Generating stars from Africa without simulating underage people trafficking

[BeeInExile]

There are several fundamental flaws in how the game works as regards African transfers:

 

1. Clubs outside Africa cannot recognise high-potential or ability players based in Africa. This means that they remain in Africa and do not reach their full potential. https://community.sigames.com/bugtracker/football-manager-2024-early-access-bugs-tracker/transfers-scouting-contracts-and-agentsintermediaries/european-clubs-dont-sign-players-based-in-africa-r18205/

2. The game appears to compensate for this by generating African youth prospects at certain European and other teams, even though they are generated under the legal age for a transfer abroad, which is 18 years old. (see: https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/66b4ce38a7998b38/original/kgl4gp7cl25ut2dbuz7y-pdf.pdf and https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/2130eb84c31cf4e4/original/lb2t6bqgmi2a1x1pr5xs-pdf.pdf). Essentially, Ghanaian teams do not generate players who will become great for Ghana, because European teams don't sign them so they can't reach their potential, so the game is set up to compensate by generating lots of 15 year old Ghanaians at Nordsjaelland. This is an (illegal) sticking plaster on the problem.

You might assume that this is happening because there is only one playable league in Africa (South Africa). However I have simmed multiple saves with African leagues enabled and had the same result.

Instead, what if the game tried to actually simulate how African players get to Europe?

Here's how they tend to do it:

1. They join one of a number of clubs that heavily specialises in African talent. They join as soon as they can, on the first transfer window after their 18th birthday. These clubs would include Nordsjaelland and Liefering.

2. Alternatively, they go abroad on loan to a third-tier European league at the age of 18 for a year to get used to being abroad and gain exposure. Leagues such as the Georgian league, the Croatian league, the Czech league (especially Vyskov), and the Israeli league are used for this purpose. In-game, this should increase their adaptability if it does not already, and would give these players exposure via other European teams scouting these leagues.

3. Before they turn 18, their clubs will try to put them in front of these European teams to generate interest. They will send them to training camps held by e.g. RB Salzburg or Barcelona, to show them what their players can do. There is no way to do this in the game at the moment, but it would be a welcome addition.

4. Agents and personal ties are an important part of this. Zambian players from Kafue Celtic have an in with RB Salzburg because they have developed a connection with Freddie Kanoute. Similarly, Zambian players have often gone on loan to Israel for their first loan move because the super-agent in Zambia is Israeli and so has ties there.

5. Francophone players will go to certain teams in France when they turn 18. I am less familiar with this process but I presume there are scouts from French teams that identify these players.

6. Lusophone players will go to certain teams in Portugal when they turn 18. I am less familiar with this process but I presume there are scouts from Portuguese teams that identify these players.

7. Once an African player is established at one of these teams and is playing well, they may then move on to a higher tier league. For example, Patson Daka and Enock Mwepu moved to England after they had proven themselves at RB Salzburg.

 

Therefore, here are my suggestions:

-If you develop a good relationship with an agent, you can ask them to tout your young player around to big clubs. This would increase their World Reputation by a certain amount. This would presumably need a cool-off. Maybe you can only do it once per year?

-You can also ask the agent to get them sent on trial (a la 3 above). U18s would then go on trial for 2 weeks to Barcelona/RB Salzburg etc. This would give these clubs knowledge of the player, which should hopefully stimulate interest. Perhaps the agent would only facilitate this for your players if they had particularly high visible potential.

-You should also be able to ask agents to find them a profile-raising loan (a la 2 above). In game terms, they would find a club that would want them for 1 year as a regular starter. This would presumably raise their profile in line with the existing game programming. Players should be very keen to go on these loans (Adaptability permitting, of course). AI clubs should do this quite frequently.

-Certain European teams should be very very interested in signing African players as soon as they turn 18 and should put in bids accordingly, signing them before they even reach that age and waiting for them to turn up. These would include Nordsjaelland, for example. I made a suggestion along these lines here: https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/578441-new-club-ambition-expects-signings-from-clubs-based-in-x-continent/#comment-14181004

-Certain European countries should actually go out and scout for players of certain nationalities and sign them. For example, there are lots of Nigerians in Croatia. Croatian teams in the game should have scouts with knowledge of Nigeria and scout it, and/or whatever else it would take for these teams to actually sign players from Nigeria (Transfer Preferences seem too weak to do the job in my experience). With any luck, this would help these players reach their potential later on, as they can use these clubs as a stepping stone. For example, German teams may not have scouts looking in Africa, but they may have scouts looking in Czechia, so if African players are playing well there, they may pick them up.

-The Affiliate option that enables players to come through your youth ranks should be removed.

