davemcglennon

Honestly haven't been interested in playing this game for months & just been coming back here to see if anyone actually plans to do anything about it. Incredible you're just trying to cite some weird legal doctrine to say this is more like real life when basically someones fecked up the player interest algorithm in monolithic proportions & you can't / won't fix it... The crux is: players from lower leagues, reputable nations & poorer nations want to move to better, more reputable & better paying clubs. In the case of youth players if players are on youth contracts: buying clubs can sign agreements with players & pay a compensation, either agreed by the club or which is set by tribunal. if the players on youth contracts but have signed a pre-contract agreement (where they will sign officially at age 17): then any purchasing club needs to agree the fee with the club with that pre-contract agreement. In both examples, the deal can be struck years in advance of the moving date, if the move cannot be registered until a point in time: such as the player being under 18 For some reason, a player under 18 simply doesn't want to move, other than a couple of exceptions. You don't need save game examples to prove this - just setup any game, pick a team from the top 20 reputable clubs in the world & try it. To prove my point further & to explain that this is not just about getting players "cheap". I can agree a "full fee" with a club where the player has a professional contract & they're not interested. To cement my point EVEN MORE: I'm tottenham, I'm willing to offer bellingham's younger brother a deal from birmingham; I can agree a fee with the club, but he doesn't even want to talk to me; he's english, can even sign immediately, but nope, under 18. But I can agree a fee with dortmund to buy his older worlds most sought after englishman at the age of 19 & he's more than happy to sign up. Honestly farcical.

Why are you presenting yourself as as someone that knows the rules? Teams still lose players to pre-contract agreements. Spurs lost 2x prospects to southampton this summer. the Pre-contract on youth contracts still exists? Of course it does. Is this unfair? Yes. The alternative?? minors at the age of 16 forced into signing pre-contract agreements from 18 until they're 23?? The game is not reflecting any changes in the real world. The devs have made a big change to how players decide their interest. They are citing legal changes as justification for it but are basically unable to present any basis of these changes to anyone on this thread. It's a farcical situation.

It's amazing as you literally have this ON YOUR WEBSITE: https://www.footballmanager.com/the-byline/top-tips-youth-recruitment-fm23 Read the bold in red. You literally state a) this is possible & be should be used. Yet you're refusing to fix it. DELVE INTO THE ‘APPROACH TO SIGN’ MARKET In FM23, any player not yet old enough to sign a professional contract within their based nation or tied up with their club with a future professional contract that automatically applies when they get old enough, will have ‘Approach to Sign’ available as an option in the Contract dropdown of their profile. The age at which players are eligible to sign professional contracts varies by nation – in England and Germany it’s 17, while in much of South America it’s 18. If you find a player that’s interested in discussing terms with you, your club will only have to pay a compensation fee to sign them. This can be a great way of sneaking in ahead of the established bigger teams and finding someone who can possibly lead your team and net you a big profit in seasons to come.

Just revert the change. You've broken the entire premise of the game for so many players. There's no legal justification and as a developer you're just saying "is it legal, isn't it legal, I don't know." Well if you don't know. WHY DID YOU CHANGE IT??? It's a maddening situation that you're simply not listening to the actual players of the game. No person visiting this thread, aside from Mr Football Club Cadoni, believes this change has been influenced by any change in reality. Players unable to sign IMMEDIATELY are never interested in moving. As soon as they turn 18, a switch is flicked and they are interested. It makes literally zero sense & the game is broken.

Fc.cadoni you don't know what you're talking about. You buy for compensation because the players haven't signed a professional contract yet. This happens still today & is still completely legal. In your make believe world do young players sign binding contracts for 5 years before they turn 18? A player can sign a contract (pre contract) with their training club. But if they haven't yet, training compensation is applied & that is just how this works. And for the record IS being correctly applied within the game. Loads of players are signed for compensation in FM22... Because the UK came out the EU, transfers for players must be for 18 years or older. This is fine. It has no bearing on the mechanics of this game & why they have changed so much. Young players aren't interested in signing for any team until they are able to sign immediately & at the time of negotiating for the contract. That is the bug. The rest of the nonsense being spouted on this thread has nothing to do with anything else.

Honestly, just ask the QA team to see a list of 18 yr olds who are interested & then the list of equivalent players who are nearly 18. You don't need us to do this. It's incredibly lazy & I won't be buying another version.

I keep looking back to see if a reasonable response from the development team is coming. No chance. How you don't understand why players bother buying this is beyond me. The game has been around for 20 years & somehow you've managed to break it without knowing.

