Ivroy Coast Ghana or Cameroon. Instead countries like Tunisia, Chad, Central Africa, Zambia. More often than not these players start with crazy high PA as well and can be bought for <100k since they play in Africa.

I posted about this in FM11 a lot but ig uess nothing really been done about it, it's still a bit out of hand imo.

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I didn't notice this in FM11 I must say, only in FM12 so far. I used scouting tools because I'd noticed the trend, I don't use them to find players in the first place, not that it really matters. I also don't see how a load of screenshots would make any difference in this case?

I'm not saying they suddenly dominate world football, but they certainly do change the face of it, which I enjoy. I just think it should be a more gradual process is all. I love the dynamic nature of it, I'd just like it to happen slightly slower. I have no problem with world class players coming from anywhere, I'm just bothered that when they come from strange nations, instead of there being just one or two, there seem to be concentrated groups, as ArsenalFan showed.

Have just found a great looking kid from Uzbekistan that I'm looking forward to developing though.

Because high PA =/= good player

I can tell within half a second whether or not a player is going to be a continental or world class player. Since I have seen less than a dozen players of that quality from average or small football nations from FM10, 11 and 12, I highly doubt that any of the hundred or so high-PA players this thread is about are anywhere near that good.

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I shall holiday for around 7 years over the next few days and I shall see just how many of these players hit their PA or come close to it and I'll see which nations prosper.

Since FM10 there has been a stupidly high number of top class regens from Africa, and not even the bigger nations like Ivroy Coast Ghana or Cameroon. Instead countries like Tunisia, Chad, Central Africa, Zambia. More often than not these players start with crazy high PA as well and can be bought for <100k since they play in Africa.

I posted about this in FM11 a lot but ig uess nothing really been done about it, it's still a bit out of hand imo.

This an excellent point, I see far too many Africans from nations like Zambia start with high CA's, get picked up cheap by European nations and go on to become brilliant players, that is quite clearly an issue and same as you I've noticed it for a while, I think I may have even complained about it before?

I'd also point out that there is no reason why Korea shouldn't produce World Class players... But hey...

I agree that was a bit of a stupid example but it seems strange to me seeing six players with what I deem the top player PA come up in 2 years, maybe it was a fluke but these guys have some decent CA's so I'll see if they go on to become top players.

See this thread: http://community.sigames.com/showthr...-out-of-Brazil

I think some of the disproportion comes from the numbers discussed in that thread needing to be realigned: Holland etc need a boost, Egypt and Mexico in particular need to be cut down. But I think overall there are just too many high_PA regens in the game: I'm 4 seasons into my game and have done a little bit of looking at PA distributions: more than 3/4 of the countries whose leagues I haven't loaded have 7 or more of their top 10 PA players be players generated since I started the game. In the leagues I'm running (30 nations), the imbalance is less tipped in favor of regens.

I don't know whether this is something consistent enough to call a bug: maybe someone with more time than me could run a long-term test and see whether the number of high-PA players coming out of non-loaded nations is Always a lot higher than those countries's PA-distributions in the original db. If so, this could be something to address in the next patch.

The fact that many of them come from outside of the major footballing nations is only a part of the wider problem.

I was looking for that but I couldn't find it and I agree, I think there does need to be something done though as some of the top players appearing are from never they should never, ever be. Some of the nations PA's are very confusing.

FM produces an insane and completely unrealistic amount of decent-good newgens for countries that have NEVER been half as "fertile", for reasons I don't quite understand.

Egypt is laughably productive for no apparent reason, and many more countries are vastly overproductive in terms of both quantity and quality (Turkey comes to mind).

The fact most newgens have a low starting CA and/or are inherently flawed (another long-term issue that hasn't been fixed properly) doesn't change the scenario that much because, as we all know, AI managers are unable to take those factors into account, so they'll sign high-PA players anyway.

100% Agree.

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And can anyone please tell me why the USA produce such great regens?

Regens with PA's of 170-186: 6

And they always start with high CA's, what's with that?

Because in previous FMs newgens through the MLS Superdraft were utter crap. It was pointless to have the draft in the game because if you were lucky in previous FMs, there would be ONE good player. Now they're decent enough that 1st Round Picks don't need to be waived, as well as clubs now produce their own youth player as Academy Apprentice players.

