The Youth Academy - A Guide

This guide is intended to provide just а few basic pointers to help you when first you start a youth academy. In a smaller nation like Nigeria, every talent produced can make a difference so even a youngster with double inadequate skill set could be trained to become a U20/NT to help Nigeria.

Some managers have claimed that there is "no sense in starting an academy, because there's no financial benefit from it." However, 20 000 Euro expenses per week is affordable, even if you're starting a new team (I'm saying this with the idea that you are able to look after the team finances). Often, managers can think "oh, no, I've been pulling disastrous-weak players every week for two seasons, why I am even bothering?" All it takes though is just one star player to compensate for the expense involved in previous seasons.

Overall, with good planning and a little luck, one can achieve much through running an academy, and you will certainly be helping Nigeria. On top of this, you will enjoy the thrill when you see your kid reveal solid/excellent potential or when he has the "proper" specialty for his position ... or perhaps even when he one day puts on the Nigeria national shirt! ;)

During the first season you will invest money without being able to promote any player to the senior squad, as each youth player must remain in the youth academy for at least a season, before he can be promoted to the seniors.

Home grown players that are promoted to the seniors, can obtain as much as 1.5-level bonus to each their skills (compared to a player with identical skills and disastrous loyalty - a new signing), and 0.5 bonus to all skills compared to a player with divine loyalty that is not 'home-grown'. It is, however, very difficult to build a team entirely from your own youth pulls that strong enough to compete in the highest division, because of the different training required.

The boys from the neighbourhood

When you open your youth academy, you'll find 16 guys with all 'unknown' skills. How can you find out if they are good? The only way is by fielding them to see what stars they achieve in different positions. After the match you'll get a training report from the youth coach to help you understand some of the players' specific attributes (stats, speciality, mentality, etc).

In most cases, the boys from the neighborhood are useless. One or two might not be that bad, but everyone else will be extremely poor, so do not be afraid to train them "properly" - this first season is something like a trial and error period for you in the youth academy zone. All you have to do is to move the players to play in different positions in each match to discover more about them. This is a time to familiarize yourself with the academy and how to "reveal" skills. More on this topic a bit later!

Note: In order to call your scouts and sign new talents, you must first fire one of the existing, if you already have a full count of 16. It's common practice to select the oldest and/or lowest in terms of skills. After a season, the other option to create space in the youth team for a new player will be to promote or 'pull' the best of them into your senior squad.

Stars and what to make of them!

In general, 5 stars is inadequate for defenders and goalkeepers (with some defense) or close to it, while 5.5 and 6 stars is inadequate for midfielders with low secondaries and 7-7.5 stars is about inadequate scoring forwards. Of course, it should be noted that defender with some secondary skill and weak defense can also get 5 stars, so this is only a rule of thumb guide.

Attacking ratings (passing, scoring) get more stars than others. For goalkeepers it's important they have defence as high as possible, as it improves their performance (and selling price!).

Revealing Skills

In the academy we can "force" a skill to be revealed.

Current skill

We can reveal the current skill of a player using the main training.

Example:

We want to see what level Player X has on playmaking.

1. Set "Playmaking" as main training.
2. All players in trainable positions (inners, wingers) should have their playmaking already revealed.
3. ... or we need to limit the number of players in said trainable positions (for example, fielding 5-1-3).

Setting this up:

Goalkeeper
Wingback Defender Wingback
Wing (4.0) Midfielder (6.0) Player X (?) Midfielder (7.0) Wing (3.0)
Forward Forward

(numbers in brackets are example known ratings of the fielded players)

or we can do this:

Goalkeeper
WB Defender Defender Defender WB
Player X (?)
Forward Forward Forward

It's a must that you start the match with nine players (goalkeeper + 8 field) or you will lose training.

In these circumstances, if you put playmaking as your main training, player X will reveal his ability in the training report after the match.

Skill Potential

We can find the potential of a skill by using the secondary training. Here is an example:

We want to know Player Y's maximum potential in scoring.

1. You have to choose "Scoring" as a secondary training (Note that if you choose the same training for primary and secondary, there will be no skill reveal! ).
2. One way to go about it is fielding players with known potential on scoring alongside Player Y.
3. ... or just use Player Y as the sole forward.

The tactic goes like this...

Goalkeeper
WB Defender WB
Wing Inner Inner Inner Wing
Striker (6.0) Player Y (?)

or...

Goalkeeper
WB CD CD CD WB
Wing Inner Inner Wing
Player Y (?)

In both scenarios, we'll find out Player Y's potential in scoring.

