Help How does the youth intake work?

[Fyreton]

I have been managing AEK Athens for about 5 seasons now, 3 of which were spent with my youth academies having a rating of Top.
However, I have never had a gold-rated youth product, and the other Greek teams cant seem to produce one either.

[Watchhands]

Just wait for a season and then ur youth academy gives you some kids to have for your reserves. The better the youth academy,the better the players or more players u got. I wish they make the youth intake like every season. That would actually be good. If u got bad players,just scout for youth players. Go to your scout(I recommend youth scouts cuz they can find good shit),and then put what location u want ur youth scouts to find. Then turn on search youth and then send them to go hunting. Don't know if this is helpful or not but ur welcome anyway

[Scratch]

Yeah, as @Watchhands said, the better the youth academy, the better your chance of getting good players. I think the club's reputation comes into it too (so a 5 star club with top facilities has the best chance of all). But there's still some randomness to it.

But also, it depends on the players retiring from that country (ie Greece), because the youngsters get reborn from the retirees. So with Greece, you'll get some good players being regenerated as youngsters, but not the same level as say Spain or France or England, etc. 

So what I've seen at Celtic, which is sort of similar, is that by season 5, my main squad is world class and we've normally won or just about to win the UCL. I normally don't have many Scottish players left in the team. So that means when the young Scottish players come into the team, even though they might be the very best Scottish players available, they are a fair way below the teams standard - so the game never makes them gold, they are just average. The might still be good enough for a squad role though or even work out to be better than that depending how they develop.

Anyway, not saying that's happening to you, but it could be something like that...

[DIRECTFX]

7 hours ago, Scratch said:

Yeah, as @Watchhands said, the better the youth academy, the better your chance of getting good players. I think the club's reputation comes into it too (so a 5 star club with top facilities has the best chance of all). But there's still some randomness to it.

But also, it depends on the players retiring from that country (ie Greece), because the youngsters get reborn from the retirees. So with Greece, you'll get some good players being regenerated as youngsters, but not the same level as say Spain or France or England, etc. 

So what I've seen at Celtic, which is sort of similar, is that by season 5, my main squad is world class and we've normally won or just about to win the UCL. I normally don't have many Scottish players left in the team. So that means when the young Scottish players come into the team, even though they might be the very best Scottish players available, they are a fair way below the teams standard - so the game never makes them gold, they are just average. The might still be good enough for a squad role though or even work out to be better than that depending how they develop.

Anyway, not saying that's happening to you, but it could be something like that...

 I hope they change this next year I’ve suggested it last few years and that’s having the youth academies have more nationalities than just the domestic league. It’s very unrealistic as in today’s world you have North Americans , African and Asian players in European academies not to mention the mix of Europeans in other academies inside and outside of Europe. I think it’s too stale keeping same nationalities and like your Celtic example you kind of know players never be good and there should be some chance all clubs with decent facilities could produce a wonder kid . 
 

Odd your Celtic career hampers the domestic youngsters but if you were national team coach of Scotland the domestic youth new players get a big boost after about 5 seasons even seen crazy saves for example if you were Bermuda national coach they have wonderkids playing in top academies like Barca after 5+ years in game. 

[SK15Kev]

I'd disagree (sorry)
In my Falkirk save, I'm in Season 6 I think. Deliberately having gold coaches and top youth facilities.
The size of my intake varies, for example I only got two last season, but have had up to 6.

My 1st and 2nd rotation team has about 6 graduates spread across the two teams.  At least 3 are labeled as world class.  You need to nurture, develop and most importantly get them game time they can learn from.  Some times when development plateaus it means they need the next challenge, i.e. international or Champions League.

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, SK15Kev said:

I'd disagree (sorry)
In my Falkirk save, I'm in Season 6 I think. Deliberately having gold coaches and top youth facilities.
The size of my intake varies, for example I only got two last season, but have had up to 6.

My 1st and 2nd rotation team has about 6 graduates spread across the two teams.  At least 3 are labeled as world class.  You need to nurture, develop and most importantly get them game time they can learn from.  Some times when development plateaus it means they need the next challenge, i.e. international or Champions League.

I wish I had a save that matched up with that, so I could show you what I mean, but I don't. I have just finished a 2 season Dundee save so I could use that, but although we won the SPL, I'm guessing you'll be a fair way in front of us in season 6. 

So instead, I started a new save with the March Database and these are all the Scottish players over 24 (warning their real CA/PA is shown here, in fact if you don't want to know too much about how the game works under the hood, stop reading now!):

Spoiler

Scotland actually has some pretty good players in the game at the moment (and some of the youngsters filtered out are really good too) - definitely better than a couple of years ago when my opinions on this were formed, so perhaps I am wrong about Scotland in particular!

That said, I'm not sure how many of them could be called truly world class apart from Robertson (and Tierney's who's slightly below him in terms of PA). I guess it depends on the definition of World Class - when you say that, what do you mean? Do you mean like this description of de Bruyne? 

Or somewhere else? Where are you seeing it? I can't see that sort of description for any of the Scottish players in the game for what it's worth. Though I guess scout reports can say they have the potential to be world class? But they can be pretty inaccurate. 

 

Anyway, back to my point. If you are 6 seasons in, then the young Scottish players coming through your academy are regens of the players in the screenshot above. Robertson might have retired, although he's likely still going, but all of the players over 30 will have retired and Armstrong and maybe even McGregor might have as well.

If those are the players you're getting (likely a good chance if you have best reputation and top youth facilities), then they will indeed turn out to be very very good players, especially if you shape them from when they are young. But the youngsters won't be as good as they would be at say a top English, Spanish, French club, etc, because the top retiring players in those countries have a higher PA to start with.

