Nordsjaelland and other Danish teams not making signings from Africa

Following this. It has been an issue many times over the years.

Sorry, I apparently completely missed this!

I ́ve looked through FC Nordsjælland's transfers the last 10 years on Transfermarkt. All African players (Mostly from Ghana and Ivory Coast) have basically all been from their Right To Dream Academy. The few exceptions have been from other non-african clubs. The Right To Dream Academy is primarily reflected in FM, by FC Nordsjælland getting more players from mostly Ghana/Ivory Coast in their youth intake - which is working.

I do however agree that the tendency for buying African players for European clubs could be better reflected in general. AC Horsens have for example bought in quite a few African talents this transfer window, after they´ve recently gotten a new owner. But I don't think it would be the right thing to do, to make a special case for FC Norsjælland.

Perhaps @Zachary Whyte would be able to provide some further input on the subject?

On 08/02/2024 at 13:32, Girafi said:

Sorry, I apparently completely missed this!

No worries - it's a long-term issue. 

On 08/02/2024 at 13:32, Girafi said:

I ́ve looked through FC Nordsjælland's transfers the last 10 years on Transfermarkt. All African players (Mostly from Ghana and Ivory Coast) have basically all been from their Right To Dream Academy. The few exceptions have been from other non-african clubs. The Right To Dream Academy is primarily reflected in FM, by FC Nordsjælland getting more players from mostly Ghana/Ivory Coast in their youth intake - which is working.

Yes, I'm getting that too, although 1) Ghanaians moving to Nordsjaelland before the age of 18 is actually illegal in real life so it shouldn't work that way (https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/66b4ce38a7998b38/original/kgl4gp7cl25ut2dbuz7y-pdf.pdf), and 2) the Ghanaians and Ivorians coming through the Nordsjaelland youth intake tend to lack work permits (because again, it's illegal, and the game is correctly reflecting that). Are you finding that Nordsjaelland buy players that are generated by the Right To Dream Academy in-game? In my experience they don't do that. Which in my opinion is pretty weird, because they're cheap players, sometimes with good potential, that they have perfect knowledge of.

On 08/02/2024 at 13:32, Girafi said:

I do however agree that the tendency for buying African players for European clubs could be better reflected in general. AC Horsens have for example bought in quite a few African talents this transfer window, after they´ve recently gotten a new owner. But I don't think it would be the right thing to do, to make a special case for FC Norsjælland.

Yeah I don't necessarily want Nordsjaelland to be made a special case - I just think they're a good illustration of the issue. I saw something similar with Vyskov in Czechia and RB Salzburg/Liefering in Austria.

On 08/02/2024 at 13:32, Girafi said:

Perhaps @Zachary Whyte would be able to provide some further input on the subject?

Would welcome any thoughts from @Zachary Whyte or anyone else at SI on this. Grateful as well for any suggestions about what I should do at my end, as an AR for Zambia, to encourage the brightest young talents there to be picked up by European clubs.

Hello, it is unlikely we'll be able to make any adjustments to this in FM24.

However, it's something we could look into further for FM25.

More real life examples of this would be useful. 

5 hours ago, Zachary Whyte said:

Hello, it is unlikely we'll be able to make any adjustments to this in FM24.

No worries - I appreciate it's more something for future editions.

5 hours ago, Zachary Whyte said:

However, it's something we could look into further for FM25.

More real life examples of this would be useful. 

@Zachary Whyte What do you mean by real life examples? Examples of clubs that in real life sign lots of players from Africa but don't do so in the game? I don't have a full list but I would suggest looking at the transfer behaviour of the following clubs:

-Vyskov (any save from the past 3 or 4 years until the most recent update, when they changed ownership). They should have been signing 50%+ of their players from Africa. In my experience, you're lucky if they sign anyone from Africa at all.

-RB Salzburg and Liefering - should be signing players from Mali, and to some extent other West African countries

-Nordsjaelland - should be signing players FROM the Right To Dream Academy, not just having 15 year old Ghanaians coming through their youth intake.