I agree that there are very good players in non-traditional footballing nations though. Sadly, in my games none of them are Canadian.. :(:p

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In FM 11, in my game, with Eredivisie loaded, in 24 years of playing, I only had 2 players with potential > 180 coming from Netherlands

does that seem odd?

Netherlands is well known for raising youngsters

what is more odd is that in FM 12 in 3 seasons I have an attacker with potential 180 also from Libya

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Because in previous FMs newgens through the MLS Superdraft were utter crap. It was pointless to have the draft in the game because if you were lucky in previous FMs, there would be ONE good player. Now they're decent enough that 1st Round Picks don't need to be waived, as well as clubs now produce their own youth player as Academy Apprentice players.

I agree that there are very good players in non-traditional footballing nations though. Sadly, in my games none of them are Canadian.. :(:p

Ah, I see, it's very annoying and it's very annoying seeing all these brilliant Americans when it just doesn't happen in real life. It needs to be changed.

Ah, I have 3 Canadians with PA's of over 150 ;)

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The reason there are so many regens with high potential is to model all the potentially great players from all over the world who never develop because they are never spotted or don't have access to world class training facilities as youngsters or just aren't very ambitious. In the starting database, high PA is only given to players we already know are great or are very likely to be great, but there are undoubtedly thousands of players in the real world who had the potential to be top players but never developed for some reason.

If a massive nation like Egypt or United States had a Brazilian-style footballing culture, they would most certainly be churning out world class players on a regular basis.

Having just done some tweaking of youth output with the official editor, it should also be noted that most "average" footballing nations tend to churn out players with very low ambition ratings due to their personality templates. Players with very low ambition ratings develop at a very, very slow rate (basically, low single digit CA per year), so that is also in place to balance out the high PA.

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In FM 11, in my game, with Eredivisie loaded, in 24 years of playing, I only had 2 players with potential > 180 coming from Netherlands

does that seem odd?

Netherlands is well known for raising youngsters

what is more odd is that in FM 12 in 3 seasons I have an attacker with potential 180 also from Libya

I can't say I had a massive issue with the Dutch regens last year but as you say you're only a few seasons in and we're seeing yet another player from Libya with a world class PA :lol:

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The reason there are so many regens with high potential is to model all the potentially great players from all over the world who never develop because they are never spotted or don't have access to world class training facilities as youngsters or just aren't very ambitious. In the starting database, high PA is only given to players we already know are great or are very likely to be great, but there are undoubtedly thousands of players in the real world who had the potential to be top players but never developed for some reason.

If a massive nation like Egypt or United States had a Brazilian-style footballing culture, they would most certainly be churning out world class players on a regular basis.

Whilst true RBKalle's point:

The fact most newgens have a low starting CA and/or are inherently flawed (another long-term issue that hasn't been fixed properly) doesn't change the scenario that much because, as we all know, AI managers are unable to take those factors into account, so they'll sign high-PA players anyway.

And of course whilst African nations are becoming much stronger in football the USA aren't going to go that way, they simply shouldn't be producing solid players year after year.

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The fact most newgens have a low starting CA and/or are inherently flawed (another long-term issue that hasn't been fixed properly) doesn't change the scenario that much because, as we all know, AI managers are unable to take those factors into account, so they'll sign high-PA players anyway.

And in real life, managers often sign cheap, promising foreign talent who end up never developing up to expectation. I'm looking at the Liverpool U18 squad now and see American, Turkish, Icelandic and Australian players who were all signed at one point because someone thought there was a remote possibility that they would eventually be good enough to be a Liverpool player. With regens, having high PA regens who won't develop is the only mechanism for reflecting that beyond just making scouting reports totally unreliable and worthless.

And of course whilst African nations are becoming much stronger in football the USA aren't going to go that way, they simply shouldn't be producing solid players year after year.

Actually, I expect there to be a dramatic increase in American football talent over the next generation for a variety of reasons:

Youth systems are becoming much more sophisticated and better funded (with many now establishing affiliations with European clubs).

The Central and South American immigrant populations are booming and increasing the profitability/competitiveness of the sport (in fact, the MLS just recently signed a major television contract with one of the major American broadcast networks).

The MLS, while still relatively terrible, is improving and the best young American players are learning to play alongside the likes of Beckham and Thierry Henry.

Most importantly (IMO), with the arrival of digital cable and the ready availability of dedicated football channels, middle and working class American kids with an interest in the sport are watching and learning from European leagues every week, whereas just six years ago, the World Cup was the only thing that all but the wealthiest Americans really knew about the game. Now, young American football fans are growing up with players like Messi as their role models and understand that "soccer" is more than just the "kick and run" game you play before you're old enough for the baseball team.

