Nation Youth Rating - Static? Why?

[jack18883]

I'm 10 seasons into my save and the SPFL is now ranked 5th amongst Europe's top leagues.

Celtic (me) has won the champions league 3 times.

Rangers have won the Europa League.

Hibs have been in the last 16 of the Champions League.

A few Scottish clubs have upgraded training or youth facilities.

 

 

I have noticed that despite myself having State of the Art youth facilities, maxed out junior coaching, youth recruitment, the best youth coaches, one of the best HOYD - I am still not getting any youth players even close (2* PA max).

So I put this down to Scotland's Youth Rating i.e how likely Scotland as a nation will produce quality youth players.

 

I then looked downloaded a copy of FMRTE to check the current youth rating of Scotland and it's still it's original value and on further investigation so were every other nation.

I then looked up an old thread and found each nation's youth rating:

 

Argentina - 159
Australia - 90
Austria - 79
Belgium - 85
Brazil - 185
Bulgaria - 72
Cameroon - 95
Canada - 54
Chile - 93
China - 117
Croatia - 98
Colombia - 117
Cote d'Ivoire - 105
Czech Republic - 94
Denmark - 91
Egypt - 138
England - 140
Finland - 75
France - 151
Georgia - 65
Germany - 160
Greece - 94
Hungary - 68
India - 86
Iran - 105
Ireland - 83
Israel - 84
Italy - 144
Japan - 114
Korea (North) - 63
Korea (South) - 99
Mexico - 153
Morocco - 85
Netherlands - 122
Nigeria - 135
Norway - 82
Paraguay - 90
Poland - 94
Portugal - 114
Romania - 91
Russia - 148
San Marino - 29
Scotland - 83
Senegal - 74
Serbia - 94
Slovakia - 79
South Africa - 95
Spain - 152
Sweden - 88
Switzerland - 90
Turkey - 144
Ukraine - 95
United States - 132
Uruguay - 90

 

These values have changed since then (FM13) but not by much.

There are several requests and indeed custom databases which are very popular which even out the distribution of regen ability.

Completely disregarding the rating at the start of the game for Scotland - I think the rating should most definitely increase as the league reputation and national team perform better.

 

So a few questions to anyone with an opinion:

 

• Should a Nations Youth rating be static or dynamic?
• If dynamic - should the youth rating vary with league reputation, club reputation, national team performance?
• Do you think the youth values above are a fair reflection on each nations likelihood to produce good youth players?
• Is there a reason why for example, Iran's youth rating is higher than Scotland's?
  • Is this tied in with the importance of youth? - In the editor this is shown as very important/not important

 

[forameuss]

Rather than answer the questions, I'll turn it around.  Why do you think the rating should be dynamic?

You say you're 10 seasons in - do you really think that something like this would change in that relatively short time?  You mention club successes, but what about Scotland itself?  Have they done anything?  If Celtic won the Champions League in real life, in a country where football is already the most popular sport in the country, do kids get better at football?  Do many more flock to the sport?  I have my doubts.  Even if they did, they're not getting markedly better in a decade.  Plus, given the absolute state of youth football here, the value is probably about right.

Having said that, I think the rating should be dynamic, but to make it remotely realistic it would have to be a generational thing.  It should take decades of consistent success to make any kind of significant impact.  Even then, national football is cyclical.  If Scotland, for example, win the World Cup, I imagine football in the country would become even more popular.  But given that it's unlikely some kind of dynasty would be built, do those kids that flocked to the game get bored of it before reaching their potential?

As a final note, just because the youth rating is low doesn't mean the nation is doomed.  I've won every international tournament with Scotland, and they can end up producing truly World Class players.

EDIT: And one last final note, I voted no given that the options are fairly black and white.  If there's a middle ground with caveats, I'd probably choose that, but as it stands it's a no.

[RBKalle]

23 minuti fa, jack18883 ha scritto:

• Should a Nations Youth rating be static or dynamic?

Dynamic.

In real life we've witnessed once great nations fade into irrelevance (the Danubian school), while previously modest countries rose through the ranks. Not to mention a solid turnover of Golden Generations leading formerly mediocre nations to unprecedented levels, or failed/poor generational turnovers tarnishing Top Teams' record and reputation.

