[FM20] Santástico - The hunt for the Next Neymar

[Mikaelinho]

42 minutes ago, _Ben_ said:

I'm not sure that James Milner and Zlatan could co-exist on the same training field!

Never the less, another great post - and I'm really looking forward to your results. Coincidentally, I read somewhere that Squad Personality (viewable only on the club profile page) has a big impact on youth players. I have no evidence to believe that - but what is yours?

They would sure make for some interesting sessions IRL! The squad personality is one area where we struggle, mainly since I'm having such a hard time bringing in good enough players with desired personality types. It's only "Determined" atm, which I think is nowhere near good enough...

[Mikaelinho]

World Cup 2026

A little more than a year after me becoming the Brazil manager it's time for the World Cup in USA/Canada/Mexico, a splendid chance for me to help my players write history! My aim is of course to win the World Cup and create immortal Brazilian legends in the process. I also want to do it with as many current and former Santos players as possible. Brazil are reigning champions and the people demand nothing less than me bringing the trophy back home again!

Early preparation

We got handed a group consisting of 15th ranked Switzerland and 36th ranked Algeria. From 2026 there are only three teams in each group, but instead there are 16 groups. Top two teams from each group reach the first knockout stage, which I'm 100% certain that we'll do. We won't leave anything to chance though and I planned five friendlies ahead of the tournament. I wanted teams of high quality with similar playing styles as our group stage opponents to prepare us in the best way possible.

The two friendlies in March, against France and Austria (to prepare for the Switzerland game) gave me a final chance to test players I was still uncertain of.

2nd ranked France were beaten quite easily and 49th ranked Austria didn't pose any threat whatsoever, with only one shot on goal. With goals from pretty much all the attacking players I was uncertain of, the final squad selection was made harder, not easier, but this is still a pleasant decision. To choose between world class quality or world class quality...

[Mikaelinho]

World Cup 2026 - The squad

After an agonizing couple of hours with a couple of really tough decisions I finally landed on a squad selection.

It's a good mix of old and new, with three players with 100+ caps and seven players with less than ten caps. It's a bit heavy on attacking players, but this is Brazil, right? We're not here to play 0-0 on our way to the final.

The squad holds five current and five former Santos players, which is perhaps one too few. My centre back Vinicius became really pissed off as I cut him, when going from a 30 man squad to a 23 man squad. He was the last player to go, as I opted to go for the experience and attacking power of veteran Bobby Firmino instead.

We played three more friendlies in the weeks leading up to the tournament, again the aim was to find opponents as similar as possible to our group stage opponents.

We beat Germany in a tight game and then followed it up by beating Zambia and then Senegal in two real strolls in the park. I feel that we are sufficiently prepared for the tournament and every player is fit to play. Let's bring that gold back to Brazil!

[Mikaelinho]

If you want to read about the actual World Cup and how we did, I'll have a post out tomorrow about it. After that, it's back to normal again!

[Mikaelinho]

Episode 13 is here!

It's a 2026 World Cup special and if you're interested in how we did, you can read it here.

[Mikaelinho]

2026 Youth intake

I'm back with regular posts again following our World Cup adventure. The first post is the 2026 youth intake, which was actually a nice surprise since the intake preview was really poor. This is the first intake since my U19 coaching staff overhaul, replacing all existing staff with Model Citizens and Perfectionists. I don't expect to see any result regarding personalities of intake players for several years though.

Even though the star rating doesn't tell the whole truth, we at least got one decent player. Let's look at him a little closer!

Richard Pracidelli is 15-years-old, which gives us plenty of time to develop his Ginga Rating of 64 (6th best 15-year-old so far). What is more encouraging is his Model Citizen personality! I don't think our overhaul had anything to do with this, I blame pure luck. The rest of the intake only had one more player with a decent Ginga Rating and this was also the only other player with a positive personality.

Alex Jardin's Ginga Rating of 61 only makes him our 20th best 16-year-old, 5.2 Ginga Rating points below the mean, which makes me less than hopeful that he'll develop into a world class player. However, he's good enough to keep and I'll give him a chance!

