Do you want to nurture your most promising talents into wonderkids in Football Manager? In this ultimate youth development guide we will take a closer look at how to develop players in Football Manager.
Our Football Manager youth development guide goes into great detail about everything you need to know about when developing your young players into potential wonderkids. Even though there are no set rules on how to develop players to the best effect, you can use our tips as simple guidelines.
When creating a youth development project, you will discover that developing youth in football Manager is far from simple. Often, you will see varying degrees of results from players to players. With our comprehensive guide to youth development in Football Manager you’ll be able to cover the project from all angles by getting some tried and tested methods that describes how I approach the challenging task of developing youth.
Throughout the ultimate youth development guide for Football Manager 2023 by Passion4FM.com you will get a better understanding of how the infrastructure at the club may aid the development of your best young players, why game time and match experience may be valuable, as well as looking closer at how to approach youth development in Football Manager in regard to setting up training for your Under-18 squad.
You will receive essential youth development tips to develop better players by taking a closer look at all the different aspects of individual training to nurture your best young players into first team starters.
Set up a more effective youth development project in Football Manager with these tips!
This youth development guide is provided together with our content creator FranklyFM84, who have put together a number of FM23 Youth development tips and experiments. Check out one of his amazing youth development tutorials in the video below.
1. The importance of training facilities
If you shall succeed with youth development, one of the primary aspects of developing players is to have the right infrastructure within the club. That means putting attention to the club’s training facilities and ensuring it’s the best it can be. In the long-term development of the club it means upgrading the facilities whenever you can, and spending more resources on infrastructure and backroom staff than signing players.
There are four types of training facilities in Football Manager – all with different levels that affects the production and progress of current and potential ability.
- Training Facilities
- Youth Facilities
- Junior Coaching
- Youth Recruitment
Each of the different types of facilities is made up of different levels which goes from worst to best; poor to State of the Art, or from basic to Exceptional, as you’ll see in the graphics below.
The level of your club’s current training facilities can be discovered in the Club Profile > Facilities
The level of training facilities will broadly speaking affect the progression of current ability and will be helpful to ensure your player’s can reach their full potential. This represent the state of facilities at the training ground for all visible players within the club, even those player’s at the B-Team, 2nd Team and/or Under-19s / Under-18s, as long as they share training facilities.
The better the training facilities, the better development of player attributes. The progress will be quicker as well, something that allows your players to become one step closer to realizing their potential.
The level of training facilities will also improve the coaching staffs abilities working under you – something that in turn benefits the players, as their progress is further improved.
Youth Facilities represents the quality and level of facilities for the Clubs Youth Academy and contributes to the production of level of current and potential ability for your Juniors (Under-14 / Under-15 players) – all those players not visible at the club but might come through at the youth intake.
The level of Junior Coaching indicates the quality and quantity of the Academy Coaches – those staff who should work with newgens before coming through at any of the future youth intakes.
You need to consider the club’s Youth Facilities and Junior Coaching in relationship to each other. Poor Youth Facilities but maximum Junior Coaching might not give you that golden generation you’re looking for – or top class youngsters with high potential. Both are equally important in the production of CA & PA level of your future newgens.
The Youth recruitment describes simply the club’s reach of recruiting Juniors, both of home and foreign origin but also contributes to a boost in the quality of player’s potential ability coming through the annual youth intake.
LEARN MORE | Youth Intake Guide – How clubs produce newgens
The club’s with the best youth recruitment within the nation will be higher in the pecking order when picking up the best Junior Talents within the nation. A lower youth recruitment doesn’t mean they will not receive quality newgens, simply lowering the chance of it.
When it comes to youth development in Football Manager 2023, it’s important to prioritize upgrading your Training Facilities, especially if your main focus is to turn your best talents into future wonderkids and you won’t be 100% limited to the quality of newgens from the youth intake (for instance if you have applied a policy within your save to develop homegrown talents á la the La Masia youth development save.
In fact, as you can see above, the youth facilities will not have any impact on the development of the players. It’s only the level of training facilities that influence on it.
This means that if your club got poor training facilities, it’s better to promote the youngsters to the first team and give appropriate playing time to aid their development.
1.1 How to upgrade the training facilities?
To get one step closer to a more successful player development in Football Manager, it’s important to analyze the club’s training facilities. Which area you prioritize upgrading will depend whether you focus on the quality of newgens arriving at the youth intakes or player development and the youth’s progress throughout a season.
Most often, we wish to put equal attention to both sides of the story – meaning you’ll need to upgrade each of the club facilities one by one to a approximately similar degree.
If you experience your club’s training facilities is lacking behind the rest of the club’s within your nation – you can ask the board to upgrade the facilities. To do so, you can make a board request.
Go to Club Vision > Make Board Request > Facilities > e.g Improve Training Facilities
* What’s available will depend on the club’s fiances, board’s objectives relating to ‘Development’ and current quality of facilities
** To request to upgrade Youth Recruitment go to Networking
*** You can also make board requests within Finances
How successful your board requests will be is often decided by your Determination, the board’s feedback and happiness about you, and the overall achievement and reputation you have gained at the club.
2.Setting up the Coaching Team
Unfortunately, you can’t simply focus on training facilities when developing young players in football Manager 2023. Without a coaching staff that are capable of getting the best out of the club’s youth players, the club’s youth development will be hampered.
It’s essential to improve your coaching staff and bring in quality youth coaches that can enhance the progress of your youngsters. But, at first, it’s necessary to assess the current level of coaches and their abilities.
Within the Staff Overview you will get a great insight to the coaching team’s attributes and levels compared to the average level within your league. By importing our specific Coaching Team View, you’ll get a deeper insight to their level of attributes and other basic information about them which can help you analyze your coaching staff.
By clicking the Development Centre and visit the Staff sub-tab, you’ll get a similar overview of B-Team coaches or Under-19 coaching staff – giving you the chance to analyze the current setup of backroom staff at the club. Or, you can click the buttons for B-Team staff and Under-19 staff within the Staff Overview.
What’s important to remember, is that the First Team Coaching Staff, B-Team or 2nd Team coaches will only work with their respective squad (Reserves, U21s, Under-19s, or U18s) as long as these squads doesn’t share a training ground. Most often, when clubs share training grounds, the Human Manager (you), the Goalkeeping Coaches and Fitness Coaches will also work with the Reserves and the youth team, despite being originally signed as Reserves Fitness Coaches.
A sub-tab entitled Coaches enables you to see which coaching staff that are available for your First Team, Reserves or Under-19s. In this page, you’ll be able to edit the coaches assignments.
NB! To edit the coaches assignments for Reserves, B-Team and Under-19s, you need to be responsible for leading either General Training or taking charge of setting up Individual Training, or both training departments, for the respective youth side.
If you are handling training for these teams, their squad name will appear below the Development Centre button on the sidebar menu located to the left of the screen.
2.1 What to look for in coaches & backroom staff?
In terms of a more effective youth development and player progress, you need to sign the best coaches possible, and assign these coaches appropriately. You should always look to maximize the number of coaches, as long as your finances allows it – both to reduce the overall workload for the coaches and to ensure they are more effective on the training ground, as well as improving the quality of the coaches.
When setting up a coaching staff aimed at improving the development of youth, there are five things to consider when looking for the most ideal coaches to develop young players.
