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Letdown regen syndrome


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One of my least favorite things in the FM series is the CA/PA system.  I feel like defining PA at creation of a player, rather than letting it be variable, results in strange and unnatural player development.

The worst example is the regen who is nearly EPL ready at creation, 16 years old, but has a relatively low PA.

Yes the real world is full of players who never reached their potential.  But typically either the player has an attitude issue or more common, chronic injury problems.

Attached is 'Exhibit A'.  You can imagine my excitement when I had this player come through my Academy.  The next Harry Kane!  Or maybe even the next Ronaldo, who can say?

I made the mistake of looking at him in the editor.

CA 140.  PA 157.

Balanced personality, no injury proneness.  But no matter what happens, he'll only get slightly better than he was at 16.

disappointment.PNG

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I think they have to have a form of cap, otherwise by the time you reach a year when it's all regens, youd have a lot of elite players due to how most clubs max out facilities and coaches by that point.

Don't forget players like Francis Jeffers, who scored 20 goals in less than 40 starts for Everton before joining Arsenal at 20. You could argue he was EPL ready at a young age, yet never improved much.

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This has been debated to death several times over already and I don't feel the need to repeat everything here, so I'll summarize my thoughts around this.

I feel the PA should be generally higher for all players, BUT reaching the potential should be much much harder! The new mentoring system makes is harder to game than the old tutoring system were you could have 20 model professionals 16 year olds at all times just from having a single older model professional in the squad. I would like to see training, reasonable game time (not too much or too little by age), facilities, team mates, randomness and a lot of other variables impact to a much higher degree than now.

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People get way, way too hung up on CA and PA. This kid is a wonderful player, and will be a premier league striker for sure. He already  has really nice stats. Focus on getting his off the ball to a higher level and he will start for a top 10 side for 15 years. As long as he is performing well, scoring goals, ignore the CA and PA.

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4 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

I think they have to have a form of cap, otherwise by the time you reach a year when it's all regens, youd have a lot of elite players due to how most clubs max out facilities and coaches by that point.

Don't forget players like Francis Jeffers, who scored 20 goals in less than 40 starts for Everton before joining Arsenal at 20. You could argue he was EPL ready at a young age, yet never improved much.

Jeffers had chronic injury problems.

 

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4 hours ago, XaW said:

This has been debated to death several times over already and I don't feel the need to repeat everything here, so I'll summarize my thoughts around this.

I feel the PA should be generally higher for all players, BUT reaching the potential should be much much harder! The new mentoring system makes is harder to game than the old tutoring system were you could have 20 model professionals 16 year olds at all times just from having a single older model professional in the squad. I would like to see training, reasonable game time (not too much or too little by age), facilities, team mates, randomness and a lot of other variables impact to a much higher degree than now.

I agree %100.  PAs should be higher, but it should be a LOT harder to get to it.

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2 hours ago, sporadicsmiles said:

People get way, way too hung up on CA and PA. This kid is a wonderful player, and will be a premier league striker for sure. He already  has really nice stats. Focus on getting his off the ball to a higher level and he will start for a top 10 side for 15 years. As long as he is performing well, scoring goals, ignore the CA and PA.

I'm a top 5 side.  He'll never be better than a backup for me.  Young (English) strikers of his PA or better are typically available for under 15M.  At best he'll help my homegrown qualification for continental football.

Again, my point is, you don't have EPL ready players appear at age 16 and then cease to improve, despite not suffering injuries or having a drug problem or something.  This happens WAY too often in FM.  As someone else mentioned, I'd prefer to see a much higher max PA cap but make it more random as to whether you'll ever reach it.

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15 minutes ago, Erith22 said:

Again, my point is, you don't have EPL ready players appear at age 16 and then cease to improve, despite not suffering injuries or having a drug problem or something.  This happens WAY too often in FM.  As someone else mentioned, I'd prefer to see a much higher max PA cap but make it more random as to whether you'll ever reach it.

So what is the solution? Essentially you're saying that every single player should be able to grow by at least 'X' amount. That's exactly what happens on FIFA's career mode, and look at the state of that! 

I think that you're wrong about young players seeming good enough at 16 and never improving. Pretty sure fans of any premier league club would give you examples of players that looked like the next big thing at a young age and it never quite worked out for them. 

Forget the PA/CA. You've found a gem of a 16 year old but unfortunately, he has limitations which will mean he's never likely to be a world beater. Another one will come along who can be. That's natural. 

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30 minutes ago, Erith22 said:

Again, my point is, you don't have EPL ready players appear at age 16 and then cease to improve, despite not suffering injuries or having a drug problem or something.  This happens WAY too often in FM.  As someone else mentioned, I'd prefer to see a much higher max PA cap but make it more random as to whether you'll ever reach it.

