How Do I Find Good Wonderkids? / Who Should I Buy?

What This Guide Is About

This guide is about finding good players to buy and making a calculated guess at who could have good potential. Essentially rather than paying big for a mostly guaranteed good player or blindly sifting through every single young player, I will provide some insights that will help filter that down to more of a 60-70% success of finding a diamond in the rough before the big guns start sniffing.

It should be mentioned that this is not a regen hunting guide, nor a specific wonderkid list. While wonderkid lists are valuable resources, those are often specific to a certain iteration or maybe a couple of FMMs. In other words, those sorts of patterns don't last and what to look for has to be constantly changed. If that is what you are looking for, I'm sure there are already countless threads about this on Vibe.

Interestingly enough, this guide isn't about looking for attributes either, at least not as a primary filter. Looking for attributes can be helpful, but I only find a loose correlation to actual potential. Of course, if a player looks amazing with 12-14s everywhere at 16, buy them don't be dumb.

 

How does this work?

The idea is that players with good potential tend to fall into certain categories. It's setting a filter on what to look for so that the chances of getting a good player will be much better than pure chance. For example, looking at players from good youth academies or looking to regions with a higher concentration of talent like South America. Not all good players will fall into those categories and not all players who do will be good, but by narrowing down you now have a viable number of candidates to access who are likely to be good.

 

What Do I look For?

Now, what are some filters that lead to a fairly small number of players to look at, but are good indicators of quality? I'll be mostly looking at some regens to illustrate my point, so there will be no preconceived notions.

 

1. International Caps and U21 International Cap

This is probably the latest point in the wonderkid stage where you are still likely to pick them up for cheap, a couple of international caps into their national career. That said, there are still some pretty good bargains to be had.

Case in Point:

Now only after the filtering do I take a brief look at the attributes. Lots of 13-14, would do well as an AP. Realistically I've taken note of him for about 2 years, and he'd be quite the beast if I had taken him and trained his pace up.

It's a little hard to quantify how good he is, so let's take a look at his compatriot 

A little older, he started as a winger but I turned him into arguably the best fullback in the world. Would he sign for USG for only 4.8k weekly now? No obviously, but this is the required scouting to bring players in that will take a club to the next level.

And yes, U21 caps can be important too for larger nations. Looking for full caps for nations like France, Brazil, etc. would be too late.

Doesn't look too great, but I am fairly certain he has some potential just that PSG is stunting his growth. Didn't get him cause he wants too much wages.

 

Now this one I am fairly sure has very good potential. He would certainly be an option for most CL clubs including mine but I'm too much of a cheapskate prick whose top earner is earning 9k per week.

 

2. They Start with Multiple Year Long Contracts The Moment The Season Ticks Over

I like to think of these players as some of the highest-rated players from youth academies around the world, the club is desperate to retain them and they offer a long-term deal.

It's a fairly limited category too, maybe only about 30-40 players every season to sift through. Not as surefire as international caps, but with the obvious duds filtered out (seriously some of them have AWFUL attributes and personalities) it can be a good 50/50 shot.

 

Anyway Case in Point:

He is lethal. Not the complete player yet, but absolutely a great player.

 

3. Expiring and Transfer Listed

Now that we've looked at plucking wonderkids at the latest point (international caps) and at the earliest point (spawn with multiple-year contracts), it's time we look at some filters to look for players in between these 2 points 

That's right, it's my favourite filters! Expiring Contracts and Transfer Listed

These 2 categories often consists of players who fall into different camps (though not exclusively). High-potential players from lower league clubs tend to let contracts expire, while high-potential players from top clubs tend to be surplus to requirements and transfer listed.

 

Anyway here are some concrete examples:

Vivas looks like he's got some potential, but he's from a club I'm not even sure what division of Spain it is in. He was running down his contract but still had a high transfer value for the level.

 

Pavon is the opposite. He was transfer listed and wasn't going to get game time. Was valued close to 10m, but Strasbourg let him go for less

 

This category is the most "More art than science" category out of the 3, but often the players can be picked up for cheap so I thought it was worth including.

 

In Summary

To ensure that you aren't overwhelmed by having to scout for high-potential young players, filtering down the number of players you look at every season can ensure you can properly assess them to make moves. It is even to a point where attributes can determine how good a player is now, but I'm sure we've all had that decent player that just never improves.

This is why this guide covers what I find to be categories that best predict how good a player's potential might be, by hijacking the AI's cheating ability to know a player's CA and PA looking for international cap/U21 caps, long-term contract being offered to youth players and good retention of the market value of players that are transfer listed/ have expiring contracts.

 

Edited March 25, 2023 by Meow

[sscout]

Just wanted to add on something:

 

Keep an eye out for poor personality, the personality tab really is such a wonderful addition to my scouting process this year and saves me so much trouble down the line. 

[Meow]

59 minutes ago, sscout said:

personality tab really is such a wonderful addition

It is one of the best thing added, didn't know it was there for weeks actually.

That said, slight disagreement. Very slight though. Some wonderkids are unfixable, but most can with a little mentoring. I also tend to go with a buy first, sell if mentoring didn't fix them mentality.

I am planning a "How to develop this wonderkid? / Should I sell this player? " type guide, so tentatively this feels like something that fits there.

Finally gonna leave a sort of open question: Could a great player fall into the cracks if you filter by personality? Deeper into a save, I realise how different some of the mainstays of my team are who were carryovers from a time when I had less options.

Yet they had a redeeming attribute (with no visible indicators) that far outstrips any "perfect" looking player. A 20 vs 15 big matches is going to look the same in coach report, as is 20 vs 15 longshots the same in player traits.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Meow

[Danibility]

@Meowwhere did you get your fmm skin i love that colour combo i want it so bad pls ?

[Meow]

@Danibility Uploaded it since I've been asked for it quite a bit

@ericm544 since you also liked the reply

[Meow]

@ericm544 Alas I didn't make the attribute skin, just adapted it. 

My guess though is that they made the decision to not change it  as there are 4 medal attribute colours but 5 position colours.

Edited March 27, 2023 by Meow