Molde FK: Building a feeder club

[Pilcs]

The objective of this thread is to discuss all aspects of creating and maintaining a feeder club.

What is a feeder club?

a football club from a low division that provides training and experience for young players, with an agreement that successful players can leave to join a club in a higher division

This has been the main focus of my Molde FK save, and below I’ll go into detail about the tactics, training and strategies that I’ve put in place to try and build a sustainable and successful feeder club.

 

Tactics

Not only do we want to develop our players’ attributes but we also want to build tactical familiarity with an approach they will likely be involved with when they move to a big club. As a result, we’ll be employing a short passing based approach taking inspiration from Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen, while also keeping with my own desired philosophy of risk taking and a major emphasis on teamwork.

 

GK    1   -
DCR   2   Take More Risks, Cross Less Often, Dribble More, Close Down More
DC    5   -
DCL   4   Dribble More, Close Down More
WBR   7   Cut Inside With Ball, Close Down More
DMCR  6   Take More Risks, Hold Position
DMCL  8   Take More Risks
WBL   3   Take More Risks, Cut Inside With Ball, Close Down More
AMCR  10  Get Further Forward, Roam From Position, Move Into Channels
AMCL  11  Take More Risks, Roam From Position, Move Into Channels
STC   9   -

• Most of the players are on support duties to encourage the team to move and create things as a unit while also keeping the spaces between the back and front of the team compact.
• Wide players are instructed to move inside with the ball to avoid them consistently running wide into a cul-de-sac as they are the only wide players in the team.
• Only one attacking player duty has been used to enable that player to position themselves much higher up the pitch.
• Even though the roles are similar across the team, the left side creates through clever interplay, while the right has a bigger focus on creating through movement.
• We press aggressively in wider areas while keeping the centre of the pitch protected by the defensive midfielders.
• Take more risks has been used aggressively to encourage through balls.
• No playmaker role to reiterate our emphasis on teamwork.*

*The game has a built in mechanic for playmaker roles where other players will specifically look to pass to them, whereas I want my players to pass the ball to the teammate in the best position.

I don’t do it so much when we’re in good form but in-game I’ll keep an eye on player emotions and try to do a team or player shout that I think might help. Encourage them if they’re apprehensive. Tell them there’s no pressure if they’re nervous. Demand more if they’re complacent.

When we want to close out a game I’ll generally stick to the following:

• 80:00 - Slow Down Distribution
• 85:00 - Waste Time Sometimes and Be More Disciplined
• 90:00 - Waste Time Often and Hold Shape

If it’s a particularly big game I might move some of those items up the list or remove Counter-Press and add Regroup. I don’t ever change the defensive lines or team mentality as I don’t want to invite pressure and I don’t want to eliminate our threat on the counter until the very end of the game (90+) where we just want to hold out and get the points.

If we’re chasing a goal I don’t tend to panic and rip up the playbook. If I do decide to make a change I won't waste any time - I want to give my players enough time to get the goal after the attacking changes. If we’re behind I’ll start with removing Play Out Of Defence and Shorter Passing from the team instructions to promote even riskier passing. If I’m finding that the other team are keeping the ball well, I’ll move the Line of Engagement to Higher and turn on Prevent Short Goalkeeper Distribution to get us in the faces of the opponent as much as possible. If I’m going all out for a goal, I’m not afraid to move the players higher up like so:

 

Training

For training we’ll be focussing on player development rather than results. The training schedules I use are from a great YouTube channel called EBFM, link to the training schedule video is below. While the video is for FM23, they seem to be working fine for FM24 but I’ll update them if/when EBFM releases his FM24 video. The schedules are proven to develop players and I like the fact they’re so generic, focusing on a broad range of attributes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv9ZTHnSzbU&

After every game, I’ve got into the habit of manually giving the 10 outfield players who started a day off training. This will allow the other players in the squad to train as normal.

I only use mentoring groups if the conditions are perfect. I'll create a group if I've got two young CBs and a team leader CB with no bad traits and a great personality but I won’t bother if their personality isn’t great or if they’ve got some undesirable traits. If younger players are still developing well then I definitely won’t look to potentially disrupt things with a mentoring group.

In terms of individual training, each player is unique - I’ll either be looking to make them more well-rounded or even more specialised depending on what is right for them. The first thing I’ll do is identify a role for them to play within our tactic (this is already done if I’ve signed them). To do this I ask myself the following questions:

• What are they good at?
• What could they be better at?
• What could they never be good at?

Instead of just using a player's natural position to dictate where they’ll play, I’ll instead use the answers to these questions. Once I’ve identified the role I’m going to play them in, next I need to decide on how I want to train them to play that role. I won’t try and work on an area of their game that they will never be good at. If there are areas that they could be better at, I’ll most likely work on those - it could be a specific additional focus or just a role that suits them.