To be fair, it does happen for certain players. Maybe not at 16, but not far off. Neil Mellor were touted as the next big thing and even scored in the Champions League, then just.... a loan here and there, and never close to being anything. No injuries (at that point) or anything similar, just didn't keep getting better. Federico Macheda, much the same. And what happened to Adnan Januzaj? Same again.

And those are just some of the top of my head. Some players just don't develop even though they are very good at one point.

As I mention above, I would like to see a generally higher PA, and make it harder to reach, but I certainly don't think this is a real issue with the game.

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1 hour ago, Erith22 said:

Again, my point is, you don't have EPL ready players appear at age 16 and then cease to improve, despite not suffering injuries or having a drug problem or something.  This happens WAY too often in FM. 

If you are seeing Premier League ready players appear "way too often" at age 16, please upload your save(s) where this is happening to the ftp server and start a new thread in the Bugs Forum / Training and Medical section.

Such newgens should be rare, even with the best youth set up possible.

However before you do, are you using any edited files and/or unofficial 3rd party in game editors, as they can have an impact on CA/PA.

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3 hours ago, Erith22 said:

I'm a top 5 side.  He'll never be better than a backup for me.  Young (English) strikers of his PA or better are typically available for under 15M.  At best he'll help my homegrown qualification for continental football.

Again, my point is, you don't have EPL ready players appear at age 16 and then cease to improve, despite not suffering injuries or having a drug problem or something.  This happens WAY too often in FM.  As someone else mentioned, I'd prefer to see a much higher max PA cap but make it more random as to whether you'll ever reach it.

I am managing a top 5 side, and he would definitely be starting for me. Give him some positional training so he is versatile, and he would be a great rotation option. Who was home grown and free. Once again, you are getting hung up on PA. Don't. Play him. If he performs well, scores, etc. then his PA is utterly irrelevant. One of the best players I ever had on any iteration of FM had a low PA, probably no more than 150 (I never looked). He was rated 2.5 stars maximum. He regularly got 20+ goals and 20+ assists because he just fit perfectly into my squad. I originally bought him as a stopgap to cover an injury crisis because he was cheap and I decided he could do a job. The point is that you should not look at a players PA and immediately decide "meh, not good enough". Judge players on their performances. There is no way this kid would not be playing for me to see what he can do.

In terms of players who play games young and then fade to nothing? Perhaps you do not remember because they faded. I can think of quite a few examples. In fact we can look at all the players who made EPL debuts at 16.

Michael Briggs. Plays non-league football now.

Izzy Brown. At Chelsea, got injured.

Aaron Lennon. Plays for Burnley. Never became a world class player. Very similar to your example.

Jose Baxter. Plays for Oldham.

Gary McSheffrey. I do not know if he plays anymore, but did not rip up any trees.

Rushian Hepburn-Murphy. Aston Villa. Still a kid, so who knows.

Reece Oxford. Another player similar to yours. Came into the league young, looked like an amazing prospect. Has stalled, no longer plays regularly.

Jack Robinson. Came through at Liverpool, looked like a good prospect. Now at Nottingham.

Jack Wilshire. We all know about him. Another player similar to your (injuries did not help, but he never reached close to what people thought he could).

Angel Gomes. He is still 18, so it is too early to tell.

James Vaughan. Another Everton kid. Scored on debut. Championship level.

Wayne Rooney. The exception on this list of a player who was as good as the hype suggested.

James Milner. Another example of a player very similar to the one you show me. Perfectly suited to playing for a top team. Does his job. Not one of the best players in the team.

Francis Jeffers. Injuries sucked for him, but he never lived up to the hype.

Jonathan Leko. Still at West Brom and playing well.

Jack Rodwell. I think we all know what happened to him with Sunderland.

Okay so that was a long list of young players. You can make of that what you will. However, I think the player you most here is exactly the same type of player as Milner, or Lennon (depending on how you want to look at it and how he plays. And the point is it is exception for a player to debut young and become a world class player. It is far more common for them to be really good when young, but not be able to progress.

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I've thought about this and I think people make great points.

I think the disconnect comes in more how FM presents information than how it actually models this mechanically.

Namely, I know EXACTLY how good a player is at any given time because I can see his attributes.  In real life you might know his strengths and weaknesses, its a fuzzy thing judging a player's anticipation or off the ball movement, especially as a prospect.  Plus, I have pretty good idea of that player's potential after a period of time.  Ignoring the editor, there will be a time around when this guy hits 18-19 that my scouting report will say 'playing close to his full potential'.

In real life, you'd never know a guy had peaked at 19.  Super high potential players will continue to get chances in real life hoping that they will fulfill that early promise, and sometimes they will.  But in FM, I know this guy is done, and never getting better, so I'm not going to waste time on him.  But it also means there's rarely going to be that moment where a previous underperformer suddenly makes a big leap, since I pretty much know he has that big leap in him.