- Coaching Qualifications incl. their coaching abilities for their respective coaching area to get a 5-star coaching staff
- Determination, Motivation and Level of Discipline
- Working with youngsters
- Personality
- Preferred Formation
- Reputation
a) Coaching Qualifications & Abilities
To improve the effectiveness of player development, you want to look for coaching with highest coaching abilities and thereby star rating as possible. A coaches star rating is determined by his level of attributes relevant to his best coaching category; Goalkeeping, Fitness, Tactical, Technical, Defending, Mental or Attacking Coaching. Our guide on how to find the best coaches will give you a deeper insight on what to look at for each coaching category.
To summarize, you wish to prioritize a coaching staff’s Determination, Motivation and Level of Discipline. These three mental attributes contributes the most to a staff’s coaching star rating.
Personally, I put more emphasize on a staff’s Determination and Motivation over Level of Discipline, since these coaches may be more strict and take up a harder line, which can have a negative affect on the youngsters training happiness and performance, especially if they lack the necessary professionalism.
i) Coaching Licences
Coaching qualifications looks to describe a staff’s knowledge level and ability to work. For any professional football club, it’s best to sign coaches with Continental Pro Licence – which is the highest qualification a coach can earn. The coaching qualifications describes a coaches’ abilities and affects his level of attributes.
This means that a coach with Continental A Licence, National A or a B Licence can take coaching courses to improve their ability and reputation. What you’ll notice is that a coach who works higher up the levels and takes coaching courses will improve his Coaching Attributes for the Coaching Category he’s part of, just like players develop and improves their Player Attributes.
When setting up my coaching team, especially if managing in a top division club, I look for coaches with a Continental Pro Licence, or if the staff is younger than 50, I’m not afraid of signing those with ‘only’ Continental A Licence. A lower coaching qualification signals that the staff can improve his abilities (aka attributes) by taking a coaching course.
To further his knowledge about the game, you can ask them to take courses by clicking on a Staff’s Profile, hover your mouse button over Overview and then click ‘Send on coaching Course’. This will send a request to the board, and whether it’s granted or not will be informed to you within the coming days.
ii) Personal Preferences
Besides these three vital coaching abilities, I also tend to consider signing multiple youth coaches with above average Mental Coaching. These coaches are better able to observe and react to a players state of mind, and enhance their level of Decisions, Tactical Understanding (anticipation and Off the ball), Composure, Vision, Flair and Teamwork – all vital attributes to apply a Tiki-Taka tactical style that I prefer. Whether it affects the player progress overall is something that I can’t prove to be the fact. It’s simply of my opinion that it is useful.
If not, it’s rather logical that those with great Mental abilities are able to make those around him more mentally strong by preparing the player’s for match days. It would be strange if this wasn’t the case in Football Manager, especially since partnerships is such an important aspect of team performances.
Regardless of the situation, it’s a fact that the players mental toughness and capabilities to concentrate, focus and make the right decisions in all game-situations becomes more and more important for every season that passes by. It’s why I include youth coaches with above 15 Mental coaching as youth coaches.
b) Working with Youngsters
In additional to Determination, Motivation and Level of Discipline, any coaches who shall work with Under-19 players requires a high level of Working with youngsters. Personally, I prefer to look for any youth coaches with a working with youngsters above 15.
Working with youngsters represents the success with working with younger players, those under the age of 18 and under in particular. Having someone who is very good at nurturing young talents can be priceless, even though only one of two of them develops into useful players.
Football Manager
If you have a squad ‘filled’ with young players, it’s useful to make sure your coaches and assistant manager have a higher degree of Working with Youngsters, despite that attribute is most important for your Reserves- and Youth coaches.
c) Personality
Besides the coaches abilities and his level of coaching attributes, their type of personality will be important to blend the squad together. A coaches personality will not only rub off onto the players, but help to create those relationships that may be fruitful for their general happiness.
In fact, you wish to look for those positive personalities (and media-handling styles) that affects a players’ Ambition, Determination and Professionalism.
What type of coaches you should prioritize looking for, can be revealed by using the squad’s overall personality as a parameter. The Squad personality can be found by heading to the Club Info > General section.
Personally, I look to bring in coaches with a personality of (from best to ‘worse’):
- Model Citizen
- Perfectionist
- Iron Willed
- Model Professional
- Professional
- Resolute
- Driven
With a number of coaches with a positive personality you will (hopefully) experience a more effective youth development – with players being more pro
d) Preferred Formation & Tactical Style
Apart from the coaches abilities and personality, it may be useful to consider their preferred formation and tactical style. You wish to incorporate coaches with a similar preferred formation and tactical style as your football philosophy. Having coaches with a Tiki-Taka coaching style, a somehow similar playing style (Passing) and Pressing Style (Press More often) will help your youngsters to get familiar with your style of play more quicker (his tactical familiarity).
e) Reputation
At last, I tend to look at a staff members reputation when setting up my coaching staff. A staff members reputation, including the Human Managers’, may have a huge influence over your club – in a number of different ways.
Besides the fact reputation affects the clubs’ ability to attract better players, it enhances the player’s likeliness to develop and work hard for the team, in additional to a whole number of other things it affects in the background.
If you sign coaches with lesser reputation than the clubs’ level, it won’t dramatically reduce the player’s progression ratio to a dramatic level. Instead, these coaches may be beneficial to be added to your team to lighten the work load for the best coaches, perhaps due to the potential they have to improve their coaching abilities in the future.
Personally, I always look to sign coaches with an approximately similar reputation to my club level. If I’m managing a club with Continental reputation, I try to shy away from signing coaches with Nominal or Minimal Reputation, especially if they are older and will be less likely to improve their coaching abilities.
2.2 The Human Manager’s Coaching Abilities
Since the Human Manager aka You will be a prominent figure on the training ground, your coaching abilities is of high importance. When setting up your Football Manager save you can take advantage of this knowledge and prioritize your coaching points on vital attributes for your playing style and tactics. For instance, since you wish to develop young players capable of playing a Tiki-Taka playing style, it will be useful to focus on Mental Technical and Technical Coaching within your Manager Profile over Fitness, Goalkeeping or Defending Coaches.
In Football Manager, it’s often more difficult finding Coaches with 5-star rating in Possession-Technical and Attacking-Technical than Defending-Tactical or Attacking-Tactical due to fewer coaches with high Mental and Technical Coaching Attributes.
When setting up your manager profile it’s important to try to get as high as possible Working with Youngster and Youngster Knowledge as possible. You want to signalize to the club’s board, your players and the media you are one who takes youth development seriously!
2.3 Head of Youth Development
If you should categorize the backroom staff’s importance in the development of young players, we can’t get away from the major affect the Head of Youth Development staff, or whoever in charge of providing youth development information, has on first and foremost youth intakes, and secondly the youngster’s player progression within the Under-19s.
His tactical style, preferred formation, judging player ability, judging player potential, working with youngsters, personality and reputation will affect the type of players you receive in the annual youth intake as well as having the biggest influence on the youngsters overall happiness. He will work with the players on the training ground on a daily basis, being a somehow mentor to the young players.
This means that you should look to sign staff with great coaching abilities for this role.
The Head of Youth Development’s abilities to analyze the players current and potential abilities is something you will benefit from inside the Development Centre as he will provide important feedback and advices relating to their progress and what you should do next.
You can learn more about the head of youth development in this guide
You can always change the person who are in charge of bringing through the next generation of young players coming through at youth intakes, despite it will automatically be given to the Head of Youth Development if you have one.
