Head of Youth Development – Football Manager Staff Role and Responsibilities

Football Manager Staff Role Head of Youth Development

The staff role Head of youth Development is one of my favorite backroom staff members in Football Manager. It was introduced with the release of Football Manager 2013 but have been improved further for FM14. Sports Interactive is now reaching out a hand to those of us who like youth development and nurture their own wonderkids and promising talents. The Football Manager backroom staff role Head of Youth Development will help you with that.

There are a lot of different things he can be assigned to and be responsible for. How you take advantage of his strengths will aid your club for many years to come. The new backroom staff role will help and assist you in a number of things, it all depends on your management style. Most importantly will he be in charge of youth development and youth recruitment. He will also be a valuable member of the youth coaching team, as he is heavily involved with daily training.

This Football Manager guide will give you a deeper insight to the backroom staff role Head of Youth Development. Here we will teach you how to find the best Head of Youth Development. You will also get more information about his staff responsibilities and how you can take advantage of his strength for a better youth intake and benefit from his personality in the clubs youth development.

Head of Youth Development Staff responsibilities

The Head of Youth Development is a very important Football Manager staff role. The Head of Youth Development (HoYD) will share some of the responsibilities as the Under-18/19 Manager. While the Under-18 Manager will be more responsible for Match Preparation (Team Training), manage squad selections and be in charge of match assignments (fixtures), such as handle team talks, do necessary adjustments to match tactics and so on, the HoYD will be in charge of youth recruitment.

Lets take a closer look on the Football Manager backroom staff head of youth developments responsibilities and requirements. We will order the list below after what we believe should be his main assignments and attach them to the required staff attributes.

Staff Responsibilities on Youth Development and Recruitment

The HoYD will bring new youth players into the club and inform you about their development. His feedback will provide you with information about their training progress and other recommendations for improved player development.

1. The staff responsibilities of HoYD is directly tied to the clubs youth intake. As mentioned in the guide about the annual youth intake, you will benefit from the scouting knowledge of the staff personnel. This means that it can be valuable to pick a HoYD with a scouting knowledge from nations with high youth rating – which influence on the quality of regens production. Nations such as Brazil, Argentina, Germany, England, Spain or Italy can be worthy countries to search for a new HoYD in.

2. His personality will also be important. Selecting an HoYD who has an positive personality will most often let you see youth players with similar personalities coming through the annual youth intake, as your excellent head of youth development will often select youth players with similar personality like himself. I tend to look for backroom staffs with personalities such as Model Professional, Professional, Resolute, Determined or fairly Determined.

3. His tactical preferences can influence on the type of youth players coming through in the annual youth intake. It will be important to select an HoYD with some of the same preferences as your playing style (passing style / playing mentality) and the choice of preferred formation.

The Head of Youth Development should be selected as your personal assistant in regard to youth development. He will provide imprortant feedback and information about the progress and development rate in training of your youngsters. The HoYD will make you able keep track of young talents who should be given more chances in the first team, pluss provide you some hints of what you have done right in youth development as well.

Staff Responsibilities in Training – Team Training and Individual Training for the Youth Team

The Head of youth Development will be one of the youth coaching staff, which reduces their workload. As the board set limitations to the allowed number of coaches, it’s a relief the Head of Youth Development can be set to one or more coaching areas, as you can save one of the available spots.

The Head of youth Development can be handle every department of training for the Under-18 Squad. Depending on the coaching area the HoYD is assigned to, you should/could look for a backroom staff member with decent level of Tactical Coaching. Then he will be a good choice for three of five coaching areas; defensive, tactical and attacking coaching category in Football Manager.

This will make him closer attached to youth development and nurturing of the clubs youngsters. What you select in this department should be determined by comparison of HoYD and Under-18 Manager – who have the best coaching attributes? There are three different responsibilities you can assign your HoYD to – or share responsibilities with the U18 Manager.

A) Runs general team training for youth squads (Under-18, Under-19)
B) Sets up individual training for youth players
C) Runs match training for Under-19 squad

1. Since the HoYD can be involved with coaching the youth squad he will require good Working with the Youth.

2. As all other Football Manager coaches, the HoYD will require the same coaching attributes as your 5-star first team coaches. This means that the levels of discipline, motivation and determination will affect his coaching star ratings in additional to specific coaching attributes.

3. Tactical knowledge will be important not only in regard to the annual youth intake but also for setting the correct match training / preparations – point C. A comparison between Under-18 Manager and Head of youth dev. in regard to tactical knowledge and judging player potential should be done in order to select the best of those two to run match training for U18/19 squad.

Staff Responsibilities on Transfers and Contracts – (Incoming / Outgoing and Renewals)

The Head of Youth Dev. will not only have assignments related to coaching and youth recruitment. You can also use him for administrative choirs such as handling incoming and outgoing transfers, which we’ll look closer to in this chapter. The HoYD can be responsible for some of the same tasks as the director of football. The only difference is that the HoYD will manage transfers related to your youth team – Under-18 / Under-19 squad. There are X staff responsibilities related to transfers for the Head of Youth Dev.