I'm not saying there's going to be an American Messi anytime soon, but the football subculture in the US is definitely on the rise. It'll likely never eclipse gridiron or basketball, but in a country of 300,000,000, a sizable and growing subculture is going to be producing a lot more top flight "CA 155" players in the mold of Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard.

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Since a long time, I want SI develop a system where modify the national & global quality of academies in FM editor at least is possible.

If you look at the link Razvan Rat posted it maybe be of help

here it is again http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/292492-Wonder-why-all-the-best-regens-come-out-of-Brazil

These two threads may be linked, its worth reading the other if you havent, it may explain a few things.

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Because in previous FMs newgens through the MLS Superdraft were utter crap. It was pointless to have the draft in the game because if you were lucky in previous FMs, there would be ONE good player. Now they're decent enough that 1st Round Picks don't need to be waived, as well as clubs now produce their own youth player as Academy Apprentice players.

I agree that there are very good players in non-traditional footballing nations though. Sadly, in my games none of them are Canadian.. :(:p

Let me follow up on this post, as for the past 3 years or so I've gone through each and every MLS draft list (125-150 players each time) and edited them with FMRTE. Why? So that the players have a decent shot at actually making it in the league.

For example, this is from the most recent class I edited a few days ago:

150 players, ranging in PA from 50s to 180. The 180 was actually a 19y.o. Canadian newgen playing for an amateur squad in the US (due to the fact that FM doesn't include US colleges, which is where the vast majority of drafted players come from.) There may have been one or two players with PAs in the 170 range, same with the 160s. At least 70%, though, had PAs less than 120, which I think is fair. BUT, as many people have pointed out already, these PAs were meaningless, for the most part, as newgen abilities are still so random that many of the higher PA players were worthless (a centerback with 13+ physical ratings for every category...and a 3 for strength. Or a striker with 14 pace and 6 stamina.) Because of this, I go through and readjust the CAs/PAs of each and every player and tweak their attributes. As a result, that 180PA Canadian newgen is now on my squad, but with a PA of 150 (and only after 15 other teams passed on the opportunity to select him.) Will he ever reach that 150 mark, though? I doubt it. If it goes anything like previous versions, he'll spend a year or two on my squad before being sold to a second-tier European squad, where he'll flounder about and hit a wall in his development.

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Ah, I see, it's very annoying and it's very annoying seeing all these brilliant Americans when it just doesn't happen in real life. It needs to be changed.

Ah, I have 3 Canadians with PA's of over 150 ;)

Why does it need to be changed? How many of "these brilliant Americans" in your game are playing for top clubs? How many of them have any shot at reaching their potential? How does America, as a country, perform in your game? Stop focusing on the PA values and look at the actual performance of the players before deciding if this is an actual problem.

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Why does it need to be changed? How many of "these brilliant Americans" in your game are playing for top clubs? How many of them have any shot at reaching their potential? How does America, as a country, perform in your game? Stop focusing on the PA values and look at the actual performance of the players before deciding if this is an actual problem.

It is a problem.

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And in real life, managers often sign cheap, promising foreign talent who end up never developing up to expectation. I'm looking at the Liverpool U18 squad now and see American, Turkish, Icelandic and Australian players who were all signed at one point because someone thought there was a remote possibility that they would eventually be good enough to be a Liverpool player. With regens, having high PA regens who won't develop is the only mechanism for reflecting that beyond just making scouting reports totally unreliable and worthless.

Whilst true the problem in FM is that these players don't become totally unreliable and worthless most of the time, most of these players may start with a low CA but if they're bought by a club because of their PA they can be nurtured into a great player with the facilities etc. Development in real life just isn't the same as FM.

Actually, I expect there to be a dramatic increase in American football talent over the next generation for a variety of reasons:

Youth systems are becoming much more sophisticated and better funded (with many now establishing affiliations with European clubs).

The Central and South American immigrant populations are booming and increasing the profitability/competitiveness of the sport (in fact, the MLS just recently signed a major television contract with one of the major American broadcast networks).

The MLS, while still relatively terrible, is improving and the best young American players are learning to play alongside the likes of Beckham and Thierry Henry.