 

 

[_Ben_]

Pracidelli is the kind of dream intake player!

Looks like plenty of potential, flair is decent and that personality!! Can't wait to see him develop.

[Mikaelinho]

10 hours ago, _Ben_ said:

Pracidelli is the kind of dream intake player!

Looks like plenty of potential, flair is decent and that personality!! Can't wait to see him develop.

Yes, I agree with you. He has all the ingredients I'm looking for and I have high hopes for him to develop into something great!

[Mikaelinho]

2026 players in

Except for the two players brought in through our intake, we signed another 8 youngsters, making this batch one of the largest so far. Common denominators for this group are that they are not fantastic Ginga wise, but their personalities are better than average!

Romário is the youngster with the highest Ginga Rating (73), making him joint 8th best among 17-year-olds so far. Marcos Leonardo is still Ginga Rating leader among 17-year-olds with 79.

[Mikaelinho]

The 2026 season

I went into the 2026 season feeling pretty confident about our squad. Both quality and depth wise we had a squad good enough to compete for titles both in Brazil and South America. I've spent several years successively upgrading our "back 7", which is our backbone. These are the players that must do their job good enough so that the players further up the pitch can really shine!

These seven players are either really talented or full-fledged world class players in their position. A couple of them are getting quite old, but they have quality to last at least this season.

In front of them is where things get interesting. I have two "front fours" filled with talents. The first four consists of the four players that I have the most faith in at the moment, with super star Gilberto spearheading the attack in his quest for 100 goals. If he reaches that aim this he'll be the 4th player who reaches it in this series and it'll also make him eligible for a move to Europe.

Our second four consists of younger more unproven players and will mostly play games of lesser importance. They will get plenty of game time though, and I hope at least a couple of them reach 10+ goals.

This was just to give you an idea of my approach going into the season. Let's look at the actual season:

Despite me going into the 2026 season with high hopes it ended as a huge disappointment. We managed to win the State Championship, but except for that we were poor. We weren't even close to challenge Grêmio for the Série A title and were humiliated by Flamengo in the semi final of the Copa Libertadores. Well, apparently it was still enough to keep the job since I'm still here, which is basically all that matters. So, how did the players perform?

As predicted, Gilberto was our big star with 35 goals, which put him past the 100 goal mark. Congrats! Behind him no-one really stepped forward. Once again we're in a position where no-one is really close to reaching the 100 goal aim, but the only way to get there is to keep playing games!

[Mikaelinho]

2026 player development

We've added a decent amount of younger players, which shows in the overview below. Back are the green number, which is basically down to this being a batch with a lower average age than for the last couple of seasons.

All players aged 18 or younger had good to great seasons (Eudi being the awful exception) when it came to development. Our first Model Citizen in the youth setup, Juninho, certainly led the way with a 59 total point increase, the third best overall increase in a single season so far.

He wasn't the only one though. Six players made it onto a list of the 15 best developments so far, which is nothing short of exceptional.

Most of the players on this list are 18 years old at the most, playing and training with the U20s. There's one big advantage to keeping them in the U20s, and that is the simple fact that there are a lot less games, which gives them more time to train! The one exception on this list is also the player that I find the most interesting.

In the season that saw him go from 19 to 20 years old, Guiba increased his Ginga Rating by 3, which is good. However, he managed a total 38 point attribute increase, which is nothing short of spectacular for a 20-year-old.

This is by far the best development we've seen so far from a 20-year-old! When you look at the top 5 in this category, the personalities stand out to me. They're not exceptional, there are no Model Citizens or Perfectionists on the list, but all five players on the list have positive personalities.