You can find the option to change that area inside:
Staff Responsibilities > Advice & Reports > Provides Youth Development Information
– Select the most appropriate Staff by clicking the drop down arrow. You can only give the task to the Assistant Manager, Under-18/19 Manager, Director of Football, Technical Director, or the Head of Youth Development.
2.4 Former Players – The ideal youth coaches?!
Since players mental toughness these days and capabilities to concentrate, focus and make the right decisions in all game-situations becomes more and more important for every season that passes by, it’s useful to sign coaches with experience from professional football.
Former players is often the ideal youth coaches – perhaps not because of their excellent Coaching abilities but due to their Professionalism, Determination, ability to handle Pressure and tactical knowledge within a specific formation and playing style.
The task of youth coaches is in the end to prepare the youngsters for professional football and all the demands of the modern football game – both on a physical technical and mental level.
By signing former players, you’ll be more likely to find coaches with the necessary skills to help developing your young players into future wonderkids. Some might have the Mental coaching to improve the youngsters awareness, vision and positioning, whilst other have the Defending or Attacking abilities to improve necessary technical abilities for your best prospects position.
Personally, I prefer looking for youth coaches with a past experience as a player. Most of these coaches have a low Coaching qualification – meaning they can develop into 5-star coaches in the future due to high unfulfilled potential, but has the necessary experience within top football to develop the young players’ technical abilities.
3.0 Development Centre
Whenever you’ve decided to implement a youth development plan at the club you’re managing in, it’s useful to spend some time assessing the youth squads for promising talents and future wonderkids that you wish to invest money and resources into. Even though the star ratings of your youngsters delivered by the Assistant Manager must be taken with a pinch of salt, they can provide you with great insight to which players to put effort into developing despite the star ratings may vary throughout the season.
The Development Centre is the new hub in Football Manager to get feedback from your Head of Youth Development about the progress and development of your young players. When the focus is on developing players it’s essential to use the Development Centre to identify future wonderkids and talents you should put effort into developing.
It informs you about players who requires your attention, either because of stalled development, players with great potential but is on an outgoing contract, or potential first team candidates now, or in the future.
At the top of the screen you’ll be informed about the general happiness of players out on loan. clicking on the title brings you to a page which informs you about the performance, progress and happiness of players on loan. Below it, you’ll get loan suggestions – making it easier to find suitable players to loan out to further his development.
In the middle of the screen you will be informed about potential first team candidates within the 2nd Team or Under-19s. It will help to keep track of players progress and give you information to take further actions on, whether it involves interacting with the player, edit his training program or move him into a better club – on loan or promote him to the first team or second team.
In the bottom right, you’ll get an overview of the ones to watch in your youth team – those Under-16 players with great potential along with a brief information about how far into professional football they may reach if they fulfill their potential, as they are compared to some of your first team starters.
Visiting the Development Centre from time to time will come in handy. On several occasions, it has alerted me about young players and future talents that I perhaps wouldn’t have noticed if it wasn’t because of the feedback and advises from the staff in charge.
NB! Make sure the appropriate staff – the one with highest Judging Player Ability and Judging Player Potential is in charge of providing advices on Development. You can change who will provide advices on player development in:
Staff Responsibilities > ‘Advice and Reports’ > Player Reports > Development
3.1 Identifying talents
As you learned above, the Development Centre can be used to identify talents worthy of your attention but you should also visit the different youth squads to identify players with higher potential. Look for development advices saying either ‘could become a quality player’ or ‘could become a star player’ as these promising talents are subjected to become as good, or perhaps even better than players within your first team.
It’s important to spend a great deal of effort at the start of a new season to browse to player reports to identify the most promising talents. Also, if the subject is player recruitment.
What you are looking for are players with higher potential. These players are far more likely to improve – most often at a faster rate than the average youngster. It will be a huge difference in the development of youngsters with -9 potential compared to a -65.
Frankly, it’s as simple as they having more room for growth than one with less potential.
Whether you are going to recruit players with the highest possible potential relating to your club’s economical stature, or develop within the club, prioritizing on the development of these wonderkids will be of utmost importance.
3.2 Handling the Training Responsibilities
When it comes to a youth development save in Football Manager, or whenever you wish to develop your own talents, it’s a necessity to take a hands-on approach when it comes to training of your most promising youth talents. Whether you decide to take charge of training all together or simply the individual training is up to you.
Personally, I favor to handle everything relating to training, both for my first team and the youth sides myself. This means, setting up training schedules, edit individual training or balancing the training workload for all my players.
To handle the training for your Under-19s, or the Reserves, you need to take charge of that area by heading to Staff Responsibilities > Training. Then click, ‘Take Control’.
If you have no desire to lead the general training, but wish to have a brief control of the youth player’s training, I advice you to let the Under-19 Manager or Head of Youth Development handle General Training meanwhile you take charge of Individual Training.
The staff in charge will then use one of the default Training Schedules based on your Tactical Style and pick the sessions he feel is best for the time of year and appropriate for the upcoming opponent.
However, keep in mind the staff’s coaching style and best attributes. If he possess great Fitness coaching he may be more inclined to schedule more Physical training.
It’s not uncommon to see the Assistant Manager / Manager applying intense training sessions the day before a match – one of the reasons why I prefers handling General Training myself.
Regardless of how much desire you have to control the training of your youngsters, it’s useful to tick the option where it says; “Receive training emails for club X“.
When enabled, you will receive inbox messages about team’s previous training week with a breakdown of the types of training sessions they have worked on along with the best and worst performers.
This is vital information that will be useful for us a bit later!
4. How to set up training for more effective youth development?
To develop your young players, nothing is as important as how you approach training and individual training in Football Manager. Even though there’s no right or wrong approach to training, as it all depends on the club’s infrastructure, the quality of the coaching staff, specific focuses and player development plans, and last but not least, the personal differences in individuals and the squad dynamics, how you set up training can have a major affect on the player’s progress.
What may work for one player, might not be as beneficial for the other – that’s why it’s important to monitor the development of your players on a monthly to a bi-monthly session.
When setting up training for your young players, you need to consider each player’s professionalism, injury susceptibility, Determination and Natural Fitness to determine how you shall go about balancing his training workload, before setting up training schedules or the individual training.
4.1.1 Training of Under-18 Players
When considering how you should set up training for players under the age of 18, the only thing you need to keep in mind is that they are best served getting actual training time rather than playing matches. Keep them in your Under-18 squad and let them work with coaches with Positive Personality and high Working with Youngsters.
At this stage of their football career it’s all about preparing the players for what’s coming. They don’t need to gain match experience to progress, but if you should promote him or loan him out, make sure they are given match experience at an appropriate level to their abilities.
The section about how attributes develops will give you more information about what’s useful to focus on according to a players age.
4.1.2 Training of Players Over the Age of 18
When the player turns 18, there is a slight change in focus relating to the development of players. While we previously have focused more on training for their development, match experience becomes more important once the players are over the age of 18.
At this point, they will gain more progress by playing more matches and the focus on their best player role becomes more prioritized.
Basically, it’s time to shape the player into a first-team starter!
From now on, it’s time to consider their current abilities and the amount of match minutes you are able to provide them. Learn more in the section about playing time and match experience.
Besides game time, it’s time to focus on their strengths and what you will be asking of the player within your tactics. From now on, it’s time to let him train in the same player role as he will play within your tactics.
However, depending on the player’s skills, you can look at this stage of development cycle from another angle.