Most importantly (IMO), with the arrival of digital cable and the ready availability of dedicated football channels, middle and working class American kids with an interest in the sport are watching and learning from European leagues every week, whereas just six years ago, the World Cup was the only thing that all but the wealthiest Americans really knew about the game. Now, young American football fans are growing up with players like Messi as their role models and understand that "soccer" is more than just the "kick and run" game you play before you're old enough for the baseball team.

I'm not saying there's going to be an American Messi anytime soon, but the football subculture in the US is definitely on the rise. It'll likely never eclipse gridiron or basketball, but in a country of 300,000,000, a sizable and growing subculture is going to be producing a lot more top flight "CA 155" players in the mold of Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard.

Yes I agree with this but I don't think that anyone can deny football is never going to be more popular than Basketball, NFL and whatever, I'm seeing superstars arise out of the USA and quickly though, this shouldn't happen.

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I wouldn't condisder these guys to be superstars, judging by the teams they're playing for. However, I'm curious to know more about the history of these players. The first one, in particular, has a rather high CA for his age compared to what I've seen from the draft newgens. Was he an academy player?

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BTW I really doubt US soccer will get better as long as they'll be keeping their NFL-like structure...

College soccer, drafts, convoluted roster/contract rules, semi-rigid league system, franchises instead of clubs... USA may as well have 2 billions people available and they'd still fail to become a football powerhouse.

And speaking of quantity =/= quality, it shouldn't matter how big the population of a country is... talent is not a matter of "1 every N", the Chinese sport-factory system doesn't apply to football because class isn't something you can learn by iteration... Therefore there's no correlation between a country population and the chance of generating the next Messi.

Some countries have a bigger tradition, better facilities and the right "environment" to churn out awesome football players every single decade. Some batches will be better, some will disappoint, but all in all the landscape of the Top football scene hasn't changed much since the mid-50s, hasn't it?

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I wouldn't condisder these guys to be superstars, judging by the teams they're playing for. However, I'm curious to know more about the history of these players. The first one, in particular, has a rather high CA for his age compared to what I've seen from the draft newgens. Was he an academy player?

Clitheroe started FC Dallas who have an academy.

Lancos started at New York who have an academy.

Palacios started at CD Chivas USA who have an academy.

Either way the USA is producing too many good players. Spain have 3 regens with PA's above 170, the USA have 11, this is a complete joke.

Can you imagine the USA producing players with that much potential? I think they'd be the one's winning the world cup.

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And speaking of quantity =/= quality, it shouldn't matter how big the population of a country is... talent is not a matter of "1 every N", the Chinese sport-factory system doesn't apply to football because class isn't something you can learn by iteration... Therefore there's no correlation between a country population and the chance of generating the next Messi.

Some countries have a bigger tradition, better facilities and the right "environment" to churn out awesome football players every single decade. Some batches will be better, some will disappoint, but all in all the landscape of the Top football scene hasn't changed much since the mid-50s, hasn't it?

Words of wisdom.

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Those three players aren't anywhere near world class. They aren't better than the current US internationals, but the two first are young enough to maybe take USA to a new level internationally if they continue to develop.

They're Premier League/La Liga/Serie A/Bundesliga material, but not for the top teams. Compare them to the players already in existence now and you will see that if anything the regens should be even better...

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Eh? Those 3 will 100% hit max PA and Clitheroe has a PA around 140 which should be rather normal for his age as he will hit PA in 2 or 3 years, do you really expect a 21 y/o to be approaching peak?

And those three could walk into the USA team, in fact, Clitheroe has and the others will follow shortly. These are better than US internationals, there simply isn't any youngsters from the US out there in real life of this quality apart from maybe Chandler if we're going by the game.

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BTW I really doubt US soccer will get better as long as they'll be keeping their NFL-like structure...

College soccer, drafts, convoluted roster/contract rules, semi-rigid league system, franchises instead of clubs... USA may as well have 2 billions people available and they'd still fail to become a football powerhouse.

And speaking of quantity =/= quality, it shouldn't matter how big the population of a country is... talent is not a matter of "1 every N", the Chinese sport-factory system doesn't apply to football because class isn't something you can learn by iteration... Therefore there's no correlation between a country population and the chance of generating the next Messi.

Some countries have a bigger tradition, better facilities and the right "environment" to churn out awesome football players every single decade. Some batches will be better, some will disappoint, but all in all the landscape of the Top football scene hasn't changed much since the mid-50s, hasn't it?

Hungary...

