Tired Of "Crap" Youth? Please Read This Thread and Help Get SI's Attention

[heathxxx]

During my five seasons managing Granada CF from the Segunda to global domination, I've been lucky enough to have my academy produce two youngsters with the potential to be world class players. What's more, their attributes are well suited to their positions and future development.

The first, a goalkeeper, came through at the start of my second season. The second, an AMC, came through at the start of my current fifth season.

Two very high quality prospects in five years, I can't really complain. During the last five years I've been improving facilities, so that my club is amongst the best in the world where facilities are concerned. The first of those two players came through whilst my facilities were still pretty average though, which shows that with a bit of luck, you can still get a top quality player, even without top quality facilities.

Over five seasons, aside from those two "wonderkids", I've had no other players that will ever be good enough to play for my team, but there have been plenty who are worth keeping, developing for a few years, then selling. Sure, I still get a good number of players coming through, who are so poor, I release them immediately.

The largest portion of my best youngsters are brought in from other clubs, thanks to the extensive scouting network I've developed. That's actually no different from what many other top flight clubs do for real. Have a glance through the real youth teams of many big clubs and you'll see players who've arrived from elsewhere. For example, Pique moved from Barcelona to Man Utd... and back again. Macheda moved Lazio to Man Utd.

As for academies around the world, though the idea has its appeal, I do think that the mechanics are already there to some extent with feeder clubs. Perhaps the easier way forward with the game might be to improve the options available to managers when presented with options when it comes to choosing feeder clubs? Might it be better to improve and fine tune game mechanics already in place?

Perhaps the links between scouting range, scouting knowledge and feeder clubs, could also have a more beneficial impact on youth recruitment? This might be one solution for those who've managed to guide smaller clubs up the leagues quicker than might seem "realistic". Scouting range is very easy to improve, I often find. During a save with AFC Telford starting in the BSN, I managed to have "worldwide" range by the time my club reached League Two via consecutive promotions, but youth recruitment was still pretty poor. The two being so far apart, didn't really seem to make sense. Possibly because youth recruitment more closely tied to club reputation?

Either way, I really do believe that the mechanics already exist in the game, especially if we consider the usage of feeder clubs as our overseas academies. Some of those mechanics just need tweaking a little, so they function a little better, or are somewhat more user friendly.