BeeInExile

To be perfectly candid, it's hard to find out much of what's going on with Lusaka Dynamos right now. @StanBoy11's covered the main points. We'll have to see whether they still exist next season, but as you've found out, "Young Lusaka Dynamos" is the team who are still participating in competitions. Usually with a name like that they would be the B team of Lusaka Dynamos, in basically the same way that Barcelona B are the B team of Barcelona. The fact that they're competing but the senior team does not seem to be is weird. If you want to know more about Lusaka Dynamos in general, I would recommend this interview on YouTube that Hanif Adams did a couple of years ago. Some of the questioning is a bit weird though - you may also want to read this as background http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/africa/7262763.stm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBAE9ZvBI2c

I'd agree with @StanBoy11 - South Africa and Tanzania are the main destinations in Africa, and DRC is both the main place where Zambian teams buy their foreigners, as well as where some of the best Zambian players go and play (particularly TP Mazembe historically, which is just across the border), so I'd definitely try to add that too. You might want to add in Malawi and Zimbabwe for the flavour, and some of their players come to Zambia (but not all that many) but Zambians very seldom go and play in those countries. If you're specifically managing Kafue Celtic, I'd recommend adding Mali and Georgia, since that's where their affiliate clubs are based. But otherwise Georgia's not needed, and Mali would just be to flesh out the world. Until recently a few Zambians went to Israel on short-term deals because the superagent in Zambia is Israeli, but I don't think the game emulates that well so I wouldn't say it's particularly important. If you're trying to do an African save, I'd definitely add in France and Portugal so they buy players from Africa and bring more money into the continent, although they seldom buy Zambians. Cagliari have bought a couple of players from Atletico Lusaka in the past, and Lameck Banda is at Lecce, so I suppose Italy might be an option too, although again it's quite slim pickings. RB Salzburg bought Patson Daka and Enock Mwepu to Europe, so I'd also be tempted to add Austria (also it has lax registration rules so again, more demand for your players). But yeah Stan's right that European leagues don't sign enough players from Africa in the game (and in fact I've logged bug reports about it).

I've noticed something very similar. I was wondering if it was to do with the agreed playing time being the basis of the assessment for this vision, rather than the actual game time you give to the youth players. I tend to minimise agreed playing time as much as possible, so, for example, I have a youth player who's a Future Prospect who I'm using like a Regular Starter. Just an idea. In any case, there's clearly something dodgy about how this Club Vision is programmed.

It's actually allowed in some leagues in real life, such as in Zambia. For example both Green Eagles and Young Green Eagles played in the Super League in the 2020/21 season. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020–21_Zambia_Super_League Personally I think it's pretty ridiculous and open to obvious abuse, but it is a thing.

Not sure why I didn't get a notification of this reply, but... I genuinely don't have an answer to how to make the home kit thing work - I'm no programmer - but I think there might at least be a method for the away kit: -There are 50-odd different styles of Shirt. The game picks one at random, excluding the Home Kit style. -As regards colours, the game records colours based on their RGBA values. So the game could look at the Home Kit colours, pick the highest value of RGBA, and ensure that in the away kit it is the lowest value of the four in the away kit, or even zero it. And then randomise the other three RGBA values. This would guarantee that the colours are substantially different, no? -The game picks one of say 9 basic colours - the primary colours - for each of Shorts Foreground and Shorts Background, and the same for the Socks. Possibly it does something similar with the RGBA values to ensure that they aren't the same as the home kit, although that's less of a problem. -The game picks one of the Shorts Styles and one of the Socks Styles at random. Again, arguably, could exclude the Home Kit value. If you need a third kit, the game does the same as this again but excludes the Away Kit values as well. I imagine you'd get some pretty funky strips doing this, and many of them might be aesthetically questionable, but it might at least provide some variety. With that said, I would imagine that the best thing would be to allow the player the option of choosing whether to accept the new Away Kit or stick to the original. You might also want a button to keep generating these kits until you got one you liked, which would be one way of dealing with the inevitable eyesores that would be created sometimes.

