FM23 Youth Development Guide - Mentoring and Training Wonderkids

UPDATED IN April 2023

Learn how to master the art of youth development in Football Manager to build a sustainable and successful future for your club.

Discover the secrets to youth development in Football Manager and how to build a winning team for the future. With this comprehensive guide, you'll learn how to develop and nurture your youth players, scout talent, and create a winning team.

Youth development is the backbone of any successful football club. Developing young talent is crucial to building a sustainable and successful future for your team. With the right strategies and tactics, you can build a team of homegrown players that will help you compete and win at the highest level. In this guide, we will show you how to master the art of youth development in Football Manager.
 

Scout for Talent

The first step to building a successful youth team is to scout for talent. In Football Manager, you can use your scouting network to identify the best young players in your region or around the world. When scouting, it's essential to look for players who have the potential to become elite-level athletes. Pay attention to their attributes, skills, and personality traits, as these will impact their development. 

Once you've identified potential prospects, it's essential to sign them to your youth academy if they are not at your club already. When signing players, it's crucial to pay attention to their personality traits. Players with high levels of determination, professionalism, and ambition are more likely to succeed than those without. These traits will also help your youth players develop faster and become leaders in the future.
 

Once you've have your youth players, it's time to develop and nurture their talents. In Football Manager, you can set up individual training programs for your players based on their positions and skillsets. It's essential to provide your youth players with the right training and coaching to help them develop their skills and reach their full potential.
Below are some of the ways I train my wonderkids on FM23

 

There's two key points to remember above all else:

• Players aged 15-17 it's all about training.
• 18+ it's all about games. Getting good match ratings and winning games

Mentoring

I have 25 players in my 1st team squad on my Bayern save where I have tested everything that will be included in this section. 6 players are over the age of 23.
 

Things to look for in a mentor are:

• Age (most likely a senior player)
• Social Group (Being a Highly Influential Player, Influential Player or Team Leader)
• Personality (Having a very good personality with good hidden attributes can help a youth player with a bad or decent personality)

This is how I set up my mentoring:
 

I organise my mentoring groups by position. I'll be honest, I don't really look at the social group that the players are in.
 

Robert Lewandowski is a Model Professional which means he has good/great hidden attributes. I have him mentoring Moukoko & a regen I got in my intake.

Look at the far right in the red square. "Estimated effect from Group" you can see that Lewandowki is having significant effect on Moukoko & the regen due to his experience & mainly his personality. So when I choose Mentoring Groups I organise by position (Lewandowski, Moukoko & Regen all ST's).
 

Training Schedules

Download all my schedules from this link.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/sibq0n2kopsgskt/FM_Wonderkids_Training.zip/file

Once you download these schedules, you need to extract them to the "schedules" folder.
Personally I use WinRAR. 
Highlight my download & click extract to. 

Then find the schedules folder in Football Manager 2023
 

Pre Season Training

The 1st thing you need to do is use the training schedule “FMW PreSeason 2022”

Set this training for 4-6 weeks.
 

I'd suggest No Individual Training. No Position/Role/Duty, Additional Focus & player traits.
 

You want the Workload on Medium or lower. NOT HEAVY.
 

Check Screenshot below
 

You can change this once pre Season is over.
*High Injury Risk
 

If you have a player complaining about this training we speak about, you can praise or criticise their training.
 

Praising & Criticising Training

This work in both Pre Season & Regular Season
 

- Go to training
- Individual
- Detailed
- Pick a player
- Far right you will see Praise & Criticise
- Praise players with a training rating above 7.10
- Criticise players with a training rating 6.50 & below
- Do this as often as possible. Pre Season & Regular season.
- Young players will benefit massively from this
- This will improve morale & happiness
- You can also do this for matches. Poor match rating criticise, good match rating praise.
- For match ratings, players aged 18+
 

Arranging Friendlies

Make sure you take control of arranging friendlies by going to Staff > Responsibilities > Match and find ”Backroom staff arrange friendly matches for the first team" and make sure it is unticked.
 

Then find out what date Pre season starts & from that date use the “FMW PreSeason 2022” Training Schedule.
 

Then organise 1 Friendly a week, always on Saturday & always at home.