For my striker, he’s playing the complete forward role where he’s asked to dribble more and take more risks. Looking at his attributes you can see straight away that he's not a great passer of the football so naturally you might want to work on that. For me though, I feel that he’s never going to be good at passing so I'd much rather work on his ball control which is already decent but that I think could improve.

For my midfielder, it's clear that his shooting isn't to standard. However, considering that he refrains from taking long shots I don't feel there's a need to work specifically on his shooting. I'd much rather train him in a role that will improve a wide range of attributes gradually over time.

Every week I receive training emails from both the first team and u19s and I stick to the following rules:

• Over 9.00 rating - Praise
• Under 6.00 rating - Warn

I’ll be careful not to overpraise a player who is consistently training well, instead I’ll praise them once a month or every now and then. Whenever a player underperforms in training though, they will always get a warning.

The B Team isn’t used at all, no players or staff are employed. The reason being is simple, SFraser once wrote a brilliant article about youth development and one of the key parts which sticks in my mind is that you should know every single player at your club. I want each player to have a clear development plan with a pathway into the first team. With too many players, I wouldn’t spend as much time with each player and it would potentially create an even harder route into the first team.

Quote

“It's that simple. Youth development relies entirely upon having a club size and club composition that you can manage. If either of the two apply to you then you need to start taking the axe to some contracts if you want to effectively develop youngsters.”

In terms of the U19s, I take control of their training - using the same training schedule and tactics as the first team so that when they make the jump up they’re already familiar with as much as possible. Individual training is done in the same way as the first team but with a focus on physical attributes. In the U19s, no friendlies are scheduled as training is prioritised over games. Each player plays in their right position, which can be done from the U19 tactics screen.

When a player turns 18, they will either join the first team or go out on loan depending on if there is a gap in the first team and how long is left in the season. The loan focuses on playing time, preferably in the position they will play for the first team and preferably playing for a team with good training facilities and a manager that works well with youngsters.

 

Strategies

Recruitment

At Molde FK, one thing that is demanded across the entire club is professionalism, both from staff and players. As a result, we will only recruit players who have a personality or media handling style that indicates they have at least a decent level of professionalism. A professional player is more likely to work hard in training, have a dedicated approach to fitness, have a positive and good training progression and display good body language around the place.

As well as professionalism, there are 4 key attributes that I value: Determination, Natural Fitness, Teamwork and Work Rate. Any signings made will be professional, be committed to do their best on and off the pitch, will maintain their fitness between matches, will work for and alongside their teammates and go above and beyond the call of duty. All these ingredients give us the best possible chance of developing a top class player who can move on to bigger and better things.

While these 5 factors are key to the success of the club - exceptions are made to players with high potential that come directly from the academy.

One thing I’ve always done is have at least two players in every position to enable me to create two saved team selections. A first team comprised of our best players and prospects, and a second team made up of everyone else. This allows me to ensure players are always fresh as they will normally only ever play 1 game a week. In Norway, we have strict registration rules which means we can only have a maximum of 25 players on full-time contracts registered in the league. This means I have 2 players for every position, an extra goalkeeper, and 2 extra players either for extra utility or for their personalities. Due to this restriction, I’ll only sign a first team player if a first team player is sold and no U19 player is ready to step up. I’ll also keep an eye on any potential U19s that are close to being ready but not quite there yet as I don’t want to block their potential pathway into the first team.

Potential signings are split into 3 categories:

• U23 - first team signing, a young player with potential to develop themselves further before moving on to bigger things
• O23 - first team signing, a player who is ready to make an immediate impact at the club who perhaps hasn’t been given the right environment to showcase their ability
• U19 - U19 signing, a youth player with high potential but needs lots of time to develop themselves further before moving to the first team

When searching for any types of these players, whenever a suitable player is found they are added to a target's shortlist. This includes players that we’ve sold. This shortlist allows us to keep track of all of these players and to revisit them further down the line if situations change. The scout reports within this shortlist are kept up to date so we can always keep an eye on them.

 

Contracts

When it comes to offering contracts, we’ve introduced the unproven Chelsea model of offering the longest contract possible. We’ll offer a higher basic wage to remove any yearly wage rise, have the longest contract length possible and include an optional 3 year extension clause. We’re not afraid of offering a considerably higher wage in order to ensure we have them tied down for the long term. The thinking is that in the long run we’ll save more money on wages as we won’t have the pressure or need to offer a player a better contract when they start developing into a better player and asking for a new deal.

 

Sales

When it comes to player sales, we’ll obviously look to be getting the best deal possible. However, we’ll also look to get the best deal possible for the player - making sure that we sell to the right club for them even if it means making slightly less money. We’ll only sell the player if it’s the right move for us financially and for the player's career - we won’t sell if we think the player can get us more money and move to a bigger club later on. We often look to add a percentage of the next sale clause for any sale we make so that we get a second injection of money if that player moves on again.