So i think its a combination of accuracy in scouting/rating combined with fixed PA which gives the feeling of 'fakeness' and 'predetermination' that I was complaining about before.

I understand there's no easy way to fix this and that FM under the hood is almost certainly a convoluted nightmare of legacy code that no one really understands fully.  Just voicing a frustration really.

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tbf if you don't use the editor or scout tools, players aren't quite as "done" as rightly or wrongly, coaches are generally optimistic about players' full potential until their 20s, and you've got no idea whether the 4 yellow 1 black star kid your scouts are recommending you buy for £15m has a somewhat better or slightly worse potential).

think the PA code is the probably the least convoluted nightmare of legacy code, and that's because there's a tractable value the AI can use to assess players with reasonable accuracy

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All it takes is for his determination to go up or a change in personality and I’m sure he’ll be a world beater. Give him game time, in this game you can see rapid changes in attributes through good form or just good form in training. Never look at the editor, though that what it says his PA is, in game that can change, dramatically.

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As a Norwich fan I can think of two perfect irl examples of this type of player: the Murphy twins. Both burst onto the scene as very capable league1/championship players. Now they are both approaching their mid 20s and look unlikely to be anything more than lower half Premier league players. 

And don't forget that you're not meant to see the PA. If you hadn't looked, you wouldn't have spoilt the narrative for yourself. 

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8 hours ago, wattzy said:

So what is the solution? Essentially you're saying that every single player should be able to grow by at least 'X' amount. That's exactly what happens on FIFA's career mode, and look at the state of that! 

I think that you're wrong about young players seeming good enough at 16 and never improving. Pretty sure fans of any premier league club would give you examples of players that looked like the next big thing at a young age and it never quite worked out for them. 

Forget the PA/CA. You've found a gem of a 16 year old but unfortunately, he has limitations which will mean he's never likely to be a world beater. Another one will come along who can be. That's natural. 

One of my best ever players on any version of FM was a striker who played for me from League 1 through to the Premiership, spent the best part of a decade at the club and at every level was a consistent 40 goal a year (in all competitions) striker. Once I became England boss he did the same trick for England, his record ended up being something like 90 appearances with 80 goals.

When he was about 28 I decided to see just how good he was so I took a look in the editor, I think it was because there had been some debate on here about how important CA was and I was interested to see, and his PA was somewhere around 140, maybe even in the high 130s.

On paper he was nowhere near world class but he was strong in all of the important areas and if used correctly, as an out and out striker who isn't expected to do anything but score goals, he was amazing.

CA is important to a degree but the right attributes in the right places can take a player a long way even if their CA isn't sky high.

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I had a look 'under the hood' of my FM13 save after completing it last year, just to see the CAs and PAs of some of the players in my title-winning Dagenham & Redbridge team. It made for interesting viewing.

My favourite player was a centre-back who came through our youth set-up in League One and became a first-team mainstay, making nearly 500 appearances by the time he was 30. He was consistently getting very high match ratings in the Premier League, despite only being a 2.5* decent PL player according to most of my coaches. His PA was ~145 (I can't remember the exact figure).

Another youth product I had was a no-frills backup ball-winning midfielder who did quite well in the PL whenever called upon. He was even capped in a very strong England team, despite apparently being only Championship quality at best. His PA was ~130.

Then there was a Montenegrin centre-forward who looked ludicrously good for 15 when I signed him from Buducnost. He developed very quickly, even outscoring nearly all my strikers in the PL during a loan spell at Coventry when he was 18/19. He was rated by my coaches as having something like 2.5* CA, 5* PA (so they were tipping him to become a leading PL player).

As it turned out, the Montenegrin had ~140 CA and ~145 PA, so in truth, he would not have developed much further. In that sense, he's not that different to the OP's player, or to some real-life players who became very good very young but never really had it in them to become truly elite (e.g. Walcott, Januzaj, Alan Smith perhaps). That's not to say I couldn't have got exceptional performances out of him if I'd used him in the right way, like @mack4ever did with his striker.

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With a couple of points in technique, finishing, composure and off the ball I would say you have a cracking striker there. Great Leadership, makes good decisions and anticipates situations well. He is also fairly quick without being blistering, but enough to trouble defenders. Get his determination up and you could have a really good squad player on your hands. I said it in another thread on CA/PA, one of the best strikers i ever had only had a 165 potential, and he made Messi's goalscoring look pathetic because he had exactly the right spread of attributes for a striker. In your case here, a higher PA would just potentially give you more points to round him out a little more (better passing, bit faster, maybe train his other foot etc).