 

[Mikaelinho]

Player development and personality

If we look at this from a slightly broader perspective, is this still a thing? I know that personality plays a part in the development of players, but how big? That the development is biggest in young players is common knowledge, so if I simply create a list sorted by best development over a season it'll mainly consist of players aged 18 or younger. However, I'm not only interested in development up to age 18. Most players seem to develop fairly well until then. No, I want to see investigate the development from 18 to 21, a stage where some players continue to develop while others completely come to a halt. Is this purely down to CA getting close to PA, or might personality play a part here as well? To investigate this, I look at the individual total point increases per season and compare it to an age weighted mean, to include older players. This is basically a measure of how good the player's development is compared to all other players of the same age. The list below includes at least a few more players older than 18:

This list reflects what was shown in our top5 of the 20-year-olds. Mostly positive personalities, with our only Model Citizen Juninho reaching a 2nd place on this list straight away.

When looking at the total number of seasons I have tracked per personality type, the picture becomes less clear. Balanced is by far our most common personality type, but it's impossible to examine. A Balanced personality type basically only means that the player's set of mostly hidden attributes doesn't fall into any other personality type. The players with Balanced personality has developed slightly worse than the age weighted mean. The second most common personality types for us so far are Fairly Determined (Determination 15-17 and Professionalism 1-15) and Fairly Professional (Professionalism 15-17 + Temperament 11-20 OR Professionalism 18-20 + Temperament 1-10), which doesn't say anything about a player's Ambition. They are both displaying slightly better than the age weighted mean, which was pretty much expected. Light-hearted is the 4th personalty type where we have data on more than ten players. This personality type doesn't say anything about Ambition either, and for Determination and Professionalism it means values between 1 and 18. The Light-hearted players have performed worse than the mean.

We don't have enough data on the rest of the personality types to come to any real conclusions, but the early signs follow logic, with positive results for Model Citizen, Driven and Resilient and negative results for Unambitious. We'll come back to this in the future, when we have some more data.

[karanhsingh]

Great work! 

[Mikaelinho]

Episode 14 is here!

It covers some of the stuff I've talked about above and more. Read it here.

[_Ben_]

2 hours ago, Mikaelinho said:

Player development and personality

If we look at this from a slightly broader perspective, is this still a thing? I know that personality plays a part in the development of players, but how big? That the development is biggest in young players is common knowledge, so if I simply create a list sorted by best development over a season it'll mainly consist of players aged 18 or younger. However, I'm not only interested in development up to age 18. Most players seem to develop fairly well until then. No, I want to see investigate the development from 18 to 21, a stage where some players continue to develop while others completely come to a halt. Is this purely down to CA getting close to PA, or might personality play a part here as well? To investigate this, I look at the individual total point increases per season and compare it to an age weighted mean, to include older players. This is basically a measure of how good the player's development is compared to all other players of the same age. The list below includes at least a few more players older than 18:

This list reflects what was shown in our top5 of the 20-year-olds. Mostly positive personalities, with our only Model Citizen Juninho reaching a 2nd place on this list straight away.

 

When looking at the total number of seasons I have tracked per personality type, the picture becomes less clear. Balanced is by far our most common personality type, but it's impossible to examine. A Balanced personality type basically only means that the player's set of mostly hidden attributes doesn't fall into any other personality type. The players with Balanced personality has developed slightly worse than the age weighted mean. The second most common personality types for us so far are Fairly Determined (Determination 15-17 and Professionalism 1-15) and Fairly Professional (Professionalism 15-17 + Temperament 11-20 OR Professionalism 18-20 + Temperament 1-10), which doesn't say anything about a player's Ambition. They are both displaying slightly better than the age weighted mean, which was pretty much expected. Light-hearted is the 4th personalty type where we have data on more than ten players. This personality type doesn't say anything about Ambition either, and for Determination and Professionalism it means values between 1 and 18. The Light-hearted players have performed worse than the mean.

 

We don't have enough data on the rest of the personality types to come to any real conclusions, but the early signs follow logic, with positive results for Model Citizen, Driven and Resilient and negative results for Unambitious. We'll come back to this in the future, when we have some more data.

 

This is it! 