-Portuguese teams - Mafra? Benfica? Not overly familiar but they should be buying players from Lusophone Africa

-Several French clubs e.g. Metz IIRC should be buying players from Francophone Africa

-Random clubs in Central and Eastern Europe - e.g. in Romania, Croatia, Poland - should be signing players from Africa now and then

-As mentioned above, Horsens have signed some Africans recently. Are you seeing African players turning up in Denmark?

 

At the other end, look at the obvious candidates: ASEC Mimosas in Cote d'Ivoire, Generation Foot in Senegal. I have an (admittedly modded) save with both the Senegalese and the French league system enabled, in which Generation Foot have sold two players to Europe in three years - one to Amiens, and one to Blackburn of all teams. To say the least, that does not reflect reality! https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/generation-foot/alletransfers/verein/30031

 

I would think that checking this behaviour to see that it is actually happening should be fairly trivial - just look at any of the saves SI must have that are for more than say three seasons, and check the Transfer History of the relevant teams.

 

If you'd like some suggested ideas of how to reduce this issue, I've put a couple of suggestions on the suggestions forum (below). I also wonder how much being known as a particular location for great young talent is being filtered through - professional football clubs IRL know that Generation Foot produce good players. Do they in the game? But the fact that as far as I can tell even when they have perfect knowledge, as Nordsjaelland do of the Right to Dream Academy, they don't sign players from there, suggests something significant is wrong.

 

I just posted about this on the main board, so I'll copy and paste to here. As to real life examples, all you have to do is pull up the FC Nordsjaelland website and look at their youth rosters. It's all Danish and other Scandinavians. African players don't arrive until they are 18. My post is below.

 

I manage FC Nordsjaelland a lot. With their link to Right to Dream Academy in Ghana, they always get a lot of African players to come through their academy at the age of 15 or 16, which in turns means fewer Danish players coming through my youth intake. To me, there are two issues with that....

1) That's generally not how it works at FC Nordsjaelland. Those players are signed from Right to Dream at age 18, because African kids can't move to Europe until they are 18. Under the current setup, I get very few Danish players through my youth intake, which isn't accurate. If you look at their real-life U19 and U17 teams, it's all Danish and other Scandinavian kids, but after a few years on FM, their U19 is loaded with African kids. In real life, the African kids are brought in directly at 18 and plugged into the first team or the reserves. FC Nordsjaelland produces a ton of good Danish players in real life, but this is hard to replicate in the game because so many kids from RTD are coming through my youth intake. Those RTD kids should be bought as transfers from RTD at 18 instead.

2) When I'm not doing an FC Nordsjaelland save, the AI can't handle the African kids coming through the Youth Intake. They all have to be paid 50k to qualify for a work permit, and the AI doesn't think they are worth that much it seems, or perhaps they are capped by the wage budget, so the result is that a large number of FC Nordsjaelland's youth team after a couple of years can't even play in games because they don't have work permits.

I'm not going to say it's game breaking, of course, because it's not. But it's also not accurate, and it does kill immersion for me, and considering the AI can't handle paying them and getting them work permits, it should be changed. There's no point in FC Nordsjaelland having a good youth setup if the AI doesn't even sign many of the players who come through it.  The solution I think would be to change the affiliate to a "right to purchase" type, rather than the type that sends players to the FC Nordsjaelland academy, and perhaps make it so the board expect you to sign Ghanian players. I would do it myself, but apparently we aren't allowed to edit affiliate types in the editor. So, my suggestion/request, as someone who almost always plays with FC Nordsjaelland, is to please change that affiliate type to something that more closely resembles real life, or at least let us have the option to edit affiliates in the editor ourselves so I can fix it. Or, if you don't think either of those things is appropriate, at least program the AI so that it actually signs those African players that come through it's youth intake.

Thanks for your consideration. If this is better suited for the suggestions board, feel free to move it, or let me know and I'll post it over there.

FYI, a partial solution to this is to download FMRTE. This allows you to edit club affiliations within saves, you can edit that FC Nordsjaelland affiliation with RTD. RMRTE does cost money, and it is not a pregame editor so you have to apply the edit to each save. But it is a good work-around until (if?) SI fix the issue.