Scouting Setup

[Joey Numbaz]

I was asked to post this here from another thread. Expanding the explanation some. I'll try to put the specific suggestions in bold italics.

I think some of these tweaks if automated in FM would make scouting more realistic, especially with the having to work your way to 100% knowledge of a player as a (great) part of the game now. I assume soccer clubs set their scouting teams up in a similar fashion to what I do. Maybe they don't. This is mainly for big clubs but it would apply to smaller scouting organizations too. I have 26 scouts right now, plus a Director of Football. 

This is based on how Major League Baseball teams typically set their amateur scouting team up. It's a tiered system. Everything here is from the perspective of an English team, but with MLB titles since that's what I know. I organized it this way to scout all EU countries for U18 players.

U18 Scouts

Area Scouts: These are scouts that are assigned to smaller regions, in FM terms, they'd each get a country (if it's say Italy or Germany) or two or three smaller (prospect-wise) countries, say Romania/Bulgaria/Hungary in a big organization. Being able to assign them to multiple countries, but not an entire region would be great.

Regional Cross Checkers: These are 'better' scouts, and they cover a region, typically they cover the area of 4-5 Area Scouts. They scout the best players the Area Scouts find. If you have Area Scouts for Spain, Italy, France, Portugal and another for all of Greece/Cyprus/Malta; you'd have a Regional Cross Checker to automatically follow up on what they deem the best players the Area Scouts assigned to them find and scout them to 100%. This guy would need adaptability more than the Area Scouts.

National Cross Checker: This would be the Chief Scout in a FM perspective. He automatically follows up again on the players the Area Scouts and Regional Cross Checkers recommend. If you have one 20/20 scout who has the final word, before you spend your hard earned cash, this is that guy. This could also be your Director of Football.

U23 Scouts

Professional Scouts: They scout players already playing just below the top leagues, but who aren't U18 types more like U23 types, especially your domestic leagues (Championship/League 1 type players if you are in England).

Special Assignment Scout: Can also scout U18s, or top professionals. These guys scout players you come across from regions not covered already (you read news about some Wonderkid in Japan or something), or older players for the first team. In FM, can be the Chief Scout or someone else. Or your Director of Football could send him out on these targeted specific player from regions not already covered assignments automatically.

Big Money First Team Transfer Scouts

Advance Scouts: They scout the top professional leagues, Premier League, Serie A, Bundisliga, La Liga, etc. as well as next opponent and your home league. These guys find your first team transfers. It would be great to be able to assign them to a few teams in your league. Say you have 3 advance scouts, and they spend all of their time scouting 6-7 other teams in the Premier League. Being able to assign them multiple teams to rotate through automatically would be great. You could have a London Advance Scout, a Northern England Advance Scout, etc.

Anyway, It would be great if we had more than just a Chief Scout and 26 scouts below him. Being able offer scouts jobs scouting a particular League, Country or Region as part of the offer would be great. I get that you don't want to leave Holland. Fine, you can stay there, scout and email your reports to me in Liverpool since it's 2017 and we have the Internet. Right now guys that don't want to leave their country turn down scouting jobs for teams in other countries, even if you don't want them to leave their country. That doesn't make a lot of sense.

You can already take care of the U23 and Prime player scouting without much extra work. But having the amateur (U18 in a FM perspective) scouts report up a chain seems like it would be a great option to have. It also provides a bit of a career path for the scouts. You poach an Area Scout from another team, by offering to make him a Cross Checker for example. And it would automate having your best scouts follow up on the players your other scouts find, saving a lot of manual effort.

I even created an org chart of what this might look like (mostly U18 scouts in my case, since that's what I am going for in this save). Each square is a scout.

[Neil Brock]

Reviewed so locked.