Transfers (Incoming)

A) Finds and make offers for young players for the future
B) Handles new signing contract negotiations for players in your Youth Team
C) Finalizes signings for young players for the future

Transfers (Outgoing)

A) Finds a new club for Youth Team players listed for transfer/loan

Contract Renewals

A) Decides which Youth Team Players’ contracts to extend and handle contract negotiations

1. In order to find suitable youngsters who can improve the current squad depth are Judging player ability and Judging player potential. The scout attribute Judging player potential is very important if the Head of youth Development is responsible for finding new talents – predict their potential. His and the clubs scouting knowledge will be important in order to increase the amount of available talents.

JPA will be important together with determination and man management for assignments related to decisions about contract renewals, but can also be important in issues related to spotting new talents and provide feedback about development rate.

2. A good staff member in this department will require good Motivation and Determination in order to secure the signature of new promising talents. Determination and motivation will also be related to contract renewals and be important in order to secure unwanted youngsters to leave the club on loan/transfers.

3. If he should find new talents and bring them into the club he will also require a good scouting knowledge and a decent level of reputation; make it more likely that young talents wants to come to your club and that the HoYD knows of the best young players within a certain region. No ambitious player will never give their signature to an unknown representant of a mediocre club.

Other Assignments related to this Staff Role

Related to the assignments discussed above, will the HoYD provide you with information about young players who are eligible for professional contracts, or who can be offered a new contract. No matter if you take advantage of the staff role head of youth development or not, all players placed on the “Development List” will be automatically available for loan. The Development list can be found under the player profile sub tab Transfers. You can add all players in your club under the age of 23 in the Development List.

The backroom staff member in charge of outgoing transfers will look to develop players placed in the Development list, by sending them out on loan to a suitable club.

Personal Recommendation on Staff Responsibilities for Head of Youth Development

For those of you who have read our other guides to Football Manager staff roles, you will notice that the staff responsibilities of the Head of Youth Development are similar to the Assistant Manager, Director of Football or Under-18 manager, as all these staff roles can be elected to be in charge of the staff responsibilities covered above.

For me there are some ground rules I go by when setting up the Head of Youth Developments staff responsibilities.

1) No matter which club I’m managing, I always let the Head of youth Development be responsible for only a few tasks. In other words, I set up his staff responsibilities according to the intentions Sports Interactive had when introducing this staff role aka youth recruitment.

2) For the manager in charge, it would not only be wise, but good team management to reduce your own workload and hand over some of the tasks to the Head of Youth Development. Of course, he should not be assigned to all of the staff responsibilities listed above, as it would require a broad set of good staff attributes to succeed in his job. Instead it is favorable to narrow his responsibilities and assign a staff member who is extremely good at what he shall do, not what he can do.

My recommendations and selections of aassignements when setting up staff responsibilities for the Head of Youth Development are:

Note!
The assignments labelled with blue markers depends of your preferences in additional to the comparison between the strength and quality of Under-18 Manager and HoYD. Do remember that your Director of Football or Assistant Manager can also handle these responsibilities marked with a blue dot.

The red labels are those I select the HoYD to handle no matter of level of attributes on your clubs Under-18 Manager.

Head of Youth Development Staff Role vs Director of Football: Should I Hire One?

From the staff responsibilities above you understand quickly that he can do a wide range of tasks related to your youth team and their players’ development. As dscovered above, his staff attributes and staff profile could be compared to another Football Manager staff role, the Director of Football. One question may come to your mind now – Should I hire an Head of youth development backroom staff or let the Director of Football or Under-18 Manager handle his responsibilities? Let’s take a closer look to this question.

The Director of Football will never be able to participate in youth coaching team, as it is one of few administrative staff roles in Football Manager. Since he isn’t part of the coaching team, he won’t be able to provide the same inside information to the development and progress of the players, which is required by you to make a good judgement in contract and transfer affairs. You need to trust the coaches recommendations, right? And here is one of the important assets related to the issue of signing a Head of Youth Development; the closeness to the everyday training and the reduction of training workload.

For a minor club which is financial restricted signing an Under-18 Manager can be as good as appointing an HoYD. The Under-18 Manager will have more responsibilities and handle “everything” about the Youth Team, but you can save some few bucks.

By not applying an HoYD you will restrict the number of youth coaches available, which is very restricted as it is. Appointing an HoyD will not only reduce the coaches training workload but also reduce the responsibilities of the Under-19 / U18 Manager..

The Main Advantages of Appointing an Head of Youth Development

There are many good reasons for why you should take advantage of the new staff role Head of Youth Development. Not only is youth development one of the most important tasks for any club in the modern world of soccer and Football Manager, as developing your own youth players can save money and be good for club finances, but as mentioned earlier – he will add more quality and experience to the youth coaching team. Here are some of the main advantages of buying a good Head of youth Development staff:

– A specific staff to supervise and monitor the progress of youth players only (under-18, Under-19, under-20).
– is part of the coaching team and a member of the youth coaches – can cover one or more training categories.
– His scouting/nation knowledge will influence in future youth intakes, which may give you regens/newgens from his nation of origin.
– His personality can rub onto the youth talents in the aim of developing professional and determined players for the future.
– he would be the main link between you and the ongoing youth coaching and will give you valuable feedback on the clubs youth recruitment.
– retired players will have Head of Youth development or Director of Football as desired careers in FM14.