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I don't mind players looking like world beaters at 16, and then ending up as disappointments. If anything, I think the game doesn't do it enough. 
The problem is that you could have a player with perfect attitude, no injury problems, and getting playing time from the start at a good club with good training facilities. And he still end up disappointing due to a hard limit to how good he can be. That makes much less sense. CA makes sense as a concept that exists in real life. I don't think PA does in the same way. And just feels like a slightly simplistic way of keeping the game world balanced. I fully realize it would be difficult to make sure the quality of players are consistent over the years with no PA, but I would still think it would make life both more interesting and lifelike.

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Sporadicsmiles has it right, and put in the hard yards to produce examples. The media constantly label talented kids The next Messi/Rooney whatever and very very rarely does a kid actually fulfil the prophecy.

As to seeing a kid's attributes somehow 'spoiling' the experience, SI offers the option of attribute masking.

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23 minutes ago, Matshit said:

I don't mind players looking like world beaters at 16, and then ending up as disappointments. If anything, I think the game doesn't do it enough. 
The problem is that you could have a player with perfect attitude, no injury problems, and getting playing time from the start at a good club with good training facilities. And he still end up disappointing due to a hard limit to how good he can be. That makes much less sense. CA makes sense as a concept that exists in real life. I don't think PA does in the same way. And just feels like a slightly simplistic way of keeping the game world balanced. I fully realize it would be difficult to make sure the quality of players are consistent over the years with no PA, but I would still think it would make life both more interesting and lifelike.

I don't think so. I have a great attitude and no injury problems. I learned in the primary school playground that did not have the PA to be George Best or Jimmy Greaves. Or ever make the Youth team of 4th Division Colchester United despite their ex-manager coaching my class on Saturday mornings. We all have our natural limits and they differ from person to person. It's no shame.

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37 minutes ago, Matshit said:

I don't mind players looking like world beaters at 16, and then ending up as disappointments. If anything, I think the game doesn't do it enough. 
The problem is that you could have a player with perfect attitude, no injury problems, and getting playing time from the start at a good club with good training facilities. And he still end up disappointing due to a hard limit to how good he can be. That makes much less sense. CA makes sense as a concept that exists in real life. I don't think PA does in the same way. And just feels like a slightly simplistic way of keeping the game world balanced. I fully realize it would be difficult to make sure the quality of players are consistent over the years with no PA, but I would still think it would make life both more interesting and lifelike.

The problem with the "no PA"-route is that in effect everyone would have max potential. As in EVERYBODY can become the next Messi. Quality of intake and youngster isn't an issue. Just sign up 20 16 year old and "game the system" to have everyone reach the potential and win.

I just can see how this can work, and certainly not better than the current system.

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21 minutes ago, phnompenhandy said:

Sporadicsmiles has it right, and put in the hard yards to produce examples. The media constantly label talented kids The next Messi/Rooney whatever and very very rarely does a kid actually fulfil the prophecy.

As to seeing a kid's attributes somehow 'spoiling' the experience, SI offers the option of attribute masking.

John Fleck is a fine Scottish example. 16yo when he broke through at Rangers, dubbed the next Rooney, then vanished into the English lower leagues.

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This player just racked up nearly 60 minutes in a champions league final for me and didn't look out of place:

545ff1bca492f66202d611ec346c6043.png

He's not first choice, of course he isn't. He's a backup option though, and he's got enough about him generally that even in top flight games he's never going to be a liability, he's going to be functional. I suspect a lot of people wouldn't even look at him in the championship, yet I've happily given him 11 appearances this season because he has the right things to a good enough level and it saved me having to buy someone else.

Far too many people get wrapped up in CA. 

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32 minutes ago, phnompenhandy said:

I don't think so. I have a great attitude and no injury problems. I learned in the primary school playground that did not have the PA to be George Best or Jimmy Greaves. Or ever make the Youth team of 4th Division Colchester United despite their ex-manager coaching my class on Saturday mornings. We all have our natural limits and they differ from person to person. It's no shame.

No. You learned in your primary school playground that you did not have the CA to compete with the other kids (I assume). You being terrible at football at the age of 7-8 means the way to reach a CA to ever be a professional footballer is huge. All of this is CA. If on the other hand you were really good at football as a kid, but nothing you did was able to help you be better, so everyone else caught up with you I agree. That is what having a low PA would represent in real life. It makes no sense as a concept. 

 

23 minutes ago, XaW said:

The problem with the "no PA"-route is that in effect everyone would have max potential. As in EVERYBODY can become the next Messi. Quality of intake and youngster isn't an issue. Just sign up 20 16 year old and "game the system" to have everyone reach the potential and win.

 I just can see how this can work, and certainly not better than the current system.

Yes. As I said, the biggest problem would be to balance it. It would be a huge challenge. Of course not every 16 year old should have the potential to be a 200 CA player. But there are lots of factors that should still be taken into account when considering how good a player can get. The CA of the 16 year old. The players personality and motivation. How lucky the player is with injuries. How the player chooses clubs that gives him the right training and matching.