 

In conclusion, there is a lot that could be done to make the development of African players work much better than it does in the game currently. But regardless, I think something definitely needs to change, if only because currently the way the game is set up simulates illegal underage people trafficking.

[scythian12]

I don't know what you mean. Sending shady men to the training grounds at ASEC Mimosas, Generation Foot and Coton Sport and letting them ogle underage kids, approach and then promise them a better life in Europe and subsequently ship 100 of them off in a container to a 2nd division Eastern European club is surely the most accurate representation of real life.

[nms1987]

On 28/12/2023 at 18:37, BeeInExile said:

The game appears to compensate for this by generating African youth prospects at certain European and other teams, even though they are generated under the legal age for a transfer abroad, which is 18 years old. Essentially, Ghanaian teams do not generate players who will become great for Ghana, because European teams don't sign them so they can't reach their potential, so the game is set up to compensate by generating lots of 15 year old Ghanaians at Nordsjaelland. This is an (illegal) sticking plaster on the problem.

I've always assumed this situation was to reflect immigrant family kids, who are eligible for a different nation but came up in youth football in the club's nation. Kids with African parents but raised (and often born) in Europe.  So, a Cabo Verdean kid from Lisbon.

But yeah, the lack of African talent in FM24 is so so aggravating.   Something needs to be done, crazy that I can send scouts to Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, ect and they come back saying "nah, nothing to see here"

I like the agent idea.  Clever, and would make agent relationships more important in the game.

[boey]

On 16/06/2024 at 01:37, nms1987 said:

I've always assumed this situation was to reflect immigrant family kids, who are eligible for a different nation but came up in youth football in the club's nation. Kids with African parents but raised (and often born) in Europe.  So, a Cabo Verdean kid from Lisbon.

You can check under the player's info on the city they're born, second nationalities etc.

Have seen quite a lot of immigrant youth intake players in my save, e.g. I have a Somalian player who was born in Wolverhampton

[BeeInExile]

On 24/06/2024 at 15:19, boey said:

You can check under the player's info on the city they're born, second nationalities etc.

Have seen quite a lot of immigrant youth intake players in my save, e.g. I have a Somalian player who was born in Wolverhampton

Sure, but that doesn't apply to players at e.g. Nordsjaelland. Look at Déblé in the attached pictures. He's an Ivorian newgen who was generated at 15 at Nordsjaelland. He was born in Cote d'Ivoire and has no other nationality. He can't get a work permit to play in Denmark in the game because he's a youth player (which is totally bizarre). According to the game he's been in Denmark for 4 years already, and has just turned 16, so he moved to Denmark when he was 12. There are several issues with this:

1) How many Ivorian kids are there in the greater Copenhagen area? Nordsjaelland generates a lot of Ivorian and Ghanaian newgens. Is this realistic? My understanding is that it is not.

2) From what I understand, Nordsjaelland in real life only actually signs players from Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire once they've turned 18, and of course this means they are signed from African clubs and should have a playing history in Africa. This is not the case with players like Déblé.

3) I appreciate that nationality laws are often rather arbitrary, but I really doubt that someone who had lived in Denmark since the age of 12 would be unable to get a work permit to work there. In fact it looks as though he might be able to get not just residency but nationality when he turns 17 as he'll have been there for 5 years including during his schooling. https://lifeindenmark.borger.dk/settle-in-denmark/danish-citizenship/the-acquisition-of-danish-citizenship-by-children

 

There's two reasons why the game makes such a mess of this (well, aside from real life being messy):

1) It conflates residency with national eligibility. Someone who really had moved to Denmark as a child should have residency there, even if they might not actually be able to play for the Danish national team yet. Moreover, they may well choose not to play for Denmark anyway. The game isn't nuanced enough to reflect this.

2) As above, for understandable reasons SI really want Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana to generate enough good players to make a semi-realistic world, but they haven't worked out how to get Nordsjaelland to buy good players from those countries (partly because they don't generate enough good players in those countries). Consequently, they have Nordsjaelland generate African players without Danish nationality, so that those players won't decide to play for Denmark instead. Instead, they should rework the game to generate more and better African youth prospects in Africa, and get European teams to actually buy them. Of note, Nordsjaelland in my game in September 2027 have yet to sign a single player from Africa - this in spite of being affiliated to the Right To Dream academy in Ghana. My preference, which is much more like real life, would be for the 15 year old newgen Ghanaians to stop being generated at Nordsjaelland and for them to buy Ghanaians from RTD as soon as they turn 18 instead. (If the devs want more ideas for how to make that happen, please see my previous contributions to this forum.)

Edited yesterday at 16:45 by BeeInExile