As you can see below

Coaching Assignments

One other thing to look at is coaching assignments, find this by going to Training > Coaches > Edit Coaching Assignments

You want your fitness coaches to have light workload so possibly just add a few coaches in to help them out, but note this is JUST FOR PRESEASON!!!!
 

Regular season coaches will be explained below.

If you manage in friendly games, for 2 friendly games pick a starting 11 & a 2nd 11 on the subs bench.
 

Starting 11 play 1st half & 2nd 11 play 2nd half.
 

For the final friendly game, starting 11 play 60 mins & the 2nd 11 play 30 mins.

I know this can be boring but this can maximise match sharpness & fitness.

By using this method you can see below the match sharpness just before pre season and how it differs to just before the 1st game.
 

And here it is after pre season before the 1st game
 

This should boost overall endurance, get the team ready to play games and get the team fit & maintain fitness.
 

It will help with:

• Tactical Familiarity
• Team Cohesion
• Individual Attributes
• Preventing long term fatigue
  • Which means the team won't be fatigued during the season and they can put more energy to the individual training & additional focus.

Regular Season Training

Individual Training

For Individual Training I recommend training:

• Their weakest attribute in the role that you want them to play
• Train the role I want them to play
• Train their work rate if it is low

DON'T TRAIN PLAYER TRAITS UNTIL THE PLAYER IS 18.
 

Check the screenshot below

Team Training

Get good Training Schedules. You can download three right here:
 

I have organised all my schedules in folders.
 

So 1 game folder, 2 game folder, 0 game folder & Youth folder.
 

Once you have them extracted in the "Schedules" folder in Football Manager 2023,
go to Training, Schedules, Custom Schedules & then Import Schedules.
 

You should see this.
 

Once you load a schedule Click Load, Confirm & then in the bottom right click save.
 

Do that for every schedule.
 

There are schedules there for 0 games in a week, 1 game a week, 2 games a week & Youth.
 

There is only 1 schedule for 0 games.
 

The ones I'd suggest for 1 game a week are - 
FMW Best Training Schedule
FMW Best Training Schedule 1 Game, Week 2
FMW 2023 One Match/FMW 2023 One Match Def
 

For 2 games a week I'd suggest using any in the folder
 

And finally for youth I'd suggest using - 
FMW 2023 Youth 1 game
FMW 2023 Youth 2 games
FMW Youth Attacking/Midfield/Defensive
 

Coaches

Rest should look like this

Training intensity should be set to automatic on every player

Training Facilities

You need good facilities at your club for all of this to work.

At least good on Training Facilities, Youth Facilities & Junior Coaching
 

Here's a look at Chelsea's facilities below and what you should be striving for

Coaching staff

Get the best coaching staff you can and make sure they have low workload and high star rating on Coaches assignments
 

In PreSeason you want Fitness work on coaching assignments to be at most average as well. So add a few more coaches to fitness work to help out the workload.
 

In addition to training, you should also focus on giving your youth players opportunities to play in matches. Playing in competitive matches is an essential part of a player's development. It allows them to gain experience and learn how to perform under pressure. Giving your youth(aged 18+) players regular game time will also help them improve their match fitness and become more confident on the field.

Test results

So I tested all of this with Dorking Wanderers in the Vanarama National.

Not great facilities at Dorking but I tested this to see how 1 player would develop

Below is how the player looked at the start of the season

And now lets see how he looks at the end of the season, in May 2023

As you can see, massive improvement.

In conclusion, Youth development is an essential part of building a successful football club. By scouting for talent, developing and nurturing your youth players, and creating a winning team culture, you can build a sustainable and successful future for your team. With the right strategies and tactics, you can create a team of homegrown players that will help you compete and win at the highest level. Mastering the art of youth development in Football Manager takes time and effort, but the rewards are worth it.
 

And remember these golden rules:

• Players aged 15-17 it's all about training.
• 18+ it's all about games. Getting good match ratings and winning game
• DON'T TRAIN PLAYER TRAITS UNTIL THE PLAYER IS 18.
• Praise and criticise player training & matches
• If you have a player complaining about this training we speak about, you can praise or criticise their training & matches.
• Poor match rating criticise, good match rating praise.
• For match ratings, players aged 18+ Physical attributes develop quickest, then Technical, finally Mental.

*If you have any questions on any of this, contact me on discord. FM Wonderkids#2076 is my username or dm me on twitter @FM_Wonderkids