To put it another way. If you took 20 completely random 16 year olds from the game today, and gave everyone 200 PA. How many of them would reach it? Or even come close. 

Plus there are tons of other factors that could be taken into account that isnt today. For example players that end up losing motivation when they reach the top at an early age.  

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The solution of everyone having up to 200 PA, or having an uncapped PA system is far worse because it is by its very essence therefore saying everyone has the same potential. Everyone is the same by the simple virtue there is no difference in their potential.

That's just not true, the reality is we don't ever know a humans true potential aptitude for something in life, but they still have it and therefore it is a part of FM in which researchers have to do their best to make an educated guess on it. It's not perfect, but it's far better than defaulting to a system in which everyone has the same potential.

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16 minutes ago, Matshit said:

Plus there are tons of other factors that could be taken into account that isnt today. For example players that end up losing motivation when they reach the top at an early age.  

It's already in FM.

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33 minutes ago, Matshit said:

To put it another way. If you took 20 completely random 16 year olds from the game today, and gave everyone 200 PA. How many of them would reach it? Or even come close. 

If you have quite good facilities and train them correctly give them propper game time (not too much early on), maybe mentor them right to improve the personality(which is a bit harder than FM18 though), a vast majority of them would become great players.

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17 minutes ago, santy001 said:

The solution of everyone having up to 200 PA, or having an uncapped PA system is far worse because it is by its very essence therefore saying everyone has the same potential. Everyone is the same by the simple virtue there is no difference in their potential.

That's just not true, the reality is we don't ever know a humans true potential aptitude for something in life, but they still have it and therefore it is a part of FM in which researchers have to do their best to make an educated guess on it. It's not perfect, but it's far better than defaulting to a system in which everyone has the same potential.

Are you saying that if you started training for something (Doesn't matter what. Football, video games, piano, cooking.) there is a hard limit to how good you could get at any of those things, and despite other people being far better no amount of practicing or training would make you any better at all? Of course, there are body type limitations that would make it impossible for people to compete at certain things. But flat out reaching their limit? I would wager that no footballer in the history of football has ever been at the maximum of how good they could get and never will be.

 

I'd be happy with a physical limit. I am way to tall to ever get Messis balance\agility. And he would never have the ability to beat me at jumping reach if I had some sort of training. And certain people develop certain muscles easier than others making them naturally faster/stronger. But something like the technique for kicking a ball hard and well placed? Or composure in front of goal? No I don't think that is something that is in anyones DNA. 

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3 minutes ago, Matshit said:

Are you saying that if you started training for something (Doesn't matter what. Football, video games, piano, cooking.) there is a hard limit to how good you could get at any of those things, and despite other people being far better no amount of practicing or training would make you any better at all? Of course, there are body type limitations that would make it impossible for people to compete at certain things. But flat out reaching their limit? I would wager that no footballer in the history of football has ever been at the maximum of how good they could get and never will be.

I'd be happy with a physical limit. I am way to tall to ever get Messis balance\agility. And he would never have the ability to beat me at jumping reach if I had some sort of training. And certain people develop certain muscles easier than others making them naturally faster/stronger. But something like the technique for kicking a ball hard and well placed? Or composure in front of goal? No I don't think that is something that is in anyones DNA. 

Then why aren't everyone as good at free kicks as Beckham? Or everyone stops shots like De Gea? Why aren't everyone as "football smart" as Pirlo? Why don't all short centrebacks look at how Cannavarro played. You don't think others try to do the same? Are everyone equally intelligent if they just decide to be? It doesn't even have to be DNA. It can be how much you have applied yourself in the early years of your life. Or how your parents have raised you and nurtured it. If you take a random kid who have ran around with a ball all their life and another kid who have never touched a ball at age 12, do you expect them to be equally good if they give their all to be a footballer? No because what you have learned as a kid will impact how you do things as you get older and genes will also have a major impact. Though this is a much grander topic than potential to be a good footballer.

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I have had players who has absolutely shi* stats and go on to be a star in the top league.

don't look at the stars/CA/PA and all that and look at his actual stats and hidden attributes. 

Your fela may well still go on to be 100m player in the future.

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What is the technique of kicking a ball but the concerted effort of a series of muscles? Of course there's more to it than that, but still if you have physical weaknesses in certain areas you cannot do certain things with a ball, a deft touch etc.

We don't present PA in FM as your birth-given PA. It is true that it still exists then in essence, the day you're born whether your capable of ever being the worlds best footballer is already possible or it isn't. Back to FM however tt's your PA once you're entering the realm of professional football, that age between 14-16 in which various aspects such as dietary impacts upon physical development, educational moulding of the mind. Other limitations in life have already played their part and left us with someone who is now being subject to a process of an educated guess on their potential as a footballer.