Some save to save comparative data should help hammer home what I've been trying to explore. I've ordered your list and presented it side by side with mine:

Whilst we are using different methods to calculate improvement, we can still order them on best average improvement to worst. I can't calculate the difference between my improvement to yours but that's another story!

 

I have also attempted a very brash percentile rank so that I can compare lists of different sizes (I really couldn't get my Friday brain thinking of anything better but I'm open to ideas). For example - Fickle, for me, is the 100th percentile, whereas the 56th for you - which means, in your game - they are developing 'better.'

-----

Firstly, I think the best thing to do is to largely ignore anomalous data or data which hasn't got enough results to validate it - so I lose my Spirited, Jovial, Casual, Loyal and Fickle as they are significantly lower than some of the data captures. Unfortunately, that removes Model Citizen from your data. I'm going to leave it on but talk about the other personalities instead.

I'll split it into two basic categories:

What is the same?

• Percentiles for Driven and F.Pro are similar. This is interesting as Driven doesn't have personality indicator (Determination 18-20, Ambition 12-20).
• Unambitious (Ambition 1-5, Loyalty 11-20, Determination <18, Professionalism <18, Leader <19) is bad in both, but again - there is a slight difference in mine and that is because it is quite loose in terms of professionalism and determination and my 'Squad's general character' is high in both of those areas.
• Balanced is pretty low across the board and also common in both sets of intakes.

What is different?

• Your Fairly Sporting (Sportsmanship 15-20, Determination 10-14, Ambition 1-14, Professionalism <15) are performing way better than mine.
• My sole Sporting (Sportsmanship 18-19, Determination 1-9, Professionalism <18, Leader <19) entry would suggest it's probably anomalous compared to yours, and by looking at the low determination and no assurance of professionalism - especially as you only have Fairly Sporting players.

-----

Much, much more to dissect from this. Please continue to track - I love it!

[Mikaelinho]

23 minutes ago, _Ben_ said:

This is it! 

Some save to save comparative data should help hammer home what I've been trying to explore. I've ordered your list and presented it side by side with mine:

Whilst we are using different methods to calculate improvement, we can still order them on best average improvement to worst. I can't calculate the difference between my improvement to yours but that's another story!

 

I have also attempted a very brash percentile rank so that I can compare lists of different sizes (I really couldn't get my Friday brain thinking of anything better but I'm open to ideas). For example - Fickle, for me, is the 100th percentile, whereas the 56th for you - which means, in your game - they are developing 'better.'

-----

Firstly, I think the best thing to do is to largely ignore anomalous data or data which hasn't got enough results to validate it - so I lose my Spirited, Jovial, Casual, Loyal and Fickle as they are significantly lower than some of the data captures. Unfortunately, that removes Model Citizen from your data. I'm going to leave it on but talk about the other personalities instead.

I'll split it into two basic categories:

What is the same?

• Percentiles for Driven and F.Pro are similar. This is interesting as Driven doesn't have personality indicator (Determination 18-20, Ambition 12-20).
• Unambitious (Ambition 1-5, Loyalty 11-20, Determination <18, Professionalism <18, Leader <19) is bad in both, but again - there is a slight difference in mine and that is because it is quite loose in terms of professionalism and determination and my 'Squad's general character' is high in both of those areas.
• Balanced is pretty low across the board and also common in both sets of intakes.

What is different?

• Your Fairly Sporting (Sportsmanship 15-20, Determination 10-14, Ambition 1-14, Professionalism <15) are performing way better than mine.
• My sole Sporting (Sportsmanship 18-19, Determination 1-9, Professionalism <18, Leader <19) entry would suggest it's probably anomalous compared to yours, and by looking at the low determination and no assurance of professionalism - especially as you only have Fairly Sporting players.

-----

Much, much more to dissect from this. Please continue to track - I love it!