23 minuti fa, jack18883 ha scritto:

• If dynamic - should the youth rating vary with league reputation, club reputation, national team performance?

It should vary, ever so slightly, depending on the average quality of the nations' youth facilities. Reputation doesn't guarantee success. Good performances may boost the morale and the overall growth of the grassroot movement (especially in smaller nations), but in most places football is already the most popular sport with the largest number of players.

So it's about HOW a nation can take advantage of said popularity and success: with new facilities or with youth project that help more kids to realize their potential. Which must be there to begin with.

So in FM we can only rely on Youth Facilities and Youth Recruitment, both currently linked to the nation's Youth Rating.. A bit of a catch-22, but I'm sure something can be worked out: a formula that will increase a nations YR by x% upon some youth-related values at club level are reached.

 

23 minuti fa, jack18883 ha scritto:

• Do you think the youth values above are a fair reflection on each nations likelihood to produce good youth players?

Some values are waaaay off.

China, Egypt, Turkey and USA are insanely high for nations whose contribution to top football begins and ends with Mo Salah (and a handful of half-decent Turkish players some years back). I guess population is a factor in China and USA's ridiculous value, but quantity =/= quality anyway.

Generally speaking though, the game produces TOO MANY good players even from countries with low YR values. I've seen a lot of Middle-Eastern squad players in EPL, even South-Asians can show up every now and then. Folks from countries with zero relevance in current (or historic) football.
I see variety and unpredictability are an added value to FM, but when Chelsea or AC Milan have a Saudi winger or a Syrian fullback in their starting XI, it's a bit too much...

 

23 minuti fa, jack18883 ha scritto:

• Is there a reason why for example, Iran's youth rating is higher than Scotland's?
  • Is this tied in with the importance of youth? - In the editor this is shown as very important/not important

The "Importance" value is another mystery IMO.

ANd something that should be dynamic, much more than the YR itself!

With good results, football in previously secondary countries may become more popular and generally better. In many places, only the top tier used to be a (semi)professional league, and still contested in a rather amateurish fashion. Over the last few decades, the level of professionalism has increased pretty much everywhere and the status of the game in some countries has indeed improved, a lot.

[jack18883]

54 minutes ago, forameuss said:

Rather than answer the questions, I'll turn it around.  Why do you think the rating should be dynamic?

You say you're 10 seasons in - do you really think that something like this would change in that relatively short time?  You mention club successes, but what about Scotland itself?  Have they done anything?  If Celtic won the Champions League in real life, in a country where football is already the most popular sport in the country, do kids get better at football?  Do many more flock to the sport?  I have my doubts.  Even if they did, they're not getting markedly better in a decade.  Plus, given the absolute state of youth football here, the value is probably about right.

Having said that, I think the rating should be dynamic, but to make it remotely realisticyouth it would have to be a generational thing.  It should take decades of consistent success to make any kind of significant impact.  Even then, national football is cyclical.  If Scotland, for example, win the World Cup, I imagine football in the country would become even more popular.  But given that it's unlikely some kind of dynasty would be built, do those kids that flocked to the game get bored of it before reaching their potential?

As a final note, just because the youth rating is low doesn't mean the nation is doomed.  I've won every international tournament with Scotland, and they can end up producing truly World Class players.

EDIT: And one last final note, I voted no given that the options are fairly black and white.  If there's a middle ground with caveats, I'd probably choose that, but as it stands it's a no.

2

The rating should be dynamic as the youtb players produced by a nation in real life varies with an increase in both fortunes of club teams in the league ala more investment and performance of the national team i.e inspiring youngsters.

I think that 10 years is enough time to spot a difference in youth coming through, yes - would you not say that England as of now has better youth players coming through now with the increased investment in youth facilities by the FA?

 

 

[enigmatic]

Youth rating is a minor balancing variable that makes surprisingly little difference. A major factor which makes Scotland less likely to produce leading international players is the reputation of the national side, which -is- dynamic but I'm assuming hasn't changed much.