The alternative argument, for why so many fail to excel comes down to just one argument then @Matshit a lack of effort. For me that's very cynical. Because of course, when you start referring to matters such as outside of physical limitations, then you're bringing the aspects of the mind into question.

Philosophically, this is why it feels so cynical to me is that it leaves a lot of room to justify (more broadly speaking in life) that a lot of peoples lacking skills is just down to laziness. A lack of hard work. Developing footballers is fairly formulaic, and by virtue of the fact that great footballers have been developed all over the world with different nuance and emphasis during development shows that the building blocks are universal.

In a footballing context its bad enough, for me when I look at players Cristiano Ronaldo has had to work far harder than Messi to reach a comparable level. Messi has just naturally seemed to have a higher baseline level to him, yet equally I've seen people like Jon Walters who has a phenomenal work rate in life be fortunate that Premier League teams ever considered him worth picking up. Which is why PA isn't a locked for all time matter (from a research perspective) in FM, because we do realise that with hardwork, players can transcend what appeared to be their limit earlier. However, we will always stand by the fact that in Year X, Player Y appeared to have a PA of Z.

- - -

Ultimately, to argue that everyone has the same capacity, think what that suggests for a moment about those in life, who without disabilities lack skills and lack intelligence. Even within a family dynamic, in which the vast majority of external factors are fairly similar you can find wide variance in things like intelligence between siblings and we have of course had one good example in recent times in football. Gary Neville and Phil Neville. They would have had very similar upbringings, educations and development as footballers, and yet one was still better than the other. It either comes down to some predisposed limits, based on their DNA or Phil was the lazy one. Personally, I couldn't subscribe to that line of thinking myself, that all inadequacy is a result of a lack of effort. However, if your argument is that potential is the same, then surely effort is the only determining factor.

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44 minutes ago, santy001 said:

However, if your argument is that potential is the same, then surely effort is the only determining factor.

It's a reflection of that odious philosophy of 'positive thinking', that feeds into the myth of the American Dream. Somehow, if you want it enough, if you pray to god hard enough, you can achieve anything. The obverse is, as you say, any failure is somehow your fault.

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I played with Lens in FM2018, so after I finished I decided to go and check CA/PA of my players. One guy had around 140, I had 2-3 around 150ish, and a couple of 160ish players. The guy who I percieved the best was around 170 and i had player or two who were higher than that. One 20 yo winger who came through the youth ranks had a PA of 195 but I never thought it was that high because sometimes he was perceived 4-4,5* by my staff. Anyway, they were all part of my Champions League winning team so for me anything above 150 is a world class. Locattelli was around 155 and his description in game was a world class midfielder.

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The scientists have identified same gene I forgot how it's called, but the reffer to it as a "speed gene" and guess what? All the top sprinters have that gene. So you can train all you want and have best coaches, you will never get close to their level if you are not blessed with genetics.

In other words, if Barcelona came for me when i was 11-12 and took me to their youth academy, I would never be Messi.

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1 hour ago, santy001 said:

- - -

Ultimately, to argue that everyone has the same capacity, think what that suggests for a moment about those in life, who without disabilities lack skills and lack intelligence. Even within a family dynamic, in which the vast majority of external factors are fairly similar you can find wide variance in things like intelligence between siblings and we have of course had one good example in recent times in football. Gary Neville and Phil Neville. They would have had very similar upbringings, educations and development as footballers, and yet one was still better than the other. It either comes down to some predisposed limits, based on their DNA or Phil was the lazy one. Personally, I couldn't subscribe to that line of thinking myself, that all inadequacy is a result of a lack of effort. However, if your argument is that potential is the same, then surely effort is the only determining factor.

And everyone who ever worked with a young Gary Neville talks about him as one of the most professional and hard working trainers they have ever met. So yeah, in a sense Phil Neville might have been the lazy one. He was at least seen as the one with the most talent, and no one really put Gary Neville as having the potential to reach the level he did.

But I am not agreeing with the statements you argue against. I do not think that everyone can become the best with the correct training and attitude. I think that everyone can keep improving with the correct training and attitude. (Until you reach the age where your body starts working against you). Any differences in natural talent should be in your CA when you get into the game. And no matter how correctly you train, or do everything right you will never get to the right level if your starting CA isn't good enough (with some fluxations, not everyone will grow at the same rate). 

My point is basically that how good you can get at something is only based on how good you are at it, and how good you hone those skills. Not some magical limit which in FM far to many players reach.

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32 minutes ago, Matshit said:

But I am not agreeing with the statements you argue against. I do not think that everyone can become the best with the correct training and attitude. I think that everyone can keep improving with the correct training and attitude. (Until you reach the age where your body starts working against you).