You could, perhaps select a more specialized role that focuses on a huge variety of player attributes to make the player more well-rounded and to further improve certain weaknesses within his profile. For instance, you could put the player on an individual role training that he might not play within your tactics, but which improves certain weaknesses within his profile.
For instance, until now the player has improved his physical attributes to a great degree but lacks the tactical intelligence to carry out the task of an holding midfielder, or a composed and intelligent defender. He might lack the Concentration, Composure and Anticipation to play out of defence well and isn’t very consistent with his performances.
Rather than working on the No-nonsense Centre Back (defend), which works on key attributes for a defender, you could put the player on Ball playing defender (defend) to develop his mental attributes.
A similar situation is with the Anchor Man (Defend) which works on 9 attributes compared to the Half Back which works on 17 attributes with highest focus on the mental aspects of a players’ game.
4.1.3 When to focus on Player Traits?
Once the player has reached the age of 21, learning traits becomes a point of focus. The player traits can be described as technical or tactical pre-defined instructions that will affect his style of play and likeliness to behave in a certain manner in specific scenarios in-game.
After the player has reached their 20s, it’s easier to get a better picture of their strength and weaknesses as they are closing in on the final stages of their development.
You might perfect your future playmaker by asking him to learn the ability to Dictate Tempo, or you might want your wingback to get forward whenever possible to take advantage of his Crossing and off the ball movement and you believe he got the necessary quickness and stamina to cover the entire flank.
The reason you should wait to focus on player traits until they have turned 20 is clear. When he’s young, he has a lot of development to do. You don’t know yet how well he will develop and what will become his main strengths.
At the same time, you can put your entire attention on developing his attributes without increasing his training workload and intensity on player traits that might make the player limited in his style of play.
4.2 Training Schedules & Units
Training schedules and how to approach training in Football Manager is actually a topic of its own. So much could be said about it. Far more than what we got time for in this piece, so I have decided to only give you a quick glance on how I lay out training for the youth – what I prioritize.
At the moment, I won’t go into the different training sessions and talk about the pros and cons of each and every one, nor how they might affect development. Instead, I’ll give you a brief insight into how I think around youth development training.
As you might have understood, there are differences in how you would lay out training for your First Team compared to your Youth. With less focus on Match Preparations and Matches, the attention to physical attributes and learning their role enhances.
4.2.1 Youth Training Schedules
In Football Manager, you will be able to select from a number of preset training schedules for the Youth. These sessions can be used as a great template if creating your own schedules.
There are four types of training schedules pre-made within the game that you can use:
- Youth – Attack (No Matches, 1 Match and 2 Matches)
- Youth – Defence (No Matches, 1 Match and 2 Matches)
- Youth – Possession (No Matches, 1 Match and 2 Matches)
- Youth – Tactical (No Matches, 1 Match and 2 Matches)
The difference in schedules is mostly about what training sessions the team will work on Thursday and Friday.
The Youth – Tactical schedule will emphasize on player’s Anticipation, Concentration, Off the ball movement, Teamwork and Decisions meanwhile the Youth – Attacking schedule will focus on in-possession attributes such as Passing, Vision, Flair, Finishing and Off the ball.
The similarities is the attention to Physical training with two sessions per week – the Match Practice (two sessions per week (if not a Match on Saturday or Sunday) and holistic sessions like the Outfield which enables Goalkeepers to work on their Individual Roles while the team work together to improve the team cohesion. It’s all about trying to make a well-rounded player.
4.2.2 How attributes develops through a players career?
How these youth sessions are laid out is actually very similar to how player’s attributes grow in Football Manager. At a young age, the Physical and Technical attributes are most likely to improve from an early stage with mental attributes being picked up later on as they are gaining more playing experience.
Players under the age of 18, will not only tolerate more physical training but will benefit from improving their Quickness, Strength and Stamina. In fact, the player’s Physical attributes may be improved until they reach the age of 24, but it is also one of those attributes categories that will decline first.
The Mental attributes however will improve later on in a player’s career and might see the biggest rise after turning 24 – when the player is reaching the middle to latter stages of their career. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible to improve mental aspects of a player’s game in the early stages of his career. Those mental attributes won’t decline as quickly as the physical attributes acceleration and pace. They are often retained until the end of their career.
Technical attributes may be developed and retained throughout the entire playing career despite some gradually drop-offs. Generally, the technical attributes will develop the most when the player is reaching their mid 20s – all depending on their position. Dribbling and agility is destined to decline quicker than Technique.
This is important knowledge that you need to consider when developing your players and setting up those vital training schedules that shall turn your most promising talents into world class players.
It gives you a clear indication of what your players need to train on at different points of their career, since players attributes are likely to develop at different rates according on where on the development ladder the player is at.
To achieve the best results when developing your young talents it’s useful to separate the training of your youth and First Team with unique and tailored training schedules for each of the squads. It’s kind of logical considering they are on different stages in their development and therefore requires a different approach to training.
4.2.3 Rest
When setting up or creating training schedules for your Youth, you should ensure the players are given enough Rest to recover from training. You don’t need to select Extra Sessions every day to improve their game. In fact, it might stagger their development.
Giving appropriate rest might benefit the player’s progress in the long-term more than you should think, especially for your youth players under the age of 18.
This means that you can vary the training intensity and workload depending on the number of matches. For those weeks with an higher match load, you’ll remove all Extra session, except for Wednesday. At this afternoon, it could be strategically smart to have a Team Bonding session.
Then, for those weeks with none matches, you’ll increase the workload by adding more extra sessions.
4.2.4 Playing Style & Training
If you’re creating specific training schedules for your youth, you should always consider employing specific sessions that relies to your playing style. If you’re playing a possession-based game, it may be useful to work on the players Ball Retention, Ball Distribution and/or Chance Creation.
After all, it’s useful to focus on those attributes that represent your tactics – e.g anticipation, decisions, passing, teamwork and vision.
If you’re playing a more gegenpressing style, it could be recommendable to include ‘Defending from the Front’, ‘Defending Engaged’ and ‘Transition – Press’. Whether you make several schedules that summarizes your playing style and tactics but are split into two or three weeks, or you keep yourself to a ‘One in all’ schedule is up to you.
4.2.5 Player Role Training
Another aspect of creating training schedules is to remember to reserve one or two spots for Individual Role Training. By reserving a day (or two) for Match Practice, the players will develop their attributes related to their player role as well as enhancing the tactical familiarity of the team instructions of your tactics.
But, there are other sessions that you could consider as well to increase the number of days the players work on their individual role. The sessions you could consider are;
- General: Goalkeeping which enables the Attacking and Defending Unit work on their individual roles
- Match Preparations: Defensive Shape or Attacking Movement (all units)
- Defending: Ground Defence or Aerial Defence which lets the Attacking and Goalkeeping unit work on their individual roles
- Technical: Chance Conversion or Chance Creation which lets the Defensive and Goalkeeping unit work on their individual roles
- Transition press, Transition restrict and Ball Retention enables the Goalkeeping unit to work on their individual roles
- Goalkeeping: all sessions enables Attacking and Defensive Unit to work on their individual roles
Including some of these player roles sessions can really boost the development of your youngsters. If you’re clever, there’s a chance to include five sessions per week that enables all training units to get a minimum of one individual role training session per week.
4.3 Training Units
Did you know you can call up a player to train with the first tam without moving or promoting the player to the First Team? By managing the training units for the First Team, you’re able to select which player to be working together in the Goalkeeping, Defensive and Offensive Unit.