Friendly Games

Every three weeks you can arrange friendly matches. Use them well, as they have around 50-75% of the training one gets in the "regular" youth matches. These friendlies are a good option to try something different or to emphasize on (lets say) more playmaking for the excellent inner you're developing.

Selecting a youth league

After opening the academy, you can find a league (no fee for going abroad in international games, unlike with the seniors). My advice is to find a league as starting as soon as possible in a group with 1-2 open slots only, regardless of the number of teams.

Scouts

An hour after the financial updates (or at 05:33 ht-time on a Saturday morning), you can call your scouts to find out the latest player they have for you to consider. There are theories that "the player database is refreshed (filled with new players) several times a day". Unfortunately, just when that happens - nobody knows. But since many managers choose to call the scouts right after the economic update, in theory if you call on other day you might have a better choice, as there would be a lower percentage of players deselected already by other managers left in the 'pool' :)

Scouts always note some things about the talent available, but most importantly, they provide information about 2 of the top 3 skills of the player.

Scouts and coaches in the academy often fail to mention a specialty on the players. It is therefore recommended that in youth matches that you use the "Play creatively" tactic, as this way you'll be increasing the chances of revealing a player's specialty during a match.

Signing the right player

This is the most important part of the academy - and sometimes the most difficult ...

Rules:
1. Pull any 15-year-old, that's offered by the scout, unless he's extremely low skilled (more on that later...)
2. Don't pull a 16yo, unless he's "overall passable" or two solids in trainable areas.
3. Always pull the player offered by the last scout you call, even if it's just to sack him! This is in order to "refresh the database" and it's important for our nation and player pool.

How to know if a player is strong or weak?

Sometimes a player can be reported with wretched and poor skills and potential. Depending on the combination of the displayed statistics, however, it might just indicate that the player is a goalkeeper. However, if the maximum of his keeping is poor or weak, he will be useless to you. The report on the player should mention either goalkeeping or a decent level of defence, so that he can become a goalkeeper. If you get something like "right now he's poor in scoring and has weak potential in playmaking", he's probably just a poor player and definitely not a goalkeeper.

The meaning of "overall"

If your scout says "overall, he's ...." that highlights the sum of the three best skills on the player. Here's some more detail:

Weak overall: probably not worthwhile, unless a goalkeeper (be advised, set pieces NEVER count towards those top three!)
Inadequate overall: could be decent!
Passable overall: in a combination with "he's 15 years old", you've just hit the jackpot!
Solid overall: in this occasion, this is double the jackpot and 99% surely a U20/NT prime candidate.

What exactly is the 'sum of skills'? We're looking at it as a combination of points. Example:

Anyway, Sunday Oliseh is 15 years old and from what I've seen of him, I must say I'm impressed.

Without any further training, this player will remain with inadequate Passing. Overall, I'd say he's passable. Coach this player right and he'll reach his potential of passable Defence before you know it!

Do we sign him, boss?

We know that the player has 6 points in defence. Thanks to the overall rating, we can surmise that his passing (the other noted skill) should be either on 6, 7 or even 8 potential. This we'll reveal with the 2dary training, as mentioned earlier.

On a side note, I couldn't help but notice that Sunday Oliseh can reach solid in Passing.

From here, the math becomes easier (6 + 7 = 13), so now we'll be looking for a number between 5 and 7 on a third skill. So, regardless if a player's overall total score is 6.0 or 6.9, the game reports him as "overall passable".

In the next game we try his wing skill to see if it's there...

I watched Sunday Oliseh during the game, and I would say he can reach wretched at Wing.

Obviously the potential mentioned is not here :) Next week we'll try with scoring.

On a side note, I couldn't help but notice that Sunday Oliseh can reach passable in Scoring.

If in that game he also scored a head SE, we would be very happy to discover that we have quite a player on our hands :) The only thing left is to fulfil his potential now and to train all his skills!

Training

The training effect is visible 5 minutes after the youth match, so all changes to the skills should be visible shortly. The coach also gives his report after the match.

Training two different things is always a better option than to train one skill as both main and secondary (defence/defensive formation is better than defence/defence).

Individual training

Due to getting quite a lot of information already in this article, I won't be going into details on this one, but for me, it's not effective to use it.

Training report

The coach will mention when a player has fulfilled the maximum on his skill, but you can also notice this yourself, when the skill bar turns yellow.

Here you can see what each comment means: (http://www.hattrick-youthclub.org/site/coachcomments_show)

Training speed: (http://www.hattrick-youthclub.org/site/trainingsspeedcalculator)

And finally, you can join the forum youth academy discussion here: (17061337.1) (whether it's to ask a question, just boast about a talent and basically anything related to the academies).

Link directly to this article (HT-ML, for the forum): [ArticleID=19959]