Yes! I'm loving this! I took a lot of inspiration from your way of tracking this correlation and tried to do it in a similar fashion. Like you say, even though we're not exactly tracking the same thing we can still use the same trends. It's gonna be interesting to see what happens with the purely positive and negative personalities as we get more data on these. The broader personality types are tougher to draw any real conclusions from. I also have this idea that Determination is the main factor for developing players 15-17 years old, but that Ambition becomes more important as they grow older. I don't have the data to back this up, but I'm playing around with a few different ways to test this.

[Mikaelinho]

Revisiting my U20 coaching staff

One year has passed since I signed ten (10) new members for the U20 coaching staff, all of them Model Citizens or Perfectionists. During this first year I've not noticed any significant effect on personality changes in the U20 squad or youth intake, but I wasn't expecting that either. All the coaches have studied for exactly one (1) coaching badge each and as a result they've all improved. Below there's a table of their progression this year:

As you can see there's been some pretty decent improvements, even though they all started from a pretty low level attributes wise. One of them now have the National B badge, six coaches have the National A badge, two have the Continental C and our U20 manager Pepe has the Continental A badge. He is also the person with the smallest increase to his attributes by far.  Three attributes didn't change at all; Working with Youngsters, Adaptability and Level of Discipline.

[ShaunG95]

Was Lazaro not very good on this save? I noticed you hadn't signed him. Gabriel Veron could have been a shout too, although I don't think he'd have come close to the ginga rating from my own experience with him.

[Mikaelinho]

38 minutes ago, ShaunG95 said:

Was Lazaro not very good on this save? I noticed you hadn't signed him. Gabriel Veron could have been a shout too, although I don't think he'd have come close to the ginga rating from my own experience with him.

Lázaro was signed in 2020 with a Ginga Rating of 69 and released on a free transfer two years later after a very modest Ginga Rating increase to 72. Gabriel Veron was very much on the radar, but I never signed him. INstead he left for Grêmio in 2025 and recently signed for Real Madrid in early 2027. His Ginga Rating as a 24-year-old is a decent 79.

[ShaunG95]

6 minutes ago, Mikaelinho said:

Lázaro was signed in 2020 with a Ginga Rating of 69 and released on a free transfer two years later after a very modest Ginga Rating increase to 72. Gabriel Veron was very much on the radar, but I never signed him. INstead he left for Grêmio in 2025 and recently signed for Real Madrid in early 2027. His Ginga Rating as a 24-year-old is a decent 79.

Lazaro has a Ginge Rating of 79 on my save but I don't think he's even reached his potential yet, I will update you on his progress!

[_Ben_]

On 15/05/2020 at 15:24, Mikaelinho said:

Revisiting my U20 coaching staff

One year has passed since I signed ten (10) new members for the U20 coaching staff, all of them Model Citizens or Perfectionists. During this first year I've not noticed any significant effect on personality changes in the U20 squad or youth intake, but I wasn't expecting that either. All the coaches have studied for exactly one (1) coaching badge each and as a result they've all improved. Below there's a table of their progression this year:

As you can see there's been some pretty decent improvements, even though they all started from a pretty low level attributes wise. One of them now have the National B badge, six coaches have the National A badge, two have the Continental C and our U20 manager Pepe has the Continental A badge. He is also the person with the smallest increase to his attributes by far.  Three attributes didn't change at all; Working with Youngsters, Adaptability and Level of Discipline.

Would you say that, from a coaching development perspective, that this has legs to be a long term good idea? I haven't tracked development of coaches any more than just anecdotally for one or two of them.

[Mikaelinho]

Just now, _Ben_ said:

Would you say that, from a coaching development perspective, that this has legs to be a long term good idea? I haven't tracked development of coaches any more than just anecdotally for one or two of them.

I'm not sure yet, I need more data, but after the first year it looks promising! I don't know if their superb personalities mean that they improve quicker as coaches as well. Time will tell I guess! An interesting route to go down though imo, expecially IF it will lead to positive effects on player personalities as well!

[keeper#1]

Just discovered this thread.  A very fun concept and great read.