(and don't forget pa stars are relative to your first team; if your first team is world class, a 2*pa player probably has the potential to play for the national side)

[noikeee]

I understand why there's somewhat of a hard cap and a tiny nation like say San Marino might never produce top players, or a very poor nation never will neither, as you as a manager cannot single-handedly overturn the economics of a 3rd world country.

But it should still ideally be dynamic, even if veeeeeeeeeeeery slow to increase/decrease. I'm running into a stupid problem managing the Hungarian national team (whilst managing MTK at the same time - I've maxed out the facilities and made them super-rich years ago whilst making the Hungarian league pretty competitive). I'm essentially doomed for all eternity not to improve the level of national team players, which is hard-coded pretty low.... despite the fact that in real life they had the best team in the world in the 1950s. I do get the occasional good regen in MTK but they're rare and it's frustrating not to be able to do anything more, whilst every single other Hungarian side produces absolute rubbish that doesn't even match the original Hungarian players in the DB (which were already pretty poor).

As it is, you can never repeat the generation of Puskas, Kocsis and Hidekguti in FM. It's hardcoded to be impossible. I don't think it should work this way.

[noikeee]

42 minutes ago, RBKalle said:

 

Generally speaking though, the game produces TOO MANY good players even from countries with low YR values. I've seen a lot of Middle-Eastern squad players in EPL, even South-Asians can show up every now and then. Folks from countries with zero relevance in current (or historic) football.
I see variety and unpredictability are an added value to FM, but when Chelsea or AC Milan have a Saudi winger or a Syrian fullback in their starting XI, it's a bit too much...

I've seen this in previous FMs but not really FM18 IMO. I believe they've toned that down, good regens feel much more linked to nationality now.

[RBKalle]

36 minuti fa, enigmatic ha scritto:

Youth rating is a minor balancing variable that makes surprisingly little difference. A major factor which makes Scotland less likely to produce leading international players is the reputation of the national side, which -is- dynamic but I'm assuming hasn't changed much.

Are you sure about that?

Again, it's a vicious loop...

1) NT struggles because the current gen is mediocre
2) NT's reputations is low because the current gen sucks
3) Newgens are mediocre because the NT sucks
4) Back to 1)

Then again, newgens aren't created in a vacuum, so YR and Youth facilities at every club play a role in the level of the new players. If YR is a minor balancing variable, how come in FM nations with high YR, but with average (or poor) NTs still churn out EPL-level players at a much higher rate than they do in reality?

[enigmatic]

45 minutes ago, RBKalle said:

Are you sure about that?

Again, it's a vicious loop...

1) NT struggles because the current gen is mediocre
2) NT's reputations is low because the current gen sucks
3) Newgens are mediocre because the NT sucks
4) Back to 1)

Then again, newgens aren't created in a vacuum, so YR and Youth facilities at every club play a role in the level of the new players. If YR is a minor balancing variable, how come in FM nations with high YR, but with average (or poor) NTs still churn out EPL-level players at a much higher rate than they do in reality?

Unless it's radically altered in FM18, or totally different for active leagues it should play out the same way as my FM17 holiday experiments

Bump up the "youth rating" of a random mediocre international team to 200 and they'll continue to produce few stars; if you do it to, say, Australia you won't see many more elite Australian players than IRL. Bump up the reputation to 8000+  leaving YR at its original value and they'll get a golden generation (though the reputation will drop pretty darn fast when the existing senior players fail to win anything, so if they're an inactive nation that doesn't get many new players generated per season it might not have any lasting effect). Every side in the game produces talented prospects at a higher rate than they do IRL

tbh it's less a vicious loop and more a reality loop. It keeps sides around the same level unless and until human managers do something game-breakingly good, and as you've noted there are a whole lot of other dynamic inputs like club reputations and facilities so there's enough flex in the system for @noikeee to gradually improve the Hungarian side now he's managing them and raising the standard of the league, it'll just take forever. Which arguably it should do. 

[forameuss]

13 minutes ago, jack18883 said:

The rating should be dynamic as the youtb players produced by a nation in real life varies with an increase in both fortunes of club teams in the league ala more investment and performance of the national team i.e inspiring youngsters.

Does it though?  How do you quantify that?  Are there any concrete and provable examples of that happening?  It's a very woolly concept, and those don't translate well into being coded into a game.