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You posted a screen shot from genie scout and didnt sort by best potential rating? Change the sort and look at how highly rated those players are. Try searching new gens only and see how many of them show up in the top 50. in my game the US has 4 players projected potential rating above 75 and 3 of them are keeprs. 3 are also dual nationals. the potential rating alone is not enough for people to be making decisions. the player templates and the distribution of the skills matter. looking at those screen shots the LB is the best of those players. The others are both flawed in some areas.

The idea that the US will not improve in the long run is ridiculous. There are more Americans than ever playing in europe and they are playing at bigger teams. several american youth internationals moved abroad this summer i.e. marc pelosi at liverpool. The argument that mls will prevent talented americans from developing makes no sense. the league structure has nothing to do with identifying young kids with talent. the drafts are becoming less relevant as the academy systems develop.

for me the game has done much better with american newgens than in the past. it used to be that the USMNT became horrible as the database players left. now at least it remains about the same. just because one game the US creates a truly great player doesnt mean it happens all the time everywhere. one of my games the two best midfielders in the world were australian. look at the screen shot and see that the best players come from traditional powers.

potentiala.png

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This is only a small part of a bigger thing - regens are too good as well.

Just look at this screenshot and it's quite clear it's ridiculous. There an Estonian in there ffs, an ESTONIAN. I'd be fine with this if it was dynamic and happened gradually but it's not the case.

Mexico etc clearly have way too high PA's for their youth as a nation and this needs to be lowered.

jsj.png

Where are all the brilliant Spaniards, French etc in this? Nowhere. The horrid thing is the French and Spanish quite literally nowhere, it's not even an exaggeration, the Spanish who currently have one the best national sides ever to have existed and currently have a backup side capable of beating major nations no longer produce the best, wonderful.

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I agree that this is an issue that should be addressed, but I'm amazed at the rage coming from some people. I suppose the fact that I rarely manage International teams means I'm less effected by this. If I see the US win the World Cup on one of my games, I chortle and think to myself 'only in FM' and then continue enjoying my game.

And speaking of quantity =/= quality, it shouldn't matter how big the population of a country is... talent is not a matter of "1 every N", the Chinese sport-factory system doesn't apply to football because class isn't something you can learn by iteration... Therefore there's no correlation between a country population and the chance of generating the next Messi.

I agree with you to an extent, but to say there's no correlation is false. I think you can certainly say that the fall from grace of countries like Hungary, Austria, and Uruguay, who at various stages have really been giants of World Football, is partly due to the countries small populations, which are all under 10 million (~3M in the case of Uruguay). I'm not saying the same will happen to the Netherlands and Portugal (roughly 16M and 10M population respectively), however to say population is a non-factor is incorrect. In the cases of both the Netherlands and Portugal, I think it shows in their national teams at times, as while they do produce World stars like Ronaldo, Figo, Sneijder, Seedorf, ect. often their national teams will lack depth, like Portugal famous like of a clinical striker post Pauleta, which meant they had to rely on Gomes many years past his peak, and Postiga who has always been distictly average. Portugal have always struggled for keepers too since Baia. Then in the case of the Dutch, average defenders like Bouma, Ooijer, Braafheid, ect. have often gotten consistent playing time.

I know this post looks very 'nit picky', as I do agree with your statement that 'class isn't something learnt by iteration', but I think there is something to be said about population, and I always find if funny when people complain the Brazil produce too much talent on FM. Have people ever looked at some of the huge players that never get/or got a look in for the Brazilian national team? Deco is one of the best playmakers of his generation. But he was always blocked off by guys like Ronaldinho, Rivaldo, Kaka and Alex (although he arguably shouldn't have been blocked by him).

While I disagree with people complaining about Brazil's talent, I do see where their coming from in terms of what you see from the likes of Mexico, USA, and Egypt, which is presumably down to the big population of said nations.

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I'm only angry because it's unrealistic and I hate seeing small nations stupidly getting overrated players whilst the nations such as Spain are left behind a bit which is completely unrealistic and it ruins my experience, so, so much.

It doesn't effect me on an international level as I don't manage there, however I don't want to have 5 Libyan's in my invincible PSG side in the future though, it just looks ridiculous.

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sure it improves but it gives a decent snapshot of the overall attribute distribution in important categories. very rarely does a players projected stats in a given category get significantly better than the projection. so a player with 9 strength projected to 14 isnt going to get to 16. or off the ball. its not iron clad but it serves as a rough outline.

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