 

Staff

For first team coaches and physios I’ll simply look for staff with the best possible attributes for their role. Using the Training > Coaches screen to make sure I’m improving the weak areas. The head of youth development is responsible for the youth intake, and one of the things that is important to me is a player's personality. As a result, I prioritise the best possible personality for my head of youth development and then look at attributes - I can improve their attributes through coaching courses but I can’t improve their personalities.

In terms of scouting, I’ll again look for the best possible attributes, mainly focusing on player potential. I’ll focus on quality over quantity, I’d rather have a team of 3 scouts (with a judging player potential of 15) that I can trust than a team of 10 scouts (with a judging player potential of 10) that I can’t completely trust. I also don’t sign any unnecessary staff, I don’t have a director of football, technical director or loan manager as I manage all of those things myself - so why waste the money.

For U19 coaches, it’s a similar story to the head of youth development - I’ll focus on coaches with the best personalities as I want my young players to be trained by people with positive personalities more than anything else. Once again, I can improve their attributes through coaching courses but I can’t improve their personalities. The U19 physios I look for still focuses on the best possible attributes but with an extra eye on personalities - always choosing the physio with the better personality.

 

Weekly Staff Meetings

One thing I’ve enjoyed as part of this save is taking part in the weekly staff meetings. I’ve found them really beneficial and definitely add to the realism of the save, hearing what my trusted staff members have to say about things around the club. They’ll advise me on player form, player training and development (specifically useful for weak foot training), and potentially sending staff on coaching courses. The only element I completely ignore is changing a players playing time status - if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

I found that if I take the time to read each point and hear what they’re saying it’s really satisfying. Besides, who doesn’t like being told that a player is developing extremely well, clicking on their profile and seeing the players’ attributes flying up or being told that you’ve gained the respect from the players at the club.

 

Player Interactions

One thing I like to do is to interact with my players as much as possible, to feel as if I’m building connections with them as you would do in real life. I’ve already spoken about when I praise or warn players for their training performances but I also do the same for match performances. During the full time team talk I will individually praise any player with a rating over 9.0 or if they’ve scored the winning goal or saved a penalty.

Once the game is finished I’ll manually praise a player for their last game if they were MOTM and had a rating over 9.0 or if they scored a particularly important winning goal or made the winning save in a penalty shootout. Another thing I’ll do is if a player had a rating under 6.5 during the game, I’ll go back into the match and look at the player statistics. Once I’ve outlined what they didn’t do well in the game, I’ll warn them that they didn’t perform well enough in that particular area.

Another thing I keep an eye out for is a players’ form, particularly if we’re not playing too well and some of the players are lacking morale. If a player has an average rating for the last 5 games of over 8.4 I’ll praise them. If that rating is under 6.5 though, I’ll warn them that their form has been declining.

If a player comes to me wanting more first team football, I will always chat to them and tell them that if they feel that way I’ll have to sell them. Most of the time they will back down but if not they’ll leave. I don’t want to keep any players at the club who don’t want to be here.

If a player wants to leave then I’ll let them unless the bid isn’t high enough and then I’ll keep them until it is. Yes I don’t want to keep players at the club who don’t want to be here but I don’t want them going for less than they are worth, or potentially worth - especially if it’s less than what we paid for them.

 

Success Stories

Mads

• At age 16 he was trusted to start in the second 11 of the first team
• Being in the second team meant he wasn’t overplayed and training was still prioritise over game time
• With his good personality he consistently improved over the years
• Sold to Arsenal for £6M up front and a 50% of next transfer fee clause

 

Emil

• One of our key players when we took over
• Performed consistently for us over the two years he spent here
• His performances led to a lot of interest, with his preference being PSV
• Sold to PSV for £9.25M in total and a 20% profit of next transfer fee clause currently worth £2.55M

 

Filip

• Signed in 2024 after a space in our first team opened up following Emil’s departure
• Soon became one of the best players at the club
• Helped us win the league in the 2025 season
• Sold to Ajax for £7.5m up front and a 50% of next transfer fee clause

Thanks for reading!

Edited February 22 by Pilcs

[TheMartello]

Great post man! I love stuff like this! Hopefully there´s more to come!

 

Do you also produce good results with this feeder-club approach?

Would love to learn more about that as well!

[Pilcs]

Thanks for the kind words!

Considering we often lose our best player each season results have been decent, we won the league last season and we’ve been performing respectfully in Europe considering our stature.

With this approach it seems that results depend on how good replacement players are and also timing. If we have a season where 2/3 of our young players start hitting the ground running at the same time then we’re likely to do well.

[TheMartello]

Is it possible for you to upload the savegame-file somewhere and share it?

 

I think I would learn a lot looking at how you do things ingame!