13 minutes ago, jack18883 said:

I think that 10 years is enough time to spot a difference in youth coming through, yes - would you not say that England as of now has better youth players coming through now with the increased investment in youth facilities by the FA?

I don't think it is.  You'd need a kid to be inspired at a very early age, and then be so inspired that he sticks at it through at least 10 years, until he hits the age when he would actually appear in-game.  Not to mention actually having the natural talent, which is the biggest (and static) factor.

As for the second part, it's largely too early to tell.  They've been more successful at youth tournaments recently, but then home nations have been far more successful at those age groups than at senior level.  Scotland reached a European Championship final at U19 level just over a decade ago, and none of the starters are still playing at a high level.  The only two "names" in the squad are Scott Fox and Graham Dorrans.

[lonestar190]

Dynamic, but a pretty low priority and as other have said, very very slow to change.  I think there should be a little more variation in the spectrum of youth quality produced - i.e. golden generations can still get produced from countries with low youth ratings, you just need a little luck. 

 

 

[llDracoll]

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Youth rating is a minor balancing variable that makes surprisingly little difference. A major factor which makes Scotland less likely to produce leading international players is the reputation of the national side, which -is- dynamic but I'm assuming hasn't changed much.

The only way to know how much difference it makes, IMO, is to create a savegame where every nation has the same youth rating, and see what happens.

[forameuss]

1 hour ago, RBKalle said:

Are you sure about that?

Again, it's a vicious loop...

1) NT struggles because the current gen is mediocre
2) NT's reputations is low because the current gen sucks
3) Newgens are mediocre because the NT sucks
4) Back to 1)

Then again, newgens aren't created in a vacuum, so YR and Youth facilities at every club play a role in the level of the new players. If YR is a minor balancing variable, how come in FM nations with high YR, but with average (or poor) NTs still churn out EPL-level players at a much higher rate than they do in reality?

Well in this particular case, Scotland's low rating isn't going to stop them generating World Class players.  Because they do.  A high rating doesn't guarantee good players any more than a low one guarantees poor players.  It's a modifier.

Just now, llDracoll said:

The only way to know how much difference it makes, IMO, is to create a savegame where every nation has the same youth rating, and see what happens.

You'd need an enormous number of repetitions of that to draw any kind of conclusions though.  There's no way to make every input equal, which would be a necessity for a decent test.  If you did it, say, 1000 times just by changing that, you might be able to tell something, but I'd have my doubts.  Different saves are very, very different.

[Sir_Liam]

I don't think youth rating is the only database value that affects quality of regens.

Having managed in Serbia and Russia on the last 2 FM's my view is that I was getting better regens in Serbia.  Serbia's youth rating is 100, Russia's 118.

There's a few other values that probably play a part such as population, game importance, economic factor, state of development, reputation (nation and league), and club facilities.

[Snorks]

If it's not already then yeas, it should be dynamic, but there are so many metrics and variables I have no idea if or whether it will be, or already is.

So, you are ten seasons into the game:

 let's assume, that your Celtic team is packed with Scottish players winning European silverware, the national team is doing well also because you are providing them with all this Scottish talent (yeah I know, bear with me on this) and you are successful from season one. From end of season one, Celtic's rep takes a little boost, season 2 again so on for ten seasons, Scotland's national rep does the same, but a bit slower on the back of your success.

The kids born the year you took over at Celtic, are now 10 years old. It will be another FIVE years at least before you see them on intake day.

The kids you get at intake now, were five years old when you took over the reigns, the steady improvement in Celtic's and Scotland's reputation will have had very, very little difference on their development in the game universe.

Yes, a national youth rating should be dynamic, but it is a decades long process before the benefits of increases will be seen in the intakes.

So, say National Youth ranking increases by 1.0 in 2020. By 2035 your actual youth players will be 15yrs old, and should be  better by a factor of 1.0 than the players you got in 2020.

This of course assumes your club's facilities/influence/recruitment remains the same. By improving these you can get better intakes, at least a better chance of better intakes, but still limited by the nations's and club's overall ranking - which an extremely long process.