No worries - I appreciate it's more something for future editions. @Zachary Whyte What do you mean by real life examples? Examples of clubs that in real life sign lots of players from Africa but don't do so in the game? I don't have a full list but I would suggest looking at the transfer behaviour of the following clubs: -Vyskov (any save from the past 3 or 4 years until the most recent update, when they changed ownership). They should have been signing 50%+ of their players from Africa. In my experience, you're lucky if they sign anyone from Africa at all. -RB Salzburg and Liefering - should be signing players from Mali, and to some extent other West African countries -Nordsjaelland - should be signing players FROM the Right To Dream Academy, not just having 15 year old Ghanaians coming through their youth intake. -Portuguese teams - Mafra? Benfica? Not overly familiar but they should be buying players from Lusophone Africa -Several French clubs e.g. Metz IIRC should be buying players from Francophone Africa -Random clubs in Central and Eastern Europe - e.g. in Romania, Croatia, Poland - should be signing players from Africa now and then -As mentioned above, Horsens have signed some Africans recently. Are you seeing African players turning up in Denmark? At the other end, look at the obvious candidates: ASEC Mimosas in Cote d'Ivoire, Generation Foot in Senegal. I have an (admittedly modded) save with both the Senegalese and the French league system enabled, in which Generation Foot have sold two players to Europe in three years - one to Amiens, and one to Blackburn of all teams. To say the least, that does not reflect reality! https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/generation-foot/alletransfers/verein/30031 I would think that checking this behaviour to see that it is actually happening should be fairly trivial - just look at any of the saves SI must have that are for more than say three seasons, and check the Transfer History of the relevant teams. If you'd like some suggested ideas of how to reduce this issue, I've put a couple of suggestions on the suggestions forum (below). I also wonder how much being known as a particular location for great young talent is being filtered through - professional football clubs IRL know that Generation Foot produce good players. Do they in the game? But the fact that as far as I can tell even when they have perfect knowledge, as Nordsjaelland do of the Right to Dream Academy, they don't sign players from there, suggests something significant is wrong.

No worries - it's a long-term issue. Yes, I'm getting that too, although 1) Ghanaians moving to Nordsjaelland before the age of 18 is actually illegal in real life so it shouldn't work that way (https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/66b4ce38a7998b38/original/kgl4gp7cl25ut2dbuz7y-pdf.pdf), and 2) the Ghanaians and Ivorians coming through the Nordsjaelland youth intake tend to lack work permits (because again, it's illegal, and the game is correctly reflecting that). Are you finding that Nordsjaelland buy players that are generated by the Right To Dream Academy in-game? In my experience they don't do that. Which in my opinion is pretty weird, because they're cheap players, sometimes with good potential, that they have perfect knowledge of. Yeah I don't necessarily want Nordsjaelland to be made a special case - I just think they're a good illustration of the issue. I saw something similar with Vyskov in Czechia and RB Salzburg/Liefering in Austria. Would welcome any thoughts from @Zachary Whyte or anyone else at SI on this. Grateful as well for any suggestions about what I should do at my end, as an AR for Zambia, to encourage the brightest young talents there to be picked up by European clubs.

Oh well!

Several line items on the Finances section could do with being split up or clarified: 1) On the Expenses tab, "Ground Maintenance" seems to include the following: Upgrades to Training Facilities (Possibly - this is not clear) upgrades to Youth Facilities Ongoing costs of maintaining the stadium at which your team plays Ongoing costs of maintaining the training ground at which your team trains. I am an native English speaker. "Ground Maintenance", as far as I am concerned, should only include Item 3 above. Items 1 and 2 are capex, not maintenance, and should definitely not be included in a budget called maintenance. Item 4 is also not necessarily your team's "ground". For me, "Ground Maintenance" would be things like: -paying for security for your stadium when it is not in use -paying for people to clean the stadium toilets when it is not in use -lighting/heating/mending broken parts of the stadium in the course of regular wear and tear -paying for groundsmen to keep the stadium pitch nice (which is I think the single most natural reading of the phrase). I therefore suggest that there be a separate subsection on the Expenses item list called Capital Investment, under which are added the following line items: 1) Training Facilities upgrades 2) Youth Facilities upgrades 3) Stadium upgrades - adding more capacity to the stadium, and/or building a new stadium (building a new stadium could be a separate line item) "Ground Maintenance" should be renamed "Facilities Maintenance", and only cover Items 3 and 4 above. 2) Stadium Rent - this should be a line item in Expenses. If I am renting my stadium from the council or another club, I am presumably paying them a certain amount per year. How much is it? This figure is surely part of the puzzle when evaluating whether to build a new ground or not. 3) The other issue I have noticed, which may possibly be a bug, is that "Loan Income" in the Income tab does not seem to display the one-off income a club gets when it takes out a bank loan. It seems to me that it should. This income may possibly be going into "Other" instead.

Although they have entries in the database, the U17 World Cup, Euros, AFCON and other regional tournaments are not in the game. It would be an extremely good idea to add them. These tournaments are a crucial way that promising young players from outside Western Europe gain exposure. Adding them into the game would likely significantly improve the transfer behaviour of AI teams. This is for two reasons: players who play in these competitions would gain increased World Reputation (especially if they play well), and clubs will presumably scout these competitions, meaning they will be aware of these promising players. This would be a significant advantage to, for example, young prospects based in Africa who are otherwise not being spotted in the game by European clubs. This is accurate to real life, probably not very hard to implement since other international tournaments are already in the game, and would improve how the game functions even for FMers who are not managing internationally.