But a claim that the vast majority of professional footballers who do not continually improve throughout their twenties either do not have the correct training and attitude or are having their bodies prematurely declining is the sort of extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence...

Gary "one of the most professional and hardworking trainers" Neville, for example, peaked pretty early and never really learned to dribble or score goals. Was he lazier than, say, young fullback Gareth Bale? Or was he just never capable of learning to shred defences or score absolute pearlers in the first place?

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28 minutes ago, Matshit said:

But I am not agreeing with the statements you argue against. I do not think that everyone can become the best with the correct training and attitude. I think that everyone can keep improving with the correct training and attitude. (Until you reach the age where your body starts working against you). Any differences in natural talent should be in your CA when you get into the game. And no matter how correctly you train, or do everything right you will never get to the right level if your starting CA isn't good enough (with some fluxations, not everyone will grow at the same rate). 

My point is basically that how good you can get at something is only based on how good you are at it, and how good you hone those skills. Not some magical limit which in FM far to many players reach.

But the point is in FM terms this can still happen. But once CA matches the players PA, further improvement can only come at the cost of decreased attributes in other areas. If you focus a player on the attacking attributes, his defensive ones will wain, if you focus on the physical it affects the technical etc etc. Which kind of makes sense.

The player in the OP might not have the best PA, but his spread of stats is pretty much bang on for what I would want as a player leading the line. Like others have said, might need some focuses here and there, but giving him more PA would just open up the scope to improve unnecessary attributes.

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The unlimited PA thing doesn't work for me, simply because we aren't being delivered newborn babies in-game - we're given teenagers that our clubs have signed and reared some years earlier. The 16 that rock up on intake day are the best of that years 'crop'. Who know's, maybe any better one's were poached by big teams before they arrived in your u18's? Maybe the best of them took up rugby or cricket or further education? Maybe that particular group we're awful and only cloggers made it through?

For what it's worth, I think @phnompenhandy and his rather sad playground tale was the correct one: by the time you're 9 or 10 or 11 then any future sporting career is pretty much decided and the rest is up to both the individuals dedication and the quality and standards of his subsequent upbringing to determine whether he makes it to a professional setup.

Improving all we can in terms of youth facilities, coaching, HOYD etc gives us more of a chance for the coming generations to be better because it effects the 'behind the scenes/under the hood' seasons that these 11 year old prospects have been at the club, but it can't change the years between birth (conception, if you want to include genetics in the argument) and signing YTS terms.  

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On 19/03/2019 at 05:53, sporadicsmiles said:

People get way, way too hung up on CA and PA. This kid is a wonderful player, and will be a premier league striker for sure. He already  has really nice stats. Focus on getting his off the ball to a higher level and he will start for a top 10 side for 15 years. As long as he is performing well, scoring goals, ignore the CA and PA.

This couldn't be more true. I never look at CA/PA numbers, but it always ends up that my best and most consistent performers are simply average players attribute wise

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I don’t think people on either side of the existential discussion are going to be swayed here. However, the solution to the original post is quite simple; don’t look behind the curtains. 

This is a game and it aims to tackle the impossible task of quantifying humans, biology, sport, competition, athleticism, etc. It’s one of those cases to me where you watch someone great at their craft, and for a brief moment say “I could do that with the right time, effort, environment, etc.” Then you play against washed up former pro at your local Sunday league and are quickly reminded that, no, there’s something different, elevated about his physical, technique, sporting intelligence that I could never reach. That’s what every pro feels against Messi / Ronaldo

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3 hours ago, Seb Wassell said:

Running Baby GIF - Running Baby Oops GIFs

Pretty much don't wanna deal with that. 

But

We're all forgetting one simple thing, Talent. That thing that science can't really explain. I was a sprinter in high school a good sprinter nothing great etc. I learned two things during my years of training with athletics. You have those who work hard and develop to be good sprinters, you have those that have the talent of just being able to run very fast without no training. The ones that make it to the very top of the sport are the ones who are naturally talented and work very hard on refining this talent. 

In football we have players that are trained to be footballers and players that are what we describe as natural footballers. To answer the question above, the why players can't hit a ball like Beckham its simple, Beckham was talented, how he hit the ball was purely down to his natural footballing talent and there is nothing wrong with that. 

You have players that see the pitch and read football on a tactical level, you have players that just know how to find space, how to see a pass, how to dribble. 

You can teach a player all he wants how to strike a ball properly but he won't be as good as a player that was naturally gifted in striking the ball and trained and refined that, you can also say that said player will never be able to do it consistently. 

Messi at age 13 was regularly beating players on the playground, the scout saw his natural talent, he went to Barcelona and they refined this talent and we have the Alien today. Same as CR7 i would say CR7 is not as talented as Messi in terms of footballing skill but his talent is his physical ability what both these players have in common is that they both put in hours on the training ground and have attained a higher level than their peers. 