These training units will be represented in each Training session. Some sessions will put more focus on the Defensive Unit e.g Defending Engaged where the Defensive Unit will see a 60% priority on attributes like Marking, Tackling, Aggression and Positioning.
Who you decide to select for each Training unit will affect player partnerships and relationships, as well as which attributes they will be working on.
You won’t be able to edit the training units on a session by session basis as they are universal across each session. Instead, you can drag and drop players from the Defensive Unit to the Attacking unit as desired – perhaps every other week if you’re considering emphasizing the attacking attributes and capabilities of your wingbacks. For instance, if you’re using a 3-5-2 formation it might be useful to let your wingbacks be part of the attacking unit rather than the defensive unit. At the same time, if you’re retraining players, you might consider moving players between units.
In terms of youth development you can give your best young players exposure to a higher training standard by including them into the First Team Training units. By adding them to the First Team training units, you improve their overall prospects of developing them towards their potential.
Simply, head to the Training Overview – locate the Units section and then select Add/Remove Reserves or Youth Team players to First Team Training. Now, it’s not about including all of your youth players to train with the First Team but to select the most promising ones – those players who are potential First Team Candidates – as discovered in the Development Centre. At least, that’s how I prefer to do it.
Hopefully this will give your talents an extra boost not only for their development, but also confidence, morale and overall happiness. They will profit from better coaches who are aiding their development and monitor their progress, as well as gaining experience to the level of training for the First Team.
4.4 Individual Training
At this tender age, your youth players will be likely to improve on any aspects of play you desire for him. Basically, they will be like a sponge – improving in the areas you ask him to. However, this depends on the individual’ – his personality, Determination and Professionalism.
What I mean is that these young players are in general far more likely to learn a new position, develop and improve their technical abilities, get familiar with a certain style of play, simply because of the many hours they receive on the training ground to focus on it.
How you set up the individual training for your young players can be an effective way to develop their talents. At least, it’s something I look to take advantage of.
When setting up the training of your Under-18 players there are mainly three different approaches to take.
- Specialized – Solely improve his skillset required of playing in a similar player role used in the first-team tactics. You will put him on an individual position/role/duty training as a Trequartista (Attack) role, regardless of his strengths and weaknesses, despite he might currently be an ideal Target Man. With this approach you are mainly developing the player into a specialist where you prioritize only the attributes required to adopt to a role within the first team tactics.
You don’t consider the overall number of player attributes the player will work on as this depends on the roles you use in the first team tactics.
This means that you might prefer to work on similar attributes in Additional Focus as he will focus on in the selected position/role/duty individual training. - Focused – Improve his skillset of his best player role and duty by working on necessary attributes for his position rather than the role. For instance, rather than training in the Complete Forward role which will let him focus on 22(!) attributes, you ask the player to put attention to typical goalscoring attributes (Advanced Forward role) meaning the training is a bit more focused as he is working on developing fewer attributes.
You will then use Additional Focuses to improve weak attributes that is not included in his player role and duty individual training.
The main idea behind this approach is that you consider youth development as a long-term plan where you don’t necessary force a player role upon your striker, but work on his abilities in a more of a step by step approach. - Generalized – Improve his overall skillset for his natural playing position – meaning you frequently change the type of player role in his individual training to either improve aspects of his play that he is weak at, or requires, to become a world-class modern midfielder. You might spend the first 3 month letting him work on the Ball winning midfielder role to improve his Aggression and Work Rate, before letting him train three months in the deep-lying playmaker role to improve his ball control and vision, before adding him into the Mezzala role to improve his Dribbling, Off the ball and Acceleration to make him an all-round roaming playmaker or box to box midfielder.
With this approach you put more attention to the player’s weaknesses as you are trying to improve all the necessary attributes to a certain level – for instance above 11 before moving onto another weakness within his profile for his natural position.
With a generalized training focus, you look to make the player more versatile – able to adjust to several types of player roles and duties meaning you’re able to make more tactical tweaks with him on the pitch. The result will be a more well-rounded player which doesn’t stand out in particular areas.
In the subject of player roles, it’s important to understand that role familiarity does NOT exist. It’s not like working on a specific player role will make the player more familiar or better in that role compared to another in the same position. His levels of attributes determines how well he will perform in a role.
When you ask for a feedback on a player’s best position and role, Football Manager simply calculates the positional abilities, preferred foot, level of attributes for the key and preferable attributes for that role. It will signify how well the player will perform in that role compared to another according to the demands of the role.
What we do got, is positional familiarity. A players’ performance will be affected by their degree of positional suitability as seen in the overview of positional abilities. As you know a player might be natural, competent or awkward in a position.
When setting up the individual training it’s important to select a role within the position he shall be natural in, unless you are retraining the player into a new position. Then, you could pick whatever player role and duty available within that playing position to prioritize developing preferable attributes for that player. Perhaps you like to emphasize improving certain physical weaknesses within his game by asking your so-called playmaker to work on the box-to-box midfielder role.
Regardless of how you go about it, it’s not like working on a specific player role will make him play better in that role due to familiarity. It only develops the key and preferable attributes for that role.
You can then target the attributes you like to develop by selecting any individual player role that includes those attributes, rather than being afraid he will be less good in a role simply because of training in another.
However, if you are retraining the player from a central midfielder to a winger, he may slightly ‘forget’ his natural position, and won’t play as good in that position if he has played another position over a longer period of his career.
4.4.1 My way of setting up youth training
Personally, I prefer to use the specialized approach where I ask the player to work on the same player role and duty as I use in the first team tactics. I tend to couple the player role training with an additional focus where I look to improve necessary weaknesses for the specific role and duty.
It’s all about working on necessary strengths to perform to the best of his abilities.
However, this is not the case for all players.
What type of position/role/duty I put him on depends in some cases of his potential, weaknesses and what I believe he’s capable of doing. For instance, there’s no point forcing a player with a potential star rating of below 2.5 with below 10 in aggression into training on the ball-winning midfielder role – or believe a player with 5 in vision will become a great playmaker but for some players it might be useful to work on a different sets of attributes as their great in key areas of a specific role.
If we consider that a player will maximum develop one point per season for a specific attribute from the age of 16 to 23, he will only gain a maximum of 7 for a specific attribute. In most cases, the player won’t have the potential nor Determination and luck to gain that much for an area of his game that’s not natural for him by default.
Then you have those young players who you wish to use in a more specialized player role in the future. In fact, some roles requires longer experience to gain high familiar of. He needs to mature to get a higher star ratings of that role. This is the case with the False 9, Trequartista, Libero, Regista or Roaming Playmaker – those specialist player roles in Football Manager. These roles takes into account a players current abilities and reputation to grow the star ratings from silver to gold stars.
When developing these players I’m not afraid to put them directly on the specific player role and duty at individual training, but I’m not afraid to mix it up either by asking him to improve the suitability as a Deep-lying playmaker (defend) and Defensive Midfielder (support) rather than starting off training for the Half-Back role.
At times, I may use player role training to improve certain weaknesses in a players’ profile.
For instance, if the player is a midfielder but who lacks the off the ball, vision and decisions to become a great Mezzala, I may let him work on a less demanding role by selecting the Central Midfielder Attack before changing his position/role/duty to an Advanced Playmaker Attack three months forward. perhaps, you’d like to change the type of player role you ask the player to work on, every three month.
As always, youth development is a long-term project where you have time to specialize the player after turning 18. How you develop your young players will depend from case to case and how you analyze his strength and weaknesses.
