With the new installment of Football Manager, everybody wants to become the best manager of all time. That will naturally take time in game and requires lots of effort from players. These guides will help you to accelerate this process whilst we do the leg-work for you and give you the best tips for 2019. Here’s some tips on Youth Development

These guides on Youth Development will cover all areas of the game regarding producing young players. I plan to make a few of these articles as covering all the information in one article might be a bit overwhelming! I plan to make guides on the following topics and will link them as I complete them:

1. Introduction: Regens/Newgens and Youth Ratings for top Countries and Clubs.

2. Scouting: Youth Intakes, What to look for in young players and how to sign them.

3. Facilities: How to improve your facilities to maximize your youth academy.

4. Development: How to grow and develop young talent and knowing when to offload.

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Part 1: What are Newgens/Regens?

For those unaware, in Football Manager players will naturally retire due to old age in game. To compensate for this players are brought into each clubs youth academy on certain days each season. In older versions of the game the date was fixed but in later editions the date seems to fluctuate each year, for most European clubs its around early March. The players brought in are often referred to as ‘Regens’ or ‘Newgens’ due to their computer image.

Whilst they don’t look particularly human, the players will overtake the current series of players. This differs from FIFA as players aren’t literally re-created and you will always have an Argentine attacker as the best player in the world. The game generates players based on factors including country and club facilities.

As stated above, the game uses data about a country that the club is based as well as the club itself to generate players. For countries, its one variable known at ‘Youth Rating‘. This is an integer between 0 and 200, with 200 being the best and 0 being the worst.

Regarding clubs there are multiple factors that affect the current and potential ability of youth players. We are also unsure as to which factors have more of an impact. However those factors are: , Youth Facilities Youth Coaching, Youth Importance and Youth Recruitment.

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Part 2: Top Countries to Scout

Country	Continent	Youth Rating
Brazil	South America	163
Germany	Europe	155
Italy	Europe	144
Spain	Europe	140
France	Europe	140
Argentina	South America	140
Egypt	Africa	138
Turkey	Europe	124
Holland	Europe	122
England	Europe	120
Mexico	North America	120
Nigeria	Africa	120
Russia	Europe	118
Colombia	South America	117
Portugal	Europe	114
Japan	Asia	112
Belgium	Europe	110
South Korea	Asia	110
U.S.A.	North America	110
Jordan	Asia	107

The above graph shows the top countries in the world for producing raw talent, regardless of clubs. Therefore if every club in the game had the same youth facilities then this would closely resemble the world rankings.

However this raises some concerns; Egypt is significantly above England and Holland? Nigeria are above Portugal? Belgium have one of the best squads in the world and they are beaten by Japan? That is due to the other major factor: Clubs! This also explains why countries such as Sweden (Zlatan Ibrahimović), Ukraine (Andriy Shevchenko)  and Wales (Gareth Bale) occasionally produce incredible talent with less consistency.

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Part 3: Top Clubs to Scout

Again, the four factors affecting youth development for clubs are Youth Facilities (YF), Youth Coaching (YC), Youth Importance (YI) and Youth Recruitment (YR) Each of these variables for each club is an integer between 0 and 20. As part of these guides I will be looking into how the four factors affect youth development.

For now though, I will list the teams with the best in each category, this means when I find my results I can use that list to suggest the best clubs to search. I’m assuming each variable affects the result in a different way. I’m looking to create a function in which you input all the data and it gives you a score. That score will tell you how good that club is at developing youth talent.

Youth Facilities:

In game, the actual values aren’t displayed, but text is used. The general progression of Youth facilities are as follows:

Poor > Basic > Below Average > Adequate > Average > Good > Great > Excellent > Superb > State of the Art

Clubs with the best Youth Facilities are as follows:

Club	Nation	Youth Facilities
FC RB Salzburg	Austria	20
Anderlecht	Belgium	19
Man Utd	England	20
Tottenham	England	20
Burton	England	20
Chelsea	England	20
Man City	England	20
CFFP	France	20
FC Bayern	Germany	19
RB Leipzig	Germany	19
Sporting	Portugal	19
SLB	Portugal	20
Krasnodar	Russia	20
Barcelona	Spain	20
Basel	Switzerland	19
Toronto FC	U.S.A.	19
Dynamo Kyiv	Ukraine	20

Youth Coaching:

Again the actual values aren’t displayed, but text is used. The general progression of youth coaching are as follows:

Minimal > Fairly Basic > Average > Adequate > Good > Excellent > Exceptional

Clubs with the best Youth Facilities are as follows:

Club	Nation	Youth Coaching
Rapid Vienna	Austria	18
FC RB Salzburg	Austria	19
Deportivo Estudiantil	Colombia	18
Envigado F.C.	Colombia	18
Man Utd	England	18
Chelsea	England	18
Ajax	Holland	18
Feyenoord	Holland	18
Olimpia (HON)	Honduras	19
CD Marathón	Honduras	18
Sporting	Portugal	18
SLB	Portugal	19
FCP	Portugal	19
FC Viitorul	Romania	19
Barcelona	Spain	18
R. Madrid	Spain	18
IF Brommapojkarna	Sweden	18
Defensor Sporting	Uruguay	19
Danubio	Uruguay	18

Youth Importance:

Youth importance has been harder to exactly pin down what it does, however I’m hoping that more on Youth importance will be revealed in my experiments in the next post. Also I think that this is the only stat which cannot be improved in the same way as facilities, recruitment and coaching as all can be improved via board requests. As 1000’s of clubs have the maximum value for this stat, it wouldn’t make sense to list them as it is a trivial case.

Youth Recruitment:

Unsurprisingly the actual values aren’t displayed, but text is used. The general progression of youth recruitment are as follows:

No (Youth Recruitment) > Limited > Basic > Fairly Basic > Average > Above Average > Established > Well Established > Extensive

This category is more common to have higher values. However I will list some notable clubs here, all of which having 20/20 youth recruitment.

Club	Nation	Club	Nation
River	Argentina	Renato Cesarini	Argentina
Boca	Argentina	South Melbourne	Australia
FC RB Salzburg	Austria	SAN	Brazil
SPO	Brazil	Colo Colo	Chile
Shandong	China	Shanggang	China
Dinamo	Croatia	FC Midtjylland	Denmark
OL	France	VfB Stuttgart	Germany
Olympiakos	Greece	Cork City	Ireland
Atalanta	Italy	Chivas	Mexico
Rosenborg	Norway	Sporting	Portugal
SLB	Portugal	FC Viitorul	Romania
Celtic	Scotland	Rangers	Scotland
Partizan	Serbia	Red Star	Serbia

From this, you should be able to find some clubs that produce some good players, some clubs that aren’t on this list may produce better players, but these clubs will consistently produce the better players on average.

As I do more research into the youth development aspect of this game. I may revisit this article and update where I see necessary. Thank you very much for reading and I hope you learnt something new!

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