[Mikaelinho]

My discussions with @_Ben_ over in his brilliant thread led me to do a bit of research around Current and Potential Ability, which resulted in a blog post. It's not exactly about this series, but if you want to read it anyway you can find it here:

FM Guide: The Concepts of Current and Potential Ability

[Mikaelinho]

Early 2027 transfers

Two different and interesting transfer dealings have been made so far in 2027.

Neymar finally "comes home" to Santos FC after agreeing terms in a free transfer deal. At age 35 he still looks brilliant when it comes to technical and mental attributes. His poor physical status though, makes him unlikely to act as a regular starter for us. The main reason for bringing him in is to try to revive the Mentoring programme at the club. His Perfectionist personality coupled with 100+ first team games for the club makes him, at least in theory, into a great mentor!

The other piece of business is this:

Superstar Gilberto leaves us after raching the 100 goal aim for the club. I kept lowering the requested transfer fee for him in an attempt to get him to Europe and finally Benfica took the bait! Ideally I would have liked him to go to a better club/league, but Benfica have a pretty good squad with Thomas Tuchel at the helm, so I hope for at least domestic glory for Gilberto!

[keeper#1]

13 hours ago, Mikaelinho said:

My discussions with @_Ben_ over in his brilliant thread led me to do a bit of research around Current and Potential Ability, which resulted in a blog post. It's not exactly about this series, but if you want to read it anyway you can find it here:

FM Guide: The Concepts of Current and Potential Ability

I can see why the "footed-ness" of a player making a big difference in CA.  A one-footed player is easier to defend (can get pushed onto his weaker foot, defenders can defend his strong side, etc.).  A "one and half footed" player is a bit more difficult because of the stronger weak foot.  The player has more options when in possession and becomes hard to defend off the ball.  A two-footed players is the most difficult to defend both on and off the ball. 

[karanhsingh]

I've looked into this one and two footed thing a lot and had several discussions on the SI forums about it. Personally I really don't like the way it plays out in the game. As you said if a player is two footed it eats up a lot of his attributes and ALL the attributes are then worse off to compensate. 

That to me doesn't make sense. I think they should introduce a new attribute called weaker foot or something which is between 1and 20 like the others. And in general I feel like it should take up less CA points. 

Also my personal experience with FM is that one footed players outperform two footed players of the same CA rating every single time. Which also suggests to me they have allocated too much to this. 

[Mikaelinho]

3 hours ago, karanhsingh said:

I've looked into this one and two footed thing a lot and had several discussions on the SI forums about it. Personally I really don't like the way it plays out in the game. As you said if a player is two footed it eats up a lot of his attributes and ALL the attributes are then worse off to compensate. 

That to me doesn't make sense. I think they should introduce a new attribute called weaker foot or something which is between 1and 20 like the others. And in general I feel like it should take up less CA points. 

Also my personal experience with FM is that one footed players outperform two footed players of the same CA rating every single time. Which also suggests to me they have allocated too much to this. 

That is my opinion as well.

[Mikaelinho]

2027 youth intake

The intake preview had suggested that we were getting at least decent players in all the attacking positions, which made me sightly hopeful.

The actual intake looked a bit underwhelming, except for one player; Willian. We've all been there before though, getting our hopes up by a 5 star potential and then the player doesn't look all that good. Let's take a look at Willian then:

Oh my. This guy looks fantastic! Ginga Rating doesn't look amazing but he is very well-rounded. A decent personality that can hopefully be improved by mentoring from Neymar himself! I'm hopeful!

 

[karanhsingh]

1 hour ago, Mikaelinho said:

That is my opinion as well.

We should do another thread at some point and try to persuade the good folks at SI! 

This Willian fellow looks fantastic meanwhile! 

[noikeee]

This is a truly fascinating thread, well done. Makes me want to try youth developing in Brazil or at least some other corner of South America. In fact I think I might well end up doing that, given we're all gonna be stuck at home for a long time during this year... 

What's your approach to compiling all those stats, surely you're not doing that manually introducing every attribute of every player into the Excel sheet every year? Is there a way to automate things or at least speed it up a bit? I'd love to do some attribute tracking, but see it as way too much work if it needs to be done manually. 