4.5 Additional Focus
The additional focus training enables you to emphasize the individual training on specific attributes relating to specific parts of the game. Each focus area will prioritize a maximum of three either individual or combined mental, technical or physical attributes relating to either Injury Rehab, Physical Training, Defensive and Attacking aspects of play. Most of them is essentially related attributes to when the player is in possession of the ball.
It’s even a specific training focus for goalkeepers that may be useful to improve their goalkeeping distribution, technique and reactions.
The table below describes what type of attributes each focus works on.
| FOCUS | TECHNICAL Goalkeeping | MENTAL | PHYSICAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free-Kick Taking | Free-Kick Taking Technique | ||
| Corners | Corners Technique | ||
| Penalty Taking | Penalty Taking Technique | ||
| Long Throws | Long Throws | ||
| Quickness | Acceleration Pace | ||
| Agility & Balance | Agility Balance | ||
| Strength | Jumping Reach Strength | ||
| Endurance | Work Rate | Stamina | |
| Defensive Positioning | Marking | Decisions Positioning | |
| Attacking Movement | Anticipation Decisions Off the ball | ||
| Final Third | Composure Decisions | ||
| Shooting | Finishing Long shots Technique | ||
| Passing | Passing Technique | Vision | |
| Crossing | Crossing Technique | ||
| Ball Control | Dribbling First Touch Technique | ||
| Aerial | Heading | Bravery | |
| GK Reactions | Reflexes | Anticipation Concentration | |
| GK Tactical | Communication | Decisions Positioning | |
| GK Technique | Handling Technique | Composure | |
| GK Sweeping | Command of Area One on Ones Rushing Out | ||
| Distribution (Long) | Kicking Throwing | ||
| Distribution (short) | First Touch Passing | Vision | |
| General Rehab | Acceleration Pace Agility Balance Jumping Reach Strength Stamina Aerial Reach* | ||
| Endurance | Stamina | ||
| Strength | Strength Jumping Reach Aerial Ability* |
Additional focus can be a great way to improve certain weaknesses within a player’s profile. I use it to extend the individual training of my young players.
For goalkeepers who shall play in the sweeper keeper role or in a tactical philosophy where you prefers to play out of defence, I always include ‘GK Distribution (short)’ in individual training of my young goalkeepers. Most often, goalkeepers in FM23 lacks both the first touch and vision to be considered great Sweeper Keepers.
For central defenders, there are three primary focuses to choose from: ‘Aerial’, ‘Passing’ or ‘Defensive Positioning’ alongside those physical focuses that looks to improve their strength and quickness.
Defensive or central midfielders might benefit from the ‘Endurance’ focus – which looks to improve a players’ Work Rate – a vital attribute for all players in modern football.
Press-resistant midfielders and those who plays in advanced positions who should be able to create space by running with the ball – will often benefit from ‘Agility and balance’ or ‘Ball Control’. At the same time, these players might also need the ‘Attacking Movement’ or ‘Passing’ to make better runs and create chances for himself and others.
Forwards should be considered to be put on either ‘Shooting’, ‘Final Third’ or ‘Attacking Movement’ helping them to be composed when he receives the ball in or around the penalty box.
What additional focus you applies for the individual, will depend on the players’ weakness for the role he’s considered to be playing.
In the case where I select Central Midfielder Attack rather than Mezzala Attack to work on fewer attributes, adding the Attacking Movement as additional focus aims to boost training in the three important areas: Anticipation, Decisions and Off the Ball. They all are part of both the additional focus and the position, role and duty training.
NB! With our Training Setup and Performance Analyzer Squad View enabled, you’ll be able to setup and monitor the progress of both your first team and your young players. It enables you to select position/role/duty training, additional focus, see traits being learned / unlearned as well as the overall training intensity and their performance in training.
This squad view also helps to identify players who is not currently on a position/role/duty training, who is under a too high training workload that may hamper his progress or that needs a positive or negative feedback relating to his development.
4.6 Training Intensity
A major part of player development and in this instance the topic of developing young players is balancing the workload. Maintaining a players fitness and training load is essential to player’s progress.
Regardless of which squad the player is eligible for, it’s important to monitor his fatigue and injury risk. You don’t want to see your most promising youngster out with a long-term injury that might risk his entire chance of playing at the highest level.
At the same time, minor injuries that keeps the player out from training over a month could hurt his development, and result in his progress is put on a hold. Even tiredness and jadedness should be avoided as this will hamper his progress.
The Medical Centre will be a useful place to visit in order to stay informed about the next generation talents training load and injury risk.
The only way to enable the Medical Centre tab within the youth sides is to control either general training or individual training for the respective squad. When being in charge of training you’ll be able to automatically schedule the training intensity based on their player conditions.
To boost their progress, I prefer to set the training intensity scheduling, which is found under Training > Rest to Double Intensity when the player’s condition is excellent. The default for this level of fitness is Normal Intensity but I have had great development by changing it from Normal to Double.
This is edited for all the different squads.
4.6.1 Player Development – Training Workload & Intensity Level
Balancing the player’s individual training workload is also essential to avoid injuries and negative progress. The Development tab inside the player’s profile will be the go-to-place to stay informed about their development, monitor their progress and ensure the intensity level is alright for the specific individual.
When setting up the individual training for your players, you need to take into account several factors that might hinder their development. Personally, I look at four different aspects before setting up individual training.
These four factors helps me to decide on the individual players’ Intensity Level and Training Workload he can endure without resulting in injuries, fatigue or jadedness. These are;
- Personality – Players with an higher level of Professionalism will be less likely to complain about training and will remain happy despite a higher training workload. They will be less likely to slack off and will give what they got in training.
- Injury Susceptibility – Players with low injury susceptibility is able to tolerate an higher training workload without risking injuries. You can find the player’s individual injury susceptibility in Player’s Medical Report (go to Player Profile > Reports > Medical Report), or the Medical Centre Overview – where you’ll see all the players injury susceptibility listed in the club’s risk assessment.
– If a player has an above average injury susceptibility you need to monitor his training workload more frequently. He will be more likely to pick up injuries and therefore won’t tolerate as high training intensity and workload. - Determination – those players with higher Determination (above 15) has an inner drive to improve themselves and work harder to achieve their goals. Their desire to succeed will be reflected both on and off the pitch – meaning he is more likely to work hard on the training ground to improve.
- Natural fitness – a player who is able to maintain their fitness between matches may will be less likely to get jaded or tired so easily. They will ensure a higher match load and training workload, meaning you can set an higher training intensity as they don¨t need to be rested that often and miss out of valuable training sessions.
Since these players are more likely to tolerate an higher training intensity, I’m more inclined to overlook the physio’s recommendations relating to training intensity level. Instead, these players are given a double training intensity level to boost the progress of their individual training.
A double training intensity is also given to all Under-23 players to boost their individual training progress as long as either the Individual Training Workload is Medium, or he is promoted to the first-team but is not a regular starter. Since his match load isn’t high, as he sits on the bench and are given 20 to 45 minutes here and there, they can put in more effort on the training ground.
NB! Remember that match experience will triumph training as soon as the player has turned 18!
Once a player is given a double individual training intensity, it’s vital that you monitor his training happiness and fatigue on a bi-weekly to monthly basis. How often you do it depends on the amount of fixtures and his training rating. Don’t be afraid to reduce his training intensity for a month to boost it later on.