Ah okay I see. Apologies for the confusion.

Thanks @Tony Grasser, I look forward to the changes to Vyškov. At the very least I would recommend removing their Club Ambition to sign players from Czechia.

This would be a great addition. There need to be more ways to promote young players in the game from smaller leagues in general. More youth tournaments would be a great way to do that.

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

Hi again, I've now given Vyškov 3 transfer windows, during which they have yet to sign a single African player (I disabled the first transfer window). On the other hand, they have signed lots of players from Czechia (see images attached). They have also had a tremendously large proportion of their youth intake come through as Cameroonian or, in one case, Liberian. This might be a reasonable way of compensating for Vyškov not signing Africans from Africa except for 2 things: 1) Those high-potential Africans based in Africa will remain in Africa, unpurchased and unable to break into Europe. Seriously, if Vyškov aren't signing them, who will? 2) It is in fact illegal under FIFA regulations for players under the age of 18 years old to be transferred from countries outside the EU to another country. The players generated are mostly single-nationality Cameroonians, which means that the game is, deeply unfortunately, simulating the illegal trafficking of minors. This seems at the very least suboptimal to me. Again, I would reiterate that I have set up a database in which every single African player is present. Most of the leagues I have set to playable are African leagues - the only exceptions are Czechia, Croatia, France and Denmark. There are no leagues at all in South America, North America, or Asia. Nevertheless, despite the database being very heavily tilted towards African players, a team that notoriously signs a huge number of African players in real life has yet to sign a single one in-game. This seems like a significant problem.

Also I should say that Transfer Preferences don't seem to do anything if you are actually managing the club in question - they only seem to affect the AI. That means that if you actually manage Vyškov you are just told weakly to sign more Czech players, and are not incentivised to sign African players at all. I highly doubt Kingsley Pungong would accept a manager who tried to do this in real life!

Ah, I was looking at the wrong part of the database - I see now that their Transfer Preferences are as you describe. However, in my saves I have noticed that Vyškov do not seem to sign many, if any, players from these nations in practice. For reference, the databases I set up have all African Players loaded, and in fact do not have the players from other continents loaded to the same extent, so if anything, teams should be signing a disproportionate number of Africans. I made a bug report noticing this behaviour already (see below), in which I noticed the same issue with RB Salzburg and Nordsjaelland. I do not think the Transfer Preferences field is strong enough to actually determine that these clubs will sign players from those countries, especially if they lack Scouting Knowledge. I will keep an eye out on my saves for what happens. So far Vyškov have yet to sign an African player - all the players they have signed have been European. Again, I suspect that what does not help the situation is that they do not have Scouting Knowledge of the countries that they are supposed to sign players from.

Lots of well known managers, including Thomas Tuchel and Jürgen Klopp, wear baseball caps, but you cannot add this to either the player's avatar or other managers' representations in the match engine. Please could this be added?

Yes, exactly. Three of the most common complaints in how the game works: -You can run really high intensity tactics without suffering ill-effects. -Youth players don't get picked enough so they can't develop. -Physical attributes are king - mental and technical attributes are less important. All three of these would be alleviated by having injuries at a realistic level, instead of the reported 80% of reality that is programmed into the game. But if a patch is perceived to have too many injuries, watch a large section of the fan-base scream bloody murder. Personally I would rather SI just ignored these people, but at any rate if people are complaining about the above, they should realise they can't have it both ways.

Less unrealistic than you might think. Ethan Pinnock, who's even taller than this guy, started out as a winger in non-league before moving to centre-back.

As people are saying up-thread, there are elements inherent to international football (you can't sign players; there are few matches) that are always likely to make it a less popular game mode compared to the club game, so to some extent it's understandable that SI don't put so much energy into it. However, there are a number of features that already exist in club football in the game that have not been added to international management for whatever reason. That I find harder to understand. These include: A) training - at least match prep and resting B) proper press conferences (surely international management should have these if anything should!) C) interactions with your players (this is presumably not done because these are already imperfect and players of club teams would kick up a stink if their international players were always becoming unhappy) D) job interviews E) special shirt numbers ("the famous number 9 shirt previously worn by x etc. etc.) F) Visions Possible reasons for the above not being implemented: A) may be hard for coding reasons somehow C) may be judged not to be a good idea right now The rest? I really couldn't tell you. We all know that SI plans years in advance the features they will implement in the future versions of the game. There is 100% chance that there was a meeting at some point in 2021 planning the headline features for FM23, and someone (probably in Marketing) will have raised making it an edition centred around international football, given the Qatar World Cup. I would genuinely love to know how to that discussion went, and why they decided against that approach. There may well have been good reasons! Hopefully one day we'll find out what those were. At the moment though it makes me extremely pessimistic that international management will ever be improved.