Scouting tiers and player transfer willingness at lower rep levels

[scythian12]

The current scouting system as in which players are visible bothered me for a while now as it is completely irrealistic for small-size clubs. You essentially get no knowledge whatsoever or suddenly know every single player in a particular country, and then in the region. Yet at the same time, especially for clubs close to national borders in Europe, you would have quite a few players playing at amateur level across the border very happily, yet in FM you would have to grow into a national club for them to even consider this.

Same with player movement - at amateur clubs or low rep sides, you can still sign players from the other side of the World (or even your country) who will join you to play for peanuts in a completely different country just for the privilege to play football for your club. This may be applicable for say players on 'natural' migration routes, e. g. from Africa to Europe, South Asia and Southeast Asia to the Arabic bay countries or Central and South Americans moving to the North of the continent. Yet no Argentinian or Brazilian will suddenly decide to turn up to play in  a random lower league European club just because he played at a similar level in Brazil before. I mean, this would not even happen within the same country on lower levels, someone won't just pack his bags and move from Somerset to Rutland just because a United Counties League club wanted him to sign. (and they would not know about him in the first place).

Another irk of mine is the strict division of the World into individual zones of countries lumped together, and as by some magic scouting package, at reasonable budget clubs they suddenly know all the players but only within the boundaries of these blocks of countries, which were arranged by some God of Footballing Geography.

My suggestion would be for clubs to be able to see and attract players in growing geographical zones, but linked to their club and its actual physical location on the map; so essentially first city-level and regional (say a 20 km-radius around the club), then macro-regional (say, 50-100 km within the nation + closest foreign cities and towns if within 10-20 km), then 250 km / national, and on a multinational level using first the neighbours of the footballing nation or countries within reasonable proximity or in case of former colonial powers countries with their language / cultural heritage, then a pan-national (~1000-1500 km radius circle) and finally worldwide scouting. Knowledge / attraction across borders would also heavily be influenced by relative economic status, city attractivity and language barriers.

The same would apply to people in game, where they would have more detailed knowledge a) at the level they played / managed at b) at the place they played / managed at. So for instance a manager who worked at clubs rep level 2000-3000 would know the 100-km radius football / people of the individual cities he worked at, but would have to use more money to lure someone to his new club even playing at a similar level whom he knows from before, when the player is outside the scouting and attraction range for the said club.

I guess for the approach to work, unemployed people would not be staying 'in a nation' but the city of their last employment (alternatively, their city of birth if known, but this is a more spurious approach)

There could also be some potential for less exponential jumps in the scouting packages in terms of player count and cost, but a more gently tiered one with different literal scouting radii offered.

[Zachary Whyte]

Thank you for the detailed feedback/suggestions we will put these under consideration for a future FM.