[WorcesterLegend]

Golden gens do exist, so dynamics, but as most people say, 10years is not enough, i mean, hungary was a good football nation, but now?...argentina right now is questioning themselve if the nation's football is going down (4 years there...but its still one of the best in the world), holand and italy didn't qualify to world cup (holand is going down since 8 years ago, with erevdivisie losing a lot of uefa spots), some people say that serie A is the worst of the top 5 leagues (this drops dates from the more o less 6 years ago)

 

After all of this, i guess sudden drops should be normal in a spam of 5 years, but going up is rather difficult to calculate, croatia and belgium got a golden gen, but this ones where more of a lucky streak from the nations, the leagues themselves are the same, and the only league that actually improved was the ligue 1 and the reason is money, but they are world champio s, so...

 

This topic is tricky, there is no real answer it should be dynamic, but most tiny/poor nation should have a cealing or a % per x amount of year, because you wont see a good san marino team, but a good serbia/croatia/ukraine is possible, but it needs luck to happen so they should not have the cealing but a better % than san marino, while top nations should get no cealing, and suddens drops if results aren't favorable or bad luck strikes the nation (neymar only era? Anyone?) 

Situations like italy and holland do make the dynamics a must because in my actual save hollamd has a lot of world class in their squad but i don't think that a holland player is that good right now and italy aren't working in their youth

[Butlee]

Just as a general kind of rule, I think doing away with as many static numbers like this as we can is a positive for the game.

Another example being stadium size limits for certain clubs (I believe they are capped?). Ok a semi-pro side shouldn't easily end up with an 80,000 seater - but if you ran a near perfect 30 year project to the top with them you'd think they'd be well on their way.

 

Re: Influence on youngsters (and thus, on what makes young players or could make FM youth intakes better)

In Australia I can definitely confirm that the popularity of the clubs and the sport in general is heavily based around the success of the National Team. In 2006 Australia (locally) famously qualified for the World Cup for the first time in decades. We used our own 'golden generation' popularity to kickstart our A-League (the initial season was 2005-2006, riding off the back of their qualification run). Fast forward a dozen years and we've got more Aussie-born players in their 20's exploring their options in Europe than ever before. They were the kids who grew up watching our main team doing so well - it was all over the TV & papers here and the other popular sports here (Rugby, AFL, Cricket) all took a back seat for once. I believe we just had the youngest player at the Russian World Cup and he just got picked up (19yrs) by Man City and got a game with Celtic on loan recently. Our National Team is better and it's (slowly) flowing on down through to us having more great youngsters come through.

Another example of something like this is the USA. They hosted the World Cup in 1994. Let's imagine all the 5-15 year olds watching that and dreaming of being there - then fast-forward 15-20 years and they had some of their best ever performances in the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, making Ro16 (being KO'd in extra time twice) based on those same kids growing into National stars. 

 

Point is, I think you CAN draw lines that relate success of clubs, and more importantly National Teams to the general quantity AND quality of young players coming through. I think FM could move in a direction like this.

 

I think the other factor here (that needs a mention when we talk about Youth Quality of Countries) is player development. I feel like FM is almost too forgiving if a great player gets a bad development when he's younger. I know sometimes if you have the right skill is might not matter - but there should be a lot less skill retention (imo) for players that don't get the right playing time or loan deals, or that get stuck in clubs with dodgy facilities or have bad coaching etc... 
So that may be some kind of bridge for allowing some countries to have better youth ratings, but often not enough capability to nurture that talent.

[blimey]

China has higher youth rating than World Cup finalist Croatia? What a joke.

[James_Fraser]

@jack18883 For the point of context, how many leagues do you have open?

[forameuss]

1 hour ago, Butlee said:

Just as a general kind of rule, I think doing away with as many static numbers like this as we can is a positive for the game.

Correct, but making them too dynamic would likely be worse.  It's all about how they do it.  It should change at a relatively glacial pace, over several decades.  Making it fluctuate massively would be far less realistic than what we have now.

1 hour ago, blimey said:

China has higher youth rating than World Cup finalist Croatia? What a joke.

And yet Croatia will consistently produce better players in-game.  It's only one attribute that doesn't mean as much as people are making out.

[noikeee]

29 minutes ago, forameuss said:

And yet Croatia will consistently produce better players in-game.  It's only one attribute that doesn't mean as much as people are making out.