NB! Once you manually set a Double Training Intensity, a player’s condition will not be taken into account in terms of be given appropriate rest which may result in jadedness or fatigue quicker than expected. The result may be a stalled development as they are training too hard. You may even see a slower development if the player is working on too many aspects of his game at once. Asking him to both learn new traits,
4.7 Retraining players
Retraining players might be a viable options for those young players who might have skills in the player profile that may come to your benefit – either because of lack of future squad depth within a specific position, or because of his potential to shine in another position than his current natural.
Who are considered to be viable options to re-train depends on their Versatility and player profile. For instance, there is no point retraining a central midfielder into a striker if he has below 6 in Finishing, Long Shots and/or Composure. At the same time, it won’t be useful to re-train a striker into a right back, unless he got the stamina, tackling, off the ball and crossing to do so.
Anyway, retraining player’s is something that you might consider doing for your Under-18 players and the newgens coming through at the annual youth intake. These newgens might have a very unfavorable player profile. They might be natural in a different position than what you use in your tactics. This is especially the case if your Head of Youth Development got a different preferred formation than what you use, or you’re managing in a nation with a historical traditions to develop certain types of players – Brazilian attacking wingbacks, hard working wide midfielders or technical gifted playmakers.
The process of retraining players may take some time. How long may depend on his Versatility and which position you ask him to become familiar of. A position that is closer to his natural position will take quicker to adopt to.
When retraining a player into another position than his ordinary, it’s important that you give him match minutes in that position. If not, it will take a longer time before he gets familiar in the new position. 10 to 30 minutes per match over a half a year will help the player to be introduced to the new position and role. This is handy, if the player is hesitant to his new position and role.
How long it takes to re-train a player into a new position depends. Some players will be easier to retrain whilst others needs one to two seasons to get adept.
How you set up individual training will also be slightly different than normal. What you want is to set the position/role/duty training to the new position and select the role he should gain familiarity of.
If you’re retraining your defensive midfielder into a right back, you would select DR > Fullback (Support) rather than DM – Defensive Midfielder (Defend)
By training on his new position and role, and receiving match appearances in it, the player will pick up the naturally skills required to play in that position to carry out the given player role effectively. He will pick up attributes and aspects of the game suited for that position helping to improve weaknesses in his game.
Practical examples
As an example, I’ve decided to re-train Mohammed el Arouch into a False 9. He got great Flair, Vision, Composure, Passing and Finishing to play as a creative forward. He’s already adept at creating chances for his teammates as a former Advanced Playmaker and he’s already capable of playing in the AM-slot making it easier to transform him into a False 9.
A more difficult case is to transform Sofiane Augarreau from an advanced playmaker into a complete wingback. I mean, he has the Stamina, Work rate and Off the ball to play on the flank, but might lack a bit of quickness, crossing and tackling to be good in defensive situations.
The assistant manager reports he is natural in a couple of positions, which tells me he has the versatility to adopt to new positions. What might make the process long and hard is the lack of potential ability. When you re-train players you essentially take points from their PA to use on learning a new position. He might not reach the same level as if he was playing in his most natural position.
Besides that, he will have fierce competition from the more talented Saël Kumbedi (17) who is destined as a wonderkid for the future meaning I need to prioritize to give him the most playing time.
5.0 Playing Time & Match Experience
When to promote players to the first team?
For those highly promising players with world class potential and great current abilities compared to the Under-19 squad, the most likely approach around the age of 18, is to promote these players to the Reserves or First Team squad. For instance, it may be players with a two star current ability level – meaning they are closing in on the First Team’s average level of 3 star, or players with a one and a half star rating if managing at a club with multiple superstars, such as PSG, Man City or Barcelona.
Personally, I like to promote one or three Under-18 players to train with the First Team (or B-Team). These player’s will be made eligible to play matches for the Under-19s / U18s. This enables these players to be Mentored as well as getting the chance to work together with better players who might have an influence over their progress.
Moving players between squads can be done by clicking on the preferred player’s profile, hover the mouse cursor over Development and select Move to Senior Squad. When I move a Under-19 player to the first team, I also make the player available for the Reserves – instructing the 2nd Team Manager to use him for 90 minutes – all depending on whether he will travel with the first team squad to matches.
Whether you should promote one of your most promising Under-18 players to the First Team is a question of debate. It all depends on he stature of your club, the squad depth (or lack of it) and what’s best for the player at this point of his career. It’s no use wasting his career by letting him rot on the bench either. If you promote him, he needs to get match minutes from time and time. You need to make sure you can keep him happy and maintain a good level of match sharpness and morale.
Ideally, you want to give your most promising players a maximum of 60% of the total match minutes throughout the season, depending on his age and abilities. Personally, I try to give the player around 15 appearances a season, or around 1500 minutes a season.
If you can’t offer the player that much game time, it’s better to keep the player in your B-Team only if you have an infrastructure which is better than the rest AND the team is playing competitive matches.
If they are not part of a league, such as the Spanish Second division, an English Youth League or playing in the second tier like in the case of Dutch top teams, it’s better to loan him out.
This guide on using loans to enhance player development will give you a deeper insight to why loans may be useful.
6.0 Mentoring
What do you do with players who tends to slack off in training and doesn’t have the personality to reach the highest level of football? They might lack either the professionalism, determination or ambition to succeed.
If the players got negative personalities such as Fickle, Mercenary, Unambitious, or Jovial, the best thing you can do is to avoid them all together – either not give them a contract if you receive such players at the annual youth intake, or consider releasing them, if they lack potential.
Most often, your youth squad will feature mostly players with Balanced personality – making them ideal for mentoring.
Earlier, mentoring was an essential part of youth and player development. You could see a huge boost in their progress of your youth talents by partnering him with the ideal mentor. Over the last few improvements to Football Manager, the importance of mentoring have declined.
The end product of mentoring can be both good and bad, as the player’s will pick up both positive and negative personality traits of each other.
This means you need to consider the player’s age and experience, level on the hierarchy pyramid, social groups and personality when creating mentoring groups.
6.1 How to Create Mentoring Groups in Football Manager?
When creating mentoring groups there are several factors to consider in order to have success with mentoring in Football Manager.
You need to consider first and foremost their age, personality, standing in the squad hierarchy and social groups, as well as experience – hereby meaning their total number of match appearances within the team.
Ideally, you want Team Leaders and/or Highly Influential players to mentor your young players. Most often these players have gained experience at the highest level of football and are over the age of 25. These older players often have the necessary positive personalities, such as Model Citizen, Model Professional, Perfectionist, Resolute or Driven, to be regarded as the perfect mentor.
To avoid first team starters and experienced players to pick up negative traits, it’s useful to keep a close eye on the estimated influence on group and the estimated effect from group when creating mentoring groups.
You can mentor any players up to the age of 24. Any players over the age of 24 will have no estimated effect from the group but potentially significant or average effect on the group.
A mentoring group in Football Manager must possess of a minimum of three players, and there’s no maximum number of players allowed to be included for each mentoring group. That doesn’t mean you shall go about adding everyone in your squad to the same group. It will only complicate things, as there are SO MANY players who have influence on each other meaning the result may be far from what you desire.
Instead, you can create mentoring groups based on position, personality, or their different standing in the social groups to improve player partnerships and mold the squad together.
