Help Academy

[vittorio1106]

Hi, I’m just wondering how academy works this year. I’m a gold youth coach in my Barcelona save but my academy can’t produce any gold candidates, only 3 stars or below and if I’m lucky, a 3.5 star rated player. What do I have to do to get a decent player? And also, what’s the difference between a 3.5 star wonder kid and a 3.5 star for example “enthusiastic” *position*?

[Mr Tree]

hi, i'm doing a very academy / youth-focused save here:

you can see there that even with my focus on it, i don't necessarily get good graduates.

i have to assume that the better your youth facilities, the higher chance of getting a silver or gold kid, but that it's still faily random otherwise - as with real life, despite the best efforts of the big bastards to monopolise talent, it can emerge anywhere and the big clubs can have classes full of duds.

you say you're gold youth, but is your academy the best possible, can't be upgraded?

for your other question, i would say the "wonderkid" almost certainly has higher potential...

otherwise, to get decent players, you might have to just buy young (which the big clubs do a fair bit in real life, too). i do a search at the start of every season - i was doing "Teamwork 10, Technique 15" but now that i'm at the very top, i push those values up to filter out crap, so i think every year i'm checking for Teamwork at least 12 plus Technique at least 17. and i sort it by age, looking just at the youngest. i get my scouts to give them a look, some are terrible, but some are great. you can also add "Transfer Listed" to the filter to make it easier - it's taking advantage of the game's stupidity, but every season there are good kids being inexplicably listed. that might not matter to you, but sometimes it's annoying to be asked for 20mill for a bloody 16-year-old.... whereas kids who are listed are generally available for a fairer price...

[MrCostinel]

Great input, @Mr Tree! Thank you for sharing your experience, it is very helpful!

It's somewhat dissapointing to see that you can not make a world-beating academy, but it is realistic and even though they might not be 5* potential, if you put the effort in their development the graduates will eventually have good attributes in the right places and perform pretty good. In one of my saves I checked the potential of academy graduates with the in game editor and the player with 3,5 star ability were decent squad members, while 4 star ability players were getting great results. 

[broodje kip]

4 hours ago, MrCostinel said:

Great input, @Mr Tree! Thank you for sharing your experience, it is very helpful!

It's somewhat dissapointing to see that you can not make a world-beating academy, but it is realistic and even though they might not be 5* potential, if you put the effort in their development the graduates will eventually have good attributes in the right places and perform pretty good. In one of my saves I checked the potential of academy graduates with the in game editor and the player with 3,5 star ability were decent squad members, while 4 star ability players were getting great results. 

In my current Porto career I only got 1 gold youth which I strongly believe it’s Nani’s regen. The rest are only 3.5-4 at best despite that I managed to get a few into the first team as backup 

[Scratch]

Missed this thread the first time around. I've done some testing with this and found that generally speaking the bigger your club (reputation) and the better your Youth Facilities, the better the chance you have of getting the top players for that year. But it's only an increased chance, they can still end up at a smaller club etc. 

Also, you only have access the best players get regenerated from that nation. And some years there won't be any top regens coming through. So if you're in England you will occasionally have good years where there might be a couple of 160PA+ players available, a lot where there are a couple of 150+ players and some years where 140+ players are the best on offer. If you are in Spain you'll get better players on a more regular basis. If you're in Scotland you'll be a fair bit worse off. 

Looking at Mr Tree's reply above, I'll say that I used to care about Teamwork because in previous years you couldn't change it. But this year you can. And a lot of the top top regens come back with a Work Rate of 1 (Teamwork is made up of Work Rate and Unselfishness combined). So if you ignore the players with low Teamwork, you'll be ignoring some of the best players in the game. Instead, buy them and get them a mentor with good Teamwork (who says they can improve Teamwork), set the Trained Atribute to that, or the best option: Warn the buggers after every performance with a rating of 6 or less (and if that doesn't work, Fine them). You might have to offer them a new contract every so often if they get upset, but every time it works their Work Rate goes up 1 (so there Teamwork goes up by half a point) until it gets to 15. 

And yeah, like Mr Tree says, look for transfer listed players in their first season. A lot of the better regens end up at a big club and are listed and can be bought for 10% of their list price...

On the other hand... Getting players with great PA is a little overrated in my opinion. A mid level player with the best training from the start can go a long way in this game. I recently did a test with Messi's regen (200PA), a 160PA striker and a 140PA striker (who change to 145PA, first time I've seen that). I played them together in a front 3 at Ajax and for the first 3 years these where their results:

Now tell me which one is which! 😄

You might be able to guess, but the diffrence in their performance isn't much different and the number of goals/assists might not be in the order you'd expect. In the 4th year Messi't regen pulled ahead, but not that much, and the otherr two weren't that behind. 

 

[FuddledFox]

23 minutes ago, Scratch said:

You might have to offer them a new contract every so often if they get upset, but every time it works their Work Rate goes up 1 (so there Teamwork goes up by half a point) until it gets to 15. 

Interesting stuff, as a player has a set PA does pushing his teamwork up ultimately mean that others of his attributes won’t grow as high because so much of his potential has gone into TW growth?

[Scratch]

2 minutes ago, FuddledFox said:

Interesting stuff, as a player has a set PA does pushing his teamwork up ultimately mean that others of his attributes won’t grow as high because so much of his potential has gone into TW growth?

Well that's a good question! I have no idea... I suspect that any increase from the Trained Attribute is going to cost you points that could have gone elsewhere, but I feel like Mentoring and Fining are free points. They might not be though, so you could be reducing increases to other attributes..

The more I learn about this game, the more I realise I don't know much about how it really works. And at the same time, the more I think none of it really matters - 140 PA or 180 PA, Work Rate of 1 or Work Rate of 15, who cares as long as the player is performing and you're happy with them...

[Scratch]

Actually @FuddledFox (nice to see the old FF handle return by the way!), I was thinking about this some more and beleive that Fining and Mentoring are free points.

A normal training/development update/increment consumes 5 points of the available PA (so for eg the player goes from 140 CA to 145 CA). For big increments (where a lot of attributes update at once) it can even consume 10 points of available PA. But none is consumed when Fining or Mentoring. I can't be 100% sure that it's not balanced out some other way, but at least from that point of view, it seems they are free.