This is true, but there's other hardcoded factors "game importance" "economic developmento of nation" etc etc and those are unchangeable as well, and it all leads to things being pretty static newgen-wise as the years go on (in fact that's the reason why China has much worse newgens than Croatia). I still think "youth rating" in particular should be dynamic because that's the one thing that makes most sense to affect as your managerial career goes on, whereas the other attributes are harder to imagine how one manager's impact on the game can change. Specially economic development and population!

Though I think "game importance" could move as well, although extremely hard to change, essentially that's how much do people give a crap about football in a country, in China well not much, and that's a huge reason why their footballers are crap despite enormous population. If you somehow managed to win a World Cup with them though, or if a big star broke out and won the Ballon d'Or, I think it could raise football's status and popularity in the country a bit.

Now of course that's going again back to the catch-22 of, need big stars to win trophies, need trophies to raise the profile to create big stars.... but like every other dynamic in the game say "club reputation", you break this cycle by overachieving. It's just that in a nation's case, even if you overachieve with both the national team AND their clubs if managing at the same time, it should still take a long time for things to make a difference and for the cycle to be broken.

[Butlee]

31 minutes ago, forameuss said:

Correct, but making them too dynamic would likely be worse.  It's all about how they do it.  It should change at a relatively glacial pace, over several decades.  Making it fluctuate massively would be far less realistic than what we have now.

Yeah sure, I 100% agree. 

Just putting it in context of the OP who's Celtic have 3x Champions League wins - there would definitely be *some* kind of impact on the youth of Scotland from that. They have arguably the best team in the World at that point. Kids are going to want to emulate that - at least slightly more than they did 10 years ago when Celtic was struggling to leave an impression at that level.

So yup I'm with you. We don't mean "dynamic" like instant, noteable movement. Just "dynamic" as in "not quite fully static". :-)

[herne79]

I'll add a slightly different angle to this.

The OP is understandably frustrated at the quality of newgens coming through, despite his great facilities and improved reputation.  There is a question mark about what exactly he's defining as "quality" as he has 2* newgens coming through which, as @enigmatic rightly points out could mean they are potentially very good first team players - depending on the squad profile.

However, that to one side, the nation's youth rating will have an impact.  Scotland is not Brazil, therefore the number of good quality Scottish youngsters coming through should be comparatively low.  But note my stress on "Scottish".  I make that clarification because I think there's an argument here to say that as your club reputation increases - and your world wide appeal and affiliates program improves - there becomes a case for attracting more and better quality non-domestic newgens to your club.  ie., ok you're still in Scotland with their relatively low youth rating, but that shouldn't stop Harry Kane Jr or Neymar 2.0 being attracted to Celtic's great youth set up and highly reputable / European championship winning side rather than tooling around at Spurs.  Take a look at Man Utd/City, Chelsea, even Barcelona - whilst yes their youth teams may be predominantly domestic players, they certainly have a liberal sprinkling of non-domestic players as well.

Now ok there are rules and regulations about signing young players so I'm not saying this should be a common occurrence.  However, this sort of thing can happen at the moment as you broaden your worldwide rep, scouting network and sign up affiliate clubs in foreign lands.  Whether that's already sufficient or not I don't know, and whether it should be more common or not is debatable, but it is possible to think beyond just domestic newgens.

(Tagging @FrazT with that thought as well, forgot to mention earlier ).

[jack18883]

3 hours ago, James_Fraser said:

@jack18883 For the point of context, how many leagues do you have open?

Top 2 divisions in:

 

England
Scotland ( 4 divisions)
France
Germany
Italy
Portugal
Holland
Brazil
Argentina
Belgium

 

[jack18883]

20 minutes ago, herne79 said:

I'll add a slightly different angle to this.

The OP is understandably frustrated at the quality of newgens coming through, despite his great facilities and improved reputation.  There is a question mark about what exactly he's defining as "quality" as he has 2* newgens coming through which, as @enigmatic rightly points out could mean they are potentially very good first team players - depending on the squad profile.

