Scouting - ineffective scouts?

[WelshMourinho]

So I'm 6 seasons into managing AC Milan having joined quite a few years in the save, and part of our club vision is to sign players aged 23 or younger to develop, and I'm more than happy to go with this season as our transfer budget is around 30-40M most seasons, and quite a bit lower than what Juventus and Inter can pay.

The problem is my scouts appear to be incredibly poor at actually finding realistic targets. They are too focused on the elite of the world, and quite obviously any great young player at these clubs are going to cost a ludicrous amount. We need to sign them before they make the jump to a massive club, not after the fact.

 

 

The scout I have sent to France has quite frankly used the assignment to get himself a PSG season ticket over the previous few seasons. He has turned up to see Stade Rennais, as an extreme example, very rarely compared to PSG. He is unaware this player exists:

As I said, this is an extreme example. This player would be very expensive, but he hasn't even been scouted, probably because Geoffrey Moncada has been busy watching Kylian Mbappe's twilight years. I mean I can't blame him too much, the lad has won the Ballon d'Or 6 times.

This theme follows throughout my scouts assignments. One of my spare scouts who was sent to Central Europe has watched Real Madrid the most, at 10 times. Obviously central Europe is vast, he's not going to be able to see as many matches and I wouldn't expect him to. But by contrast, he has been to see Groningen just once. I manually just looked at their U18s squad and found a 4.5* PA striker, another player who hadn't been scouted. 

Am I missing something? Is there an option or a condition that I've missed that would make scouts more effective? It would be ridiculous to expect them to find every good youngster as easily as it used to be, I understand that, but surely there's a way of being able to send a scout over to France and not have him just watch PSG walk the league every season?

Hope to find a good solution for my current predicament!

Edited April 25, 2021 by WelshMourinho

[CARRERA]

I’ve noticed that too and I can only assume, that scouts more likely visit teams close to your clubs reputation, but I can’t tell that for sure.

[WelshMourinho]

5 hours ago, CARRERA said:

I’ve noticed that too and I can only assume, that scouts more likely visit teams close to your clubs reputation, but I can’t tell that for sure.

I thought maybe this was the situation. I can understand that  these clubs will have the best players, but surely the condition of looking for hot prospects should imply the importance of looking at smaller clubs first. It's flawed in my view.

[Brasilia88]

For me: Region, age <21 and scout potencial good or above. That system will give you enough options. South-America is bonkers with Colombia really being a little surprising gold mine. Eastern Europe also is advisable. The rest is luck based. Brazil and Argentina are good, but bring your wallet! They easily charge you 10 million for a young dude who has potencial. Your scouts in Western-Europe will probably come up with expensive players, since they all come from competitions that are similar to yours.