Are Youth Prospects Swayed By Geographic Region?

[DasMagicMullet]

I know if a player is English and based in England then he's obviously going to be more willing to join an English team, but does region/distance come into play at all?

Take Everton & Liverpool prospects, are they more likely to want to ply for Tranmere than they are other League 2 teams like Crawley or Northampton?

I'm just thinking ahead for my FM22 save, I'm starting lower down the leagues and was wondering if I'm better off putting more focus on local academies or not.

 

[Freakiie]

Depends on how low you start, if you're talking amateur/part time contracts players will reconsider if they're based on the other side of the country at times, but when you're talking fully professional this generally isn't an issue any more.

[Thebaker]

i think in previous versions it did, playing in the VN/S the players interested were always from nearby teams. 

Played as Colwyn Bay one year and players from chester, Everton and Liverpool were interested but no players from London clubs, another year i played as St Neots and the interested players were from Northampton and Peterborough.

[FrazT]

I would have thought the league, club and manager reputation would be much higher influences for a youth player, well above location, although this may have a minor bearing

[bigmattb28]

I would assume the place of birth affects it, say being born in Newcastle he'd be more likely to want to play for Gateshead in the Conference north than he is Forest Green or some other southern team. 

[michaeltmurrayuk]

It's as @Freakiie said Part-Time/Non-Contract players won't travel far, but Full-Time players will - it's to reflect part-time players may for example have another job so cannot just move across the country.

However I think the game sill has an issue with borders, so Chester for example may struggle to sign part-time players from Wales.