However, that to one side, the nation's youth rating will have an impact.  Scotland is not Brazil, therefore the number of good quality Scottish youngsters coming through should be comparatively low.  But note my stress on "Scottish".  I make that clarification because I think there's an argument here to say that as your club reputation increases - and your world wide appeal and affiliates program improves - there becomes a case for attracting more and better quality non-domestic newgens to your club.  ie., ok you're still in Scotland with their relatively low youth rating, but that shouldn't stop Harry Kane Jr or Neymar 2.0 being attracted to Celtic's great youth set up and highly reputable / European championship winning side rather than tooling around at Spurs.  Take a look at Man Utd/City, Chelsea, even Barcelona - whilst yes their youth teams may be predominantly domestic players, they certainly have a liberal sprinkling of non-domestic players as well.

Now ok there are rules and regulations about signing young players so I'm not saying this should be a common occurrence.  However, this sort of thing can happen at the moment as you broaden your worldwide rep, scouting network and sign up affiliate clubs in foreign lands.  Whether that's already sufficient or not I don't know, and whether it should be more common or not is debatable, but it is possible to think beyond just domestic newgens.

(Tagging @FrazT with that thought as well, forgot to mention earlier ).

5

Thanks for the reply Herne.

I'd agree with the fact I should now be able to recruit ("Youth Recruitment")  good foreign youngsters in my youth intake.

But I think my concern is that a nation's youths - Scotland in this case - will be forever tied down to being a lesser nation - despite domestic club success and a big improvement in the national team performances.

Maybe as mentioned by others the timeframe of 10 years for Scotland to become a powerhouse in producing world-class youth players is a stretch in expectations but at least a small increase in the value of Scotlands "Youth Rating" would be more realistic.

I am not expecting that despite the SPL being ranked 5th est league in Europe that Scotland should produce the 5th best youngsters - but a small improvement would be more realistic.

I'd like to see this being dynamic bt I'm not expecting a dramatic change.

 

Based on the values in the OP - if Scotland started with 83 - I'd like this to have changed to about 95-100 over the course of 10 years.

For it to change to match England or even Holland would be unrealistic.

[forameuss]

4 minutes ago, jack18883 said:

Thanks for the reply Herne.

I'd agree with the fact I should now be able to recruit ("Youth Recruitment")  good foreign youngsters in my youth intake.

But I think my concern is that a nation's youths - Scotland in this case - will be forever tied down to being a lesser nation - despite domestic club success and a big improvement in the national team performances.

Maybe as mentioned by others the timeframe of 10 years for Scotland to become a powerhouse in producing world-class youth players is a stretch in expectations but at least a small increase in the value of Scotlands "Youth Rating" would be more realistic.

I am not expecting that despite the SPL being ranked 5th est league in Europe that Scotland should produce the 5th best youngsters - but a small improvement would be more realistic.

I'd like to see this being dynamic bt I'm not expecting a dramatic change.

 

Based on the values in the OP - if Scotland started with 83 - I'd like this to have changed to about 95-100 over the course of 10 years.

For it to change to match England or even Holland would be unrealistic.

Whether it's static or not, the bolded part just isn't true.  I've seen - and managed - World Class players that have been generated from Scottish clubs.  Not exactly full squads of them, but I've had a number of generations of them, mainly forwards.  One guided me to two World Cup Finals, on the shortlist for the Ballon D'Or, and ended up with 130 goals in 160 caps (or something similar).  He finished his career at the 2038 World Cup at the age of 36, so he would've been generated very early on.   

[enigmatic]

2 hours ago, noikeee said:

This is true, but there's other hardcoded factors "game importance" "economic developmento of nation" etc etc and those are unchangeable as well, and it all leads to things being pretty static newgen-wise as the years go on (in fact that's the reason why China has much worse newgens than Croatia). I still think "youth rating" in particular should be dynamic because that's the one thing that makes most sense to affect as your managerial career goes on, whereas the other attributes are harder to imagine how one manager's impact on the game can change. Specially economic development and population

There's a lot of unchangeable variables in there to balance things out, but that's the point of them. The most important variable, reputation, is very, very changeable (to the point there's so much flexibility in there a persistent human manager can make San Marino internationally competitive if controlling the club side as well), but the static values prevent weird unintended stuff happening like Brazil ceasing to become a leading exporter of talent after a couple of bad tournaments. 