Of course, the game occasionally does things like bring back a Messi and make him Scottish or redistribute PA from a disappearing player to a younger players, etc, but in my experience that's really rare (actually although top players do change nationality occasionally, I've never seen them change to the nationality of the league I'm in and definitely never seen them land in my academy). 

 

The other part to this is that some of your youngsters can look awesome even if their CA/PA isn't that high. And actually they may even be awesome for you (in which case great!), although I find they aren't as good as equivalent players (attribute wise) with better PA. 

Here's an eg from a long term China save I finished earlier this year and had lying around:

Looks pretty good to me! But although he's one of China's top players and has turned out great thanks to my facilities and coaches (and his hidden attributes are ace due to my youth facilities), he is ultimately a far way short of the top players from other nations, many of whom won't have attributes as nice as his:

Of course if you had a team full of players at that level with attributes that good, you could still probably win everything the game has to offer, including the UCL (though Beijing obviously can't do that!).

 

Anyway, not quite sure how to wrap this up now! So I guess I'll just end.. 🙂 Oh I should say it's better not to think too much about this (although I certainly do!), if you are happy with a player and he's doing well, then use them! 

[SK15Kev]

Very fair point and yes don't think about and just play the game .  My fault for disagreeing.  Yes you are right, what do we loosely class as World or Legendary or even the GOAT!

Wasn't aware of the regen piece, but didn't think all regens come back out in the same nation or nationality.
I might come back with examples of types of players that you wouldn't expect from Falkirk when I can get somewhere where I can upload and download the screenshots.  Certainly the likes of whom they had never produced before.  Guess I was sort of hinting at the big club thing, i.e. Celtic or Rangers and would argue that currently in my save Falkirk is producing the best youth players in Scotland.  Therefore the club with the top facilities and coaches produces the best players in that country, maximising what you can get.

[SK15Kev]

Jumping into some detail and examples, just to compare current Scotland "world class" against the kids coming through the Falkirk youth system:-
 

Current Scotland Stars	Falkirk Starlets

As you can see they are comparable, give or take a few attributes here and there.  Also consider their age and they still may have more development to do.

Here are other examples of players that have come through the academy.  Falkirk is now the dominant team in Scotland and a competitor in the later stages of the Champions League. I work hard to make sure if players are not making the first team they can get 1st team time elsewhere on loan. Stone is the one I would def say is World Class and not typically Scottish, also note the technique level that a number of these players have.  Would love it if you can name who they are regenerated from

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited August 17, 2021 by SK15Kev
additional pictures

[Scratch]

On 17/08/2021 at 02:14, SK15Kev said:

Wasn't aware of the regen piece, but didn't think all regens come back out in the same nation or nationality.

They can swap nationality, but most seem to keep it. At least from what I've seen.

On 17/08/2021 at 02:14, SK15Kev said:

Guess I was sort of hinting at the big club thing, i.e. Celtic or Rangers and would argue that currently in my save Falkirk is producing the best youth players in Scotland.  Therefore the club with the top facilities and coaches produces the best players in that country, maximising what you can get.

Have you been winning trophies? What's your reputation on the General Info screen? As far as I can tell it's a combination of youth facilities and reputation (plus a bit of randomness). You have great facilities and a pretty good reputation, you'll have a great chance at the best Scotland has to offer.

But.. Looking at your players above, I think they are going to be similar to my Chinese player (screenshot above) who looked great, but was only a 3,5 star player in terms of CA/PA.

Only Percovich has the description of Wonderkid, the rest are things like Enthusiastic striker. So I think Percovich might have a really good PA - but his name isn't very Scottish. Does he have a second nationality? It might be he is a high PA player who changed nationality on regeneration. That's only a guess, he might be a Scottish regen at the top end of their PA range.

As for why your youngsters are better than the current Scotland stars - that's something I've noticed in the game: The best looking players are going to be the ones you get from a very young age with low CA (but high PA) and train them up yourself with top staff and top facilities. If you get someone with Jack Grealish's PA and train him from youth, he will end up way better than Jack Grealish himself. 

I'm not sure why it is, but the top players in the game start pretty good, but nowhere near as good (attribute wise) as if you development yourself. And the AI is pretty poor at developing players. 

It's a pity I haven't finished my app yet, so you could peak behind the curtain and check their CA/PA! If you would like to know, I guess you could DM me a save and I could check for you (although you can't do what if you are doing a challenge, as it would be against the rules). But only if your curious - if the players are doing well and their attributes are high, then it doesn't really matter what their CA/PA is!  

[Marcellis]

So, can someone tell me why the new gen with gold 5 stars have no label of wonder kid while another new gen at 4.5 has the label?

Furthermore why does the PA always drops 1 star in the team screen compared to the youth assessment screen?

[Chelseaplchamps2022]

18 hours ago, Marcellis said:

So, can someone tell me why the new gen with gold 5 stars have no label of wonder kid while another new gen at 4.5 has the label?

Furthermore why does the PA always drops 1 star in the team screen compared to the youth assessment screen?

The 4.5* player likely has a higher reputation.

[Marcellis]

19 hours ago, Chelseaplchamps2022 said:

The 4.5* player likely has a higher reputation.

Yes I think that's true. Also perhaps because the player has better stats and cN be fielded in the first team instead of reserves.

My only problem with the system is that the scouting PA assessment is not clear and probably misleading. And also the in game editor sucks. The shown PA is most likely not aligned with the hidden PA number.