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The guide of the youth academy

Written by diluv

What do I have to do to get the most out of my youth academy?

You use your youth academy to get young, talented players. These players can be used as trainees for your own team, or you can sell them for a lot of money.

To get young, talented players, you first have to scout correctly, to get players worth training into your youth academy. Then you need to train these players until they learned all they can learn or until they get 17 years old.

If you want to find out more on how to scout and train your youth players efficiently, please read on.

How to scout efficiently

Each week you can add one youth player to your youth academy. To do that, you call your scouts. The scout will give you basic information on the player, and you have to decide whether to use him or not. If you decide not to use certain player, you can call the next scout – but if the next player is even worse, you can’t go back! Once you discard a youth player, you can’t get him back.

The scout will tell you the age of the player and might give you information on some of the following: current skill levels, potential skill levels, overall skill levels and player speciality. Your scout will always mention two of the three best skills this player can get. The third skill isn't mentioned by the scout, but could be even higher than the ones he told you. So it's very important to try him out on every position, to find out whether you might have a future star in your team.

Age: Try to get young players, the younger the better. Try to get 15 year old players, these players you can train for more than one season and pull them into your normal team when they hit age 17 – try to have your players fully trained by the age of 17, as this is the time well trained players are worth most. If your scout offers you players that already are 17 years old, don’t take them. You can do better.

Current skill level: A current skill level of inadequate or better is nice. But the current skill level isn’t that important, what really counts is the skill potential.

Potential skill level: The potential tells you how good a player can get in a certain skill. In the youth academy, players have maximum levels their skills can reach. The most a youth player can get is a skill of excellent, with the exception of goalkeepers who can only get good. You should try to scout players with a potential of good or excellent, although you have to be lucky to get players that good.

Overall skill level: This one is often misunderstood. If your scout says, His overall abilities are good, this doesn’t mean he has skill level good – it only means he has nice abilities. The higher the overall skill level is, the better. Try to get players with an overall skill level of inadequate or better.

Summary: Try to look for 15 year old players, with a current skill of at least inadequate (if mentioned), a potential skill of at least passable (if mentioned) and an overall skill of at least inadequate (if mentioned).

Of course, if one of these factors is high enough, you should still take the player – for example a 16 year old player with a current skill of passable or a potential skill of excellent would be welcome, too!

How to find out whether a youth player is useful

Sometimes you don’t have much information on a player. To find out whether he is useful or not, you have to watch him play. After the game, you can look at his personal star-rating. Players that make at least five stars are useful, players with six stars and more are real talents.

Make sure you try different positions for your players, let them play defense, midfield, winger and forward and have a look on which positions he scores the highest marks (gets the most stars).

To uncover your players skills, let him play on a training position. To uncover his potential in a skill, you have to train this skill as secondary training.

If you have a player, for example, that gets a rating of 6 stars on the inner midfield position, and you don't know his playmaking skill yet, you can be quite sure that he has about passable playmaking (one star in the rating equals one level of main skill, very roughly, unless he has very strong secondary skills that might influence his rating). So you know he's worth training, but to find out whether he's a real star, you should now train playmaking secondary to find out his potential skill. But, remember, if you train the same skill in primary and secondary training, you won't get information on the potential skill!

How to train efficiently

Training in your youth academy differs from the training you’re used to from your regular team.

First, in the youth academy, you can train primary and secondary training. This means, he raises two different skills at the same time. It is advisable to choose different training types for primary and secondary, ideally skills that support each other. For example, you could train your midfielder in playmaking as a primary skill and at the same time in passing as a secondary skill.

Second, training in your youth academy is counted for each match, not for each week as the training for your regular team. That means, if your youth team plays a league match and a friendly match in the same week, your players get training twice! Play as many friendly matches as possible!

Third, always try to support your best players. You might want to train all of your players, but in the long term it is best if you concentrate on your most promising player, adjust the training to his needs. The other players will of course receive training as well, but focus on that superstar of yours. He’s the one who’ll earn you big money!

As soon as your best player reaches his skill cap and your trainer tells you he can’t improve anymore, switch to supporting skills that might be nice for him, too.

For example, if you’re training an inner midfielder and his playmaking has reached the maximum level he can reach in your youth academy, train him in passing and defense. If all skills that are useful for his position have reached their maximum levels, pull him into your regular team and concentrate on the next superstar.

When to pull youth players into the regular team

You can pull a youth player into your regular team if he’s at least 17 years and 0 days old and he’s been in your youth academy for at least 112 days (one season).

Ideally you should train a player until your coach tells you he can’t learn any more. Ideally this player would then be no older than 17 years an 0 days.

Normally you’ll have to make choices: Pull the player without full training, to get him as young as possible onto the market, or let him train until he’s really good, then sell him for a higher price.

In most cases I’d recommend looking at the rest of your team: If you have other stars in your team that are waiting to get some training, pull the player as soon as possible. If you don’t have other players with potential in your team, keep him until he’s fully trained.

Thanks also to Cattington for his disponibiliy