They can sign, but cannot transfer. This isn't brazilian specific but presuming you're clued up in the world of football (given your developing for a leading the football simulator), I thought it a nice obvious scenario. I don't think anyone would want to see a simulation where you could "offer parents a job" to move them all to a new country & then conveniently sign the player in advance of their 18th birthday. This happened with Messi for barca and is weird. If I could write this succinctly: A players interest in moving to a new club should not be impacted by their future transfer date. Because in reality it just doesn't in real life. Not in the way the game is doing it all of a sudden "I can't move so I won't discuss moving". This is just wrong and inaccurate. They sign pre-contracts & move when permitted - when 18. A feature request to improve the realness of the game would be to have a team or managers reputation in signing, playing & developing youngsters being a much bigger factor when youngsters look at moving; i.e. where are they likely to play & be developed into stars (i.e. dortmund) vs signing up & being farmed out on endless loans (i.e. chelsea/man city).

I'm REALLY trying to help. Being 8, 18 or 88 should make no difference to interest. Does the player have interest / ambition to move to another team in a much higher division, much higher reputation, much higher chance to play. Pre-contracts exist for a reason - for players to agree in advance of their move date & this is the crux of the issue. A player interested in moving when they turn 18, should have been interested the day before their 18th birthday, when they are 17. But the proof here is that is not being displayed in game -- & it ruins it. As a team who has scouted a prospect it makes zero sense to have no chance to sign them, or stoke interest to prevent them signing a contract. It means you basically need to wait until any young player turns 18 with a really long contract which based on the pricing in this game means they will cost £50m for a prospect who has done nothing in the game. The legislation you're referring to effects EU players only. For non-EU it's precisely the same. Brazlians must be 18 before they move. Again Endrick is agreeing a move & he is 16 - it happens all the time. I'm not sure why I'm wasting my breathe. The legislation hasn't changed since FM22's release but the game behaviour has. This is a regression. Not a "feature request".

ok - so I've seen the update, updated the game & now it's basically the same or worse. We can attract the best 18 yr olds. But anyone who is 17 or below has basically zero interested in playing for a premier league team. They won't even enter negotiations with wild expectations of being a 1st team starter or whatever. It's complete rubbish & so much worse than before. I can sign basically the very best players of 18 years old.

No - you're not listening. You're just explaining how and why the updates you have made are correct. The opinions of the players are seemingly unimportant. In reality no requests for this update have been made by players & it's so severe that you simply cannot sign players before 18 (with the very small / odd exception). So whatever excuses as a developer you're trying to make, you've made a terrible hash of it & it's not even close to realistic. I've purchased FM every year for over a decade but I can honestly say, not that it is a big deal for you, that I won't buy it again. You've trashed the whole point of the game.

It's frustrating for players of decades to be giving advice on the game, for a developer to simply disagree & say we're all wrong. The real world is people working around this legislation. But if we want to be "real" the pre-contract is real, happens all the time & is a broken mechanic because it simply won't allow a player to sign in advance of their transfer date. Can you please listen and acknowledge this part of it. Neymar signed way before he could leave, same as vinicius, same as rodrigo. Alvarez for city the same. This is seemingly impossible now & is unrealistic. Irrespective of the UK law, that shouldn't impact the ability to sign younger players in advance of the legal transfer date,

I would just say I don't think the mechanic is that bad. It's derisory as an offer however you can refuse, have dialog with the player & typically agree to sell if the bid in future matches the valuation. You agree the price (fair valuation of the player or higher) & this typically satisfies all parties (& feels as it would in real life - very rarely would you have a superstar saying, I don't care, sell me for 25% of my value so I can go to this big club. Obviously the player might refuse a new contract if it's close but this is realistic. i'd add you can also set to refuse bids lower than x if the club is constantly bidding low to unsettle. which doesn't cause a problem if the valuation has been agreed with the player as agreed. Transfers in general could be better. I do think the valuations are somewhat crazy. Some feedback from me would be to potentially display the mechanic behind the valuation to the player behind the keyboard. Age, contract length, reputation, clubs assessment on ability/potential, experience all contribute. explaining why some random average PL player is worth £250m is essential. Maybe you might recognise something could be tweaked.

Ok, thanks. I appreciate some things might want to be tweaked. Having a coaches or teams reputation for developing youth, for example, should be a factor IMO, but probably something to come next release as there's no "develops youth" entity in the game mechanics I presume. At least it's not visible to me in the editor.

whichever way you cut it, these clubs would accept 100m for any of these players. It's ridiculous. barring 190 CA players or players from rivals (which I like - impossible for spurs to by declan rice for example).