Newgens should have more family connections - Analysis based on youth teams in England, Italy and Germany

[seanwalker93]

Introduction

• I see a lot of discussion on these forums about the chances of having a manager's son generate in a youth intake, but not much about the chances of other family connections. I had a hunch that it was unrealistic how rarely a newgen in FM had a family relationship with another person in the database, so I did some research with transfermarkt, looking at the top youth leagues (U18 or U19) of England, Italy and Germany. The headline is that 1 in every 27.5 players in these leagues has a family connection that I think should be represented in FM.

The data

• I analysed every player in the Transfermarkt database from the U18 Premier League in England, the Campionato Nazionale U18 in Italy, and the U19 Bundesliga North/Northeast, West, and South/Southwest, amounting to a total of 1758 players, on the 7th of July 2020. 1032 came from the U19 Bundesliga, 520 from the U18 Premier League, and 206 from the Campionato Nazionale U18.
• I looked at every player in these youth teams as a proxy for the youth intake in FM. The youth intake would of course be best represented by those players who were joining the U18/U19 team from a lower youth team in a given year, but this would have been much more complicated data to collect, and I don't think there are likely to be significant differences in proportions of family relations between those in their first year in the U18/U19 team and the rest of the players in that team. If anything, we might expect that there would be more related players at younger ages, as less talented relatives who are products of nepotism are likely to be weeded out over time, and so this analysis likely underestimates the proportions of players in youth intakes who should have a family connection.
• If a player had a family connection to another person with a Transfermarkt profile, I took note of who this person was and what they do in the world of football.
• If the family connection was over 18 years old and was not in FM19 as either a player or a staff member, I removed them from the analysis.
• This left three types of family connections - those who were older than 18 and were in the FM19 database, those who were playing football in the same age group as the players I analysed, and those who were playing youth football in a younger age group.
• I believe that all three of these types are relevant analogies for family connections that could and should be represented in FM. Older relatives could be represented by newgens being the younger brother, cousin, nephew or son of a person in the database. Relatives in the same age group could be represented by newgens having brothers or cousins generate in the same intake. Relatives in the lower youth teams could be represented by newgens having younger brothers or cousins generate in the years after their older connection. 

The results

• Out of 1758 players in these leagues, 64 had at least one relevant relative. Six players had two relevant relatives, meaning that there were a total of 70 relatives. This works out to 1 relevant relative for every 25 players, or 1 player with at least one relevant relative for every 27.5 players.
• The proportion of players with relevant relations was pretty consistent across leagues: in the U19 Bundesliga it was one in every 29 players, in the U18 Premier League it was one in every 27 players, and in the Campionato Nazionale U18 it was one in every 23 players.
• Of the relatives, 33 were non-twin brothers, 15 were twin brothers, 12 were fathers, 7 were cousins and 3 were uncles to the players in these leagues. 
• None of the older relatives were the managers of the club that the player was at, though two were in senior roles related to recruitement of players (1 HOYD, 1 DOF). I did notice while collecting the data that many more of the players had started out at the club where a relative of theirs was a member of staff but were no longer at that club, so this should be analysed in more detail.
• Of the 70 relatives, 31 were senior players, 25 were youth players, and 14 were members of staff.
• Of the 25 relatives who were youth players, 18 were in the same age group (with 15 of those being twins) and 7 were in a lower age group.
• Of the 70 relatives, only 28 either played or were employed in the same team as the relevant player, with 14 of those being the twin brothers.
• However, 52 out of the 70 relatives either played or were employed in the same country as the relevant player.

Implications

• Based on this research, it would be realistic for 1 in every 27.5 newgens in FM to have some form of family relationship with another person in the database, resulting in roughly 1 newgen with a family connection in every 2 youth intakes. There does not seem to be any official information about what the current ratio is, but based on my own experience and anecdotal evidence in these forums, it seems to be nowhere near that number. In FM19 alone I have played through at least 30 intakes with no family relationships appearing, not to mention the countless newgens that I have encountered who did not come through youth intakes in my club and who also had no family relations.
• Based on this research, the majority of these relationships should be with players or staff in the same country, but not necessarily the same team. As I noted however, my research does not account for where a player started their  footballing career and where their relative was at that time. I would suggest that it undercounts the proportion of these relations that would be based in the same club at the time of a youth intake.
• Of course, I am not suggesting that FM should change this chance based solely on my research. Instead, I am suggesting that my research should be built on to find what is a more realistic chance of a relationship than what is currently used, which certainly seems far too low based on this research. 
• I am aware that my research may be biased by looking at the top youth leagues in three top footballing countries. I did so because I thought there was likely to be the best data available for these. I can see arguments both ways as to the impact of this on the research though. I would tend to think that given the competition in these higher skilled youth leagues, a player would be less likely to be able to stay in the team due to nepotism alone than in the lower leagues, and so the proportion of players with relationships would be even higher in worse youth leagues. 
• Having more family relationships in game due to implementing a more realistic ratio of newgens with these relationships would make the game more immersive and therefore more enjoyable for me and the many others who I have seen discussing this issue here and on reddit.

Calls to action

• If you work at FM, have a look at this research and pass it onto the relevant people.
• If you want to check my maths or conduct further analysis of my data, download the attached spreadsheet and play around with it.
• If you're a masochist and want to contribute to changing the FM policy on this, try conducting the same type of analysis for other leagues. 

FM family spreadsheet.xlsx

[Luke Hume]

Reviewed so locked.