[Mikaelinho]

19 hours ago, noikeee said:

This is a truly fascinating thread, well done. Makes me want to try youth developing in Brazil or at least some other corner of South America. In fact I think I might well end up doing that, given we're all gonna be stuck at home for a long time during this year... 

What's your approach to compiling all those stats, surely you're not doing that manually introducing every attribute of every player into the Excel sheet every year? Is there a way to automate things or at least speed it up a bit? I'd love to do some attribute tracking, but see it as way too much work if it needs to be done manually. 

I am actually doing most of the data collection manually for this save. I have created macros that made the Excel life a bit easier in previous saves, but as I've kept adding different kinds of data to the spreadsheet, I've been doing in manually. This takes up quite a bit of time now, even though I consider it a labour of love. My second favourite game behind Football Manager is Excel Spreadsheet Manager! 

[_Ben_]

15 hours ago, Mikaelinho said:

I am actually doing most of the data collection manually for this save. I have created macros that made the Excel life a bit easier in previous saves, but as I've kept adding different kinds of data to the spreadsheet, I've been doing in manually. This takes up quite a bit of time now, even though I consider it a labour of love. 

I've got into a process of kind of setting up the tabs, formula etc for 5 seasons at a time so I spent an hour or so doing the next five years worth and then it's just a copy and paste through. 

15 hours ago, Mikaelinho said:

My second favourite game behind Football Manager is Excel Spreadsheet Manager! 

This has been the story of FM20 for me! 

[_Ben_]

On 21/05/2020 at 09:03, Mikaelinho said:

Oh my. This guy looks fantastic! Ginga Rating doesn't look amazing but he is very well-rounded. A decent personality that can hopefully be improved by mentoring from Neymar himself! I'm hopeful!

With lockdown massive speeding up my play time, I really think that I'm going to achieve all I want with Guadalajara in a calendar month or so and it's newgens like this that confirm I know where I want to go next! My new laptop should handle the extended state leagues which means I can jump in with my club and start my whole process off again!

[Djuicer]

This is quality. Keep it up 

[Mikaelinho]

I'm just gonna leave this here...

If you want me you know where to find me.

On the floor.

Crying. 

Still or again doesn't matter...

[Carambau]

Oh no!!!!

From where do you get those player faces btw?

Edited May 25, 2020 by Carambau

[Tilling]

1 hour ago, Mikaelinho said:

I'm just gonna leave this here...

If you want me you know where to find me.

On the floor.

Crying. 

Still or again doesn't matter...

I thought the youth intake was fixed this year? Like when you get the notification about who the players are, that's actually when your intake is decided. Fingers crossed for you that this is the case!

[karanhsingh]

Damn that sucks!!

[Mikaelinho]

4 hours ago, Tilling said:

I thought the youth intake was fixed this year? Like when you get the notification about who the players are, that's actually when your intake is decided. Fingers crossed for you that this is the case!

Oh, I do hope so too!

[Mikaelinho]

5 hours ago, Mikaelinho said:

Oh, I do hope so too!

I got a new Willian! A very different kind of player than the first, but he still looks good!

 

[Jimbokav1971]

On 05/05/2020 at 10:41, Mikaelinho said:

I'm playing around a bit with Excel and this is the result so far:

A scatter plot showing the correlation between starting Ginga Rating at the beginning of the year (x axis) and increase/decrease in Ginga Rating at the end of the year (y axis). The different colours/ages are:

15 to 16: red
16 to 17: orange
17 to 18: yellow
18 to 19: green
19 to 20: blue
20 to 21: purple

As you can see the trend is fairly easy to spot. A low Ginga Rating at the start of the year is correlated with a high Ginga Rating increase during the year. Perhaps not that surprising and I'm not even sure if it's the negative correlation between age and development that we're seeing or if it's actually a negative correlation between starting Ginga Rating and Ginga Rating increase. Probably a bit of both!