At the end of the day, the values in question aren't supposed to be interpreted in isolation or even seen in game and aren't preventing people from doing intentionally crazy stuff so I'm not sure making more of them dynamic so the game can go weird in more mysterious ways is worth the immense amount of debugging effort involved.

[herne79]

1 hour ago, jack18883 said:

Maybe as mentioned by others the timeframe of 10 years for Scotland to become a powerhouse in producing world-class youth players is a stretch in expectations but at least a small increase in the value of Scotlands "Youth Rating" would be more realistic.

Why would it be more realistic?  For all the great players Scotland's produced over the years, they've never been a powerhouse in world football.  Now ok previous history doesn't need to reflect future dynamics, but from another perspective how would other nation's youth ratings change over your 10 (or more) year time frame?  Would they stand still (or reduce) while Scotland develops so that we get more quality Scottish newgens?  They arguably wouldn't (although a more cyclical shift could be an idea) so if other nations improve as well then Scotland remains in kind of the same position:- everybody's improved therefore nobody has, if you see what I mean.

Also a balance needs to be maintained over all in the database, so in essence if we see more quality coming through from one nation, other nations would need to reduce accordingly.  Without that we'd see a power creep seeping into the database, so instead of say the top 5% being very high potential, it'd move to 10% (or whatever, just numbers to demonstrate the point).  That in turn would lead to less players at lower levels of play as the total number of players available can't increase just because we want more good quality players.  It's a tricky balancing act.

Now ok that exaggerates the point: you're only talking about one or two players once in a while at your own club - hardly worthy of a balancing act in the database - but that's really nothing more than being selfish for your own club (nothing wrong with that of course!).  You've made the investment over time, won competitions and improved your world standing so it's only natural to expect or want better things.

I've no problem at all with Scotland developing their youth rating over time, but it would have a wider impact beyond the Scottish borders because what you're actually asking for is a global youth profile shift.  Other nations would need to stand still (or reduce) in order for Scotland to improve, and is that realistic?

[noikeee]

5 minutes ago, herne79 said:

Other nations would need to stand still (or reduce) in order for Scotland to improve, and is that realistic?

I think yes... This happens in real life, see Holland. The league went backwards, the youth went backwards, the national team results took a while to reflect it but then finally went backwards, when the generation that was produced back in the days when the league was still vaguely decent and the youth facilities were top class, retired from the national team.

Maybe it's circumstancial, a minor blip in the Holland national team performances that will soon return to normal, maybe I'm taking too many conclusions from just one factor, but you could argue that this does happen in real life.

Also Italy, their league started lagging behind the other big leagues (except for the rebirth of Juventus in recent years), we're nowhere near the days when Serie A was THE big league (early 90s), Italian football's defensive stance started looking dated, and now look at their national team which seems to have suddenly hit rock bottom as the Buffon/Pirlo/Chiellini/de Rossi generation retires.

[RBKalle]

Of course if one nation goes up, another must go down... IMO Youth ratings could be recalculated every 6-8 years (every 3 major tournaments) taking into account the NT results at senior and youth level, and, marginally, the standard of domestic leagues.

I'd be wary to use a single club's success, or even the league's reputation to influence the NT and the Youth variables because we've been underestimating a huge factor here...

Should the SPL become a bigger and more important league, the newfound popularity and appeal of the league would attract better foreign players, suddenly making most of the young Scottish players useless.
Currently I guess every youth intake has at least a couple of half-decent prospects, if not for Celitc at least good enough to be sold to smaller clubs. But what if, in 10 or 15 in-game years, even St.Mirren or Dundee will be able to sign decent foreign players? What will happen to all the newgens who, in the past, could have had a decent career in a weaker league?

We as human managers can decide to invest time and money on no-hopers for the good of the NT, but AI managers won't... So a promising prospect who in 2019 would have received playing time, in 2029 will end up retiring at 19 because nobody needs him, regardless of how much he'd have contributed to the NT.

[Ber-T]

Surely a case such as Iceland's shows what investment across the country in facilities and number of coaches per capita can have on a country's football. I'm not if that could accurately be represented in fm as it wasn't an individual club's output that changed everything but a concerted effort.