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UPDATED 1st Jan 2024

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/7e6z1qmsurbxemj/FM_Wonderkids_FM24_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 2024
 UPDATED 1st Jan 2024. Youth Team Schedules are in there

 

Pre Season Training

The 1st thing you need to do is use the training schedule “FMW Pre Season 2023-24”

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:
 

You can see all the Schedules you need
 

Once you have them extracted in the "Schedules" folder in Football Manager 2023 or 2024,
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 1 Game 2023-24
FMW Best Training  1 Game, Week 2. 2023-24
FMW One Match 2023-24 & FMW One Match Def 2023-24
 

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

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 

Comments
Camelgod
6 years ago
2 months ago
1
Premium

should you have the same schedule for the u18/u21 as you have for the regular team?

Should i rotate between all three  FMW Best Training 1 Game 2023-24
FMW Best Training  1 Game, Week 2. 2023-24
FMW One Match 2023-24 & FMW One Match Def 2023-24 or stick with one?

Great content btw!

Dennis Dijkstra
2 years ago
2 months ago
2

It seems like a nice guide with great info but based mostly on an older game.
I know many things remain the same and transfer over but can you really call this a FM24 guide if it's not based on FM24??

Perhaps retest and update all above information to make it more up to date 🙂

stevey
13 years ago
2 weeks ago
14
Premium

What are the match rating thresholds for criticism and praise? Is it the same as training?

Protheus
6 years ago
2 months ago
9
Premium
By stevey 02 November 2023 - 12:12 PM UTC 

What are the match rating thresholds for criticism and praise? Is it the same as training?

 

yes same

Adam Steven Cook
3 years ago
2 weeks ago
5
Premium
By stevey 02 November 2023 - 12:12 PM UTC 

What are the match rating thresholds for criticism and praise? Is it the same as training?

 

I personally do

9.5> ‘puts arm around’ - praise

9 - 9.4 ‘Pats on shoulder’ - praise

8.5 - 8.9 - just a simple praise

Praising always has a positive effect on players if training at these levels.

 

<6.0 - criticise. Careful with criticising though as if you do it too often they'll get whingey at you. I'd do it twice in a row then I wont do it a third time if they performed poorly in training 3 weeksa in a row, But generally I have good schedules and its rare that a player gets below 6.

 

I dont know if they hugs and pats do much, I've rarely noticed it do much in terms of a players body language but I just do it anyway.

DarkRaiden12
2 years ago
1 year ago
1

Love the guide but I just had one question, which schedules do we use for youth teams?

 

Risaldi
2 years ago
2 weeks ago
3

can i apply this in fm23?

FM Wonderkids
8 years ago
5 days ago
48
Premium
FM Wonderkids
8 years ago
5 days ago
48
Premium
By DarkRaiden12 10 November 2023 - 02:04 AM UTC 

Love the guide but I just had one question, which schedules do we use for youth teams?

 

Updated now. Youth Schedules in there now

FM Wonderkids
8 years ago
5 days ago
48
Premium
By stevey 02 November 2023 - 12:12 PM UTC 

What are the match rating thresholds for criticism and praise? Is it the same as training?

 

Morale

FM Wonderkids
8 years ago
5 days ago
48
Premium
By Dennis Dijkstra 29 October 2023 - 18:43 PM UTC 

It seems like a nice guide with great info but based mostly on an older game.
I know many things remain the same and transfer over but can you really call this a FM24 guide if it's not based on FM24??

Perhaps retest and update all above information to make it more up to date 🙂

 

Its been retested on FM24. it works

edwinvanderhoosen
9 months ago
9 months ago
1

Really good guide, some new things for me and many reminders. Very useful and much appreciated!

will price123
7 months ago
6 months ago
1
Premium

do I stick with one schedule for 1 game weeks or switch them up?

 

AndreasBW1978
4 years ago
3 days ago
3

Are there also training schedules for semi-professional teams or does it generally make no sense to develop wonderkids or the youth itself as a semi-professional team?

FM Wonderkids
8 years ago
5 days ago
48
Premium
By Camelgod 27 October 2023 - 08:07 AM UTC 

should you have the same schedule for the u18/u21 as you have for the regular team?

Should i rotate between all three  FMW Best Training 1 Game 2023-24
FMW Best Training  1 Game, Week 2. 2023-24
FMW One Match 2023-24 & FMW One Match Def 2023-24 or stick with one?

Great content btw!

 

Yes, You can have the same schedule for the u18/u21 as you have for the regular team.

 

Yes, rotate between all three  FMW Best Training 1 Game 2023-24
FMW Best Training  1 Game, Week 2. 2023-24
FMW One Match 2023-24 & FMW One Match Def 2023-24 

 

Sorry for late reply & Thank you for your support

FM Wonderkids
8 years ago
5 days ago
48
Premium
By will price123 21 April 2024 - 20:22 PM UTC 

do I stick with one schedule for 1 game weeks or switch them up?

 

Switch them up

 

Sorry for late reply

Patricio Segura
2 months ago
2 weeks ago
1

I'm having a lot of injuries starting the season (just 2nd Premier League game with West Ham and already 6 injured, only 2 severe though). Is that normal with this training? Maybe I have to check workload/staff? Sorry, I'm kinda new in the FM world. Thank you for the reply and the guide!

Yotab Arkaven
1 year ago
1 month ago
13

Great advices with terrible English. Some instructions took me 100 times to understand what he actually means.

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