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18 hours ago, Matshit said:

Are you saying that if you started training for something (Doesn't matter what. Football, video games, piano, cooking.) there is a hard limit to how good you could get at any of those things, and despite other people being far better no amount of practicing or training would make you any better at all?

That is a pretty good explanation of how the world works, I would say. No matter how much I train myself to sing, I am never going to have a beautiful voice. No matter how much I practise guitar, I will never be <insert personal favourite guitarist here>. Or how every much I practise my drawing, I will never be a great artist. Indeed, I could practise football every day and I am fairly certain I would never have gotten a professional contract. Indeed I did practise every day as a kid, with coaching. Got me nowhere. I did have more talent for rugby, in that things just seemed easy to do (I guess this is what talent feels like), but my body decided to keep me too small to think about playing at a high level.

The point I am trying to make is that the difference between Messi and I is not that Messi practised and I did not. Messi has natural talent I simply do not have. I would kick his ass at working out how to align laser optics though (my biggest talent, which I can do effortlessly). No amount of practise will make me Messi. They do not even make Ronaldo into Messi. There is no amount of training you could do to become that good. We tend to have limits about what we can do. In football, the limits tend to be how well our brains can communicate with our feet. In that respect, having a limit to CA and PA makes total sense. It mirrors real life pretty well.

But I want to reiterate. Stop getting hung up on CA and PA. The only think that matters are performances. If a player averages 7.5 over a season, it does not matter if he is 130/140 or 160/190 or whatever you like for CA/PA. If he averaged 7.5, he played great, and I will keep him. Judge players on performances, and stop assigning such immense importance to CA and PA. They are not the be all and end all of a player in FM.

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Agree that PA is not the reference of a good player. I had an Italian AM L/S in AS Roma one season and he had a PA of 200, but a CA of 130-ish. I played him regularly, he got tutored, even loaned out to a Seria B team one season, but he never developed past 160. Still a good player for Seria A, but not a world-beater as his PA would suggest. Could be that my training wasn't good enough or he just doesn't develop enough to reach 200.

And now I got a 20yo player in my Wrexham team (currently mid-Championship) who has CA 111 and PA 113 who is currently the leader in assists in the league and wanted by Premiership clubs like Watford and Southampton. CA111 is low to average in Championship but he just got the right attributes and fits really well with how my team plays.

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11 hours ago, Amarante said:

 

In football we have players that are trained to be footballers and players that are what we describe as natural footballers. To answer the question above, the why players can't hit a ball like Beckham its simple, Beckham was talented, how he hit the ball was purely down to his natural footballing talent and there is nothing wrong with that. 

You have players that see the pitch and read football on a tactical level, you have players that just know how to find space, how to see a pass, how to dribble. 

This is exactly it for me.  Some people are just naturally gifted at the game and others have to work at it, i'm not saying they both can't reach a similar level but one will get there a lot easier than the other. 

 

My example of "trained" footballers are always the same, I always use Jordan Henderson and Ross Barkley, both are good footballers but both are trained, they have strong levels of fitness but when it comes to ability, they have been taught to play how they do, and if you watch them play their decision making it a process, you see them with the ball at their feet thinking about what they are doing, whereas players like Gerrard, David Silva, Iniesta, Messi, they dont think the same, they see things before they happen and that is the big difference, that is what FM can't replicate in my eyes and i feel it will always be difficult for them to do so. 

 

And it is the same in schools across the country, i consider myself to be quite naturally gifted, i can see the game evolving but i'm lazy and hated training so would have never stood a chance of making it professionally because distractions were there, whereas a few lads in my school have played semi-pro and even professionally, i wouldnt consider them to be better but they had the determination and drive to go on and do it!   How difficult must that be for SI to recreate?  

 

To just quickly make a point on the OP, you've ruined your save to be honest mate, why look?  Just play the game, if he scores goals, he is worth playing regardless of a number next to his PA, i'm sure we could all look back and the guy we thought was amazing and a massive part of your team wasn't actually that good in terms of PA but he fit your system and had the right attributes where it mattered!  Play players based on how they perform, not what there PA is! 

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Have to agree with most points, PA isnt all that important to a player, I'd guess that most players dont actually every reach it anyway.

Form, and attributes relating to role, is far more important. 

In real life, Ravel Morrison probably has a huge PA, while someone like Lingard isnt as naturally talented. No question who youd rather have in your team.

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One potential consequence of unlimited PA would be that, in this world of perfect footballers the only variables would be the randomly generated height and weight of them and the best way to exploit that, which would lead to teams (you? The AI?) signing every 6'8 youngster the scouts could find and launching the ball at them to gain the only advantage available, surely?

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