Taking advantage of mentoring in Football Manager looks to affect four essential aspects of a player’s on and off the pitch behavior. Mentoring can effect:
- Personality (Ambition, Loyalty, Pressure, Professionalism, Sportsmanship, Temperament, Controversy)
- Hidden Attributes (both positive and negative, such as Consistency, Dirtiness, Versatility, Important matches and Adaptability
- Player Traits
- Determination
In fact, the only way to improve a players Determination is by mentoring. None of the training sessions or the player roles will incorporate the valuable attribute Determination. Mentoring can therefore be a great option to increase a young players Determination, which is one of the factors that boost the chance of maximizing an effective youth development!
When setting up mentoring groups, I want the estimated influence on the group to be significant by adding a Team Leader or Highly Influential Player with a youngster who will get significant effect from the group. The third person is either another youngster with significant effect from the group or an emerging player with average influence on the group (20 to 28).
When players are paired together in a mentoring group these players will start building positive relationship with each other. Asking players who will play on the same side may be beneficial in order to build good player partnerships – something that will improve the on-pitch performances.
At the same time, player’s relationship may be worsen if their personalities clash. If players fall out with each other when mentoring, the session will come to an abrupt end – causing more harm to the squads dynamics.
Ideally, you want to bring players with approximately similar personalities to avoid discontent between individuals. Since there isn’t a 100% rule that mentoring will be successful 10 out of 10 times, you need to be wary of whom you are asking to be mentored.
7.0 How to boost player development by taking advantage of player interactions
Unfortunately, training alone is not a guarantee for a successful player development. Every individual needs to be taken under your wings and carefully monitored. For younger players, how you interact with the player on a weekly basis could be paramount to their development.
To boost their player’s development it’s not enough to handle their training intensity and workload. Based on their recent match- and training performance and how they handles themselves within the club, you need to take advantage of man management to get the best out of every individual.
Ideally, you wish to provide a great foundation for them to blossom by building relationships with your players. There are several ways to build relationships with your players. They will gain a positive relationship with you by working together on the training ground but in this instance we are talking about using player chats to boost player development.
You can talk to your players about their training/development, conduct, last match performance or recent form in additional to ask them for advices. By heading to the player’s profile and the ‘Discuss’ tab, you’ll be able to select different discussions points for interacting with a player via private chats.
7.1 Praising or criticizing the player’s development
In terms of player development, one thing that can boost their progress is the option to praise or criticize their training and/or development. It’s actually one of these in-game option that I use to a great extent.
At least once a month, but it may be as regular as every other week, I gauge every players’ training performance. Then, I identifies any players who have trained well in the past week. Our training setup and performance squad view enables you to see every player’s recent training performance, their progress and individual training but you can also get feedback about who has the best and worst training performance in the past week by receiving training emails for the Under-19s, or reserves.
Any players with a training rating above 7.50 is a subject of receiving praise for their Development, meanwhile those with a lower training performance than 6.80 should be criticized.
Personally, I try to ensure very player within the team have gone through a private chat within a three months time, despite I have caught myself prioritizing praising or criticizing those with the highest potential.
By praising the development of the youngsters, you look to improve their training happiness which in turn affects their morale and match performance. A player with superb morale will have an higher chance of turning in great training performances compared to one with poor morale.
7.1.1 How to remind yourself to interact with your players?
If you’re one who tends to forget assessing the player’s recent training performances, one in-game feature you might want to take advantage of is your Manager Notebook.
Yes, a notebook exists in the game!
The Manager Notebook can be found in the Home Overview. Here you can set reminders that will be send to your Inbox at specific events – either you decide to receive reminders at a specific date every month, or only once.
To keep your notebook organized you can create categories which your note is saved to.
7.2 How to gauge training happiness / unhappiness?
How satisfied they are with the training and your treatment of them will also influence on their progress. Whether you include a column containing the General Happiness, Overall happiness or Training happiness, or you browse through each of the individual’s Development page inside their player profile is up to you. What you’re after is reports from the Assistant Manager about their training to identify any potential issues that may lead to unhappiness, or any sources of concerns for their future progress.
The Squad Dynamics section has a sub-page entitled Happiness which gives you better insight to the overall happiness of your players. Unfortunately, this is only for your First Team – meaning some time to check the happiness of any of your best prospects.
The layout of the Happiness screen in Dynamics gives you a quick and easy way to identify potential issues which you can act upon before it becomes a major problem that affects the Club Atmosphere.
In regard to the development of your youngsters, what you should pay attention to is any concerns the player has in regard to Training.
What can lead to unhappiness or concerns?
The training report will give you hints about what you need to modify to keep the player happy. The player’s may be unhappy with the overall training and the types of training schedules you select. Training on the same things every week will potentially lead to unhappiness as the training becomes too monotone and dull. Or, they may be unhappy with additional focuses that they don’t find beneficial to their game.
In fact, a low training performance rating can signalize concerns or potential arising issues the player may have about training. Simply click on the player, go to Development and remove / change the Additional focus he does not prefer.
By modifying their training, the player will be more likely to enjoy his time at the club – something that may eventually boost his development and the relationship between you two, as he will be more satisfied with your treatment of him.
8.0 Analyzing Training Progress
The final chapter in this guide to youth development in Football Manager will focus on analyzing the player’s training progress. To track any player’s development and to see whether you are giving the player the appropriate game time, you can use the player development graph to review their progress.
This graph is available in: Player profile > Development > Progress
Here you can review how his abilities have increased or decreased over the last months. By clicking on the Attributes screen, you can compare attribute changes over a specific period with his progress, and for a specific role.
You can ask to see the attribute change over the Last Month, 6 months ago and All Time improvement.
Even though it doesn’t give you an explanation to why certain attributes as slightly or massively increased or decreased over the selected period, you’ll be able to get an overall picture of his development.
Below the attribute graph, you’ll receive a summary of his overall progress. Any information saying he has had slight overall improvement is good. If you’re seeing No Significant change or Slight Overall Drop is a reason to take actions immediately – both with how you set up your training schedules for that team, how you go about his individual training and the playing time you’re giving him.
It may be many reasons for a player has had a slight drop in his abilities. It may be long-term injuries that have kept him out for a longer period of the season, or it may be more comprehensive than that.
Perhaps you’ll identify that the player hasn’t had the expected growth as you would have expected and that you will need to take further actions to aid his development – whether it is giving him more game time by promoting him to the first team, add him to the Development List and look for potential loan moves, or ask your Under-19 Manager or Reserves manager to use him more often.
Perhaps, you’ll even discover that you are training your players too hard – something that hasn’t the effect you were hoping for. Or, you are training him in a player role and duty that is not beneficial to him.
By analyzing the player’s development graph every three month, you’ll get a better picture of whether you are doing something right, or you need to change your training methods and man management.
By actually putting focus on youth development and give your full attention to the development of your young talents, you too might be able to develop the next wonderkids in Football Manager.
Good luck with youth development in Football Manager! Hopefully you’ll have as much enjoyment with developing your own talents and wonderkids as I have!
Actually, youth development isn’t only about developing wonderkids and world class players. If you’re able to turn one or two promising talents into First Team players which you can eventually sell for profit, your club will be more successful on an economical plan than your competitors. The cost of developing your own players is substantially lower than signing Important players with high abilities over and over again without considering the talent within your own club.
Feel free to share your best methods for youth development in Football Manager and how you approach player development in the game, in the comments below.
And if you’re not having success with youth development in Football Manager despite reading our guide, fear not! This piece by DeRaamFM might be of help! Check out the 11 reasons why player’s won’t develop in Football Manager and make the necessary changes.