I'm really sorry but I have read this a few times and I just haven't got a clue what it's showing. 

Would you mind dumbing it down and explaining it for me please.

[Mikaelinho]

1 minute ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

I'm really sorry but I have read this a few times and I just haven't got a clue what it's showing. 

Would you mind dumbing it down and explaining it for me please.

Haha, half of the time I don't understand myself either. I'm gonna try to explain it to the best of my ability and I'll include the scatter plot form the original post again. 

On the horizontal axis you have each player's Ginga Rating at the start of a season. On the vertical axis you have the total Ginga Rating development over the season that followed. The different colours indicate how old the player was during this season. So for example the yellow dot up in the left shows a player who started the year as a 17-year-old with a Ginga Rating of 51(x axis) and during the season that followed increased his Ginga Rating by 10 (y axis).

If the player went from 15yo to 16yo: red
16 to 17: orange
17 to 18: yellow
18 to 19: green
19 to 20: blue
20 to 21: purple

What it shows is that players with a High Ginga Rating develop less than players with a low Ginga Rating and that older players develop less than younger players. Not mind blowing insights I guess, but still...

[Jimbokav1971]

Thank you.

I know you have touched on staff at your club, but are you doing anything to try and focus Youth Intake generation of players in positions/roles that are most likely to fit into the requires style that you want? HoYD preferred formations & tactical/playing style? 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Jimbokav1971

[Mikaelinho]

Yes, I had very specific ideas in mind when searching for a HoYD.

I wanted a HoYD with Model Citizen or Perfectionist personality first of all. Secondly I wanted 4-2-3-1 as the preferred formation. I also wanted a high "Working With Youngsters" and high JPA+JPP to not completely lead me down the wrong track when presenting me with his thoughts on youth intake players. Based on this I signed the guy above, Sebastian Pait.

More often than not I've had players with preferrable skill sets, ie attacking players with at least decent Ginga Rating, as the top prospect coming through my intakes. The first intake, the only intake that Pait wasn't "in charge of" gave me a great centre back, but after that it's mainly been attacking players. Since I overhauled the U20s coaching staff two years ago, focusing entirely on personality types, the best player (according to PPA) coming through each of the last two intakes has also been a Model Citizen. I blame dumb luck. 

[Gdawg69]

On 15/04/2020 at 14:26, _Ben_ said:

You know what - I actually loved the idea of playing your best striker prospect at wing back! I'm in the process of converting a winger who can't dribble or score into a full back and love these kind of experiments!

Any luck of moving Kaio Jorge on yet? He's had a fairly non-descript career in my game - moving for Everton for €17m and then Fener for €10m:

Who are you best 'real' prospects? I will have a look at how they've progressed in my game.

Hi Ben,

I have just come across this skin which appears allows you to play the game without knowing the exact attributes of each play, more just their range.

Can I ask, how do you do this? It looks lovely and i've toyed with this previously on an FM 19 save but this looks even better?

[Mikaelinho]

I'm sorry there hasn't been any updates lately. I've been hit by a few real life things that has taken up my time, but I fully intend to keep this going. If you wanna know what happens in the meantime I've started streaming the save on a semi-regular basis at twitch.tv/mikaelinhofm.

 

[Mikaelinho]

2027 development overview

Another excellent year development wise. Four of our older players struggled, but on the other end of the spectrum several players excelled in training!

Three players make it onto the All-time Top 10, with Vinicius Rodrigo beating Cesinha's massive development from 2021 by 4 points!

I don't know what's more impressive, his 72 attribute point improvement or him gaining 9kgs over a year! Either way, they are both amazing accomplishments!

[Mikaelinho]

Richard Pracidelli, last season's most promising intake player, certainly hit the ground running! His 66 point total increase is the third highest ever and puts him on a 77 Ginga Rating. Hopefully his Model Citizen personality will secure further development in the coming seasons!

[Ausie]

Wow Vinicius still only 17. What’s his potential ability star rating? Do you give that much notice or decide for yourself?