Youth Academies Explained

There has been a lot of moaning on the official SI forums lately from players who are upset at the lack of quality coming through their youth academy. These players are upset because despite building very expensive youth academies in well-known and talented footballing nations, they seem to be getting a constant stream of very low potential players rather than the promising youngsters they were expecting. While I don't blame them for being upset at getting so little end product out of such a large amount of investment, it is clear from some of the posts that many managers still don't understand how the Youth Academy system in Football Manager Live is meant to function.

I hope to reveal the mechanism behind how the Youth Academy system in FML functions as well as demonstrate why it is sometimes better to build in a very obscure nation rather than an established footballing power.

HOW DO YOUTH ACADEMIES WORK?
There was a rather popular thread in the beta forums when the testing for 1.5 was occurring where Ov Collyer explained a lot of the details behind the inner workings of the Youth Academy system. Although the ways that the YAs in beta were functioning was slightly different than the way that they function now, the concern voiced by the beta community was actually nearly identical to some of the complaints showing up on the Subscribers forum now: there was a lack of quality players being produced by the large number of youth academies. One of the replies that Ov crafted demonstrated why this was the case in beta as it is now:

I've been having a look at Miller this morning, and the fundamental reason, not surprisingly, why so many players appearing in YAs are of low PA is simply because pretty much every nation is over-subscribed in terms of academies.

Some examples, to illustrate:

Bolivia - academies are demanding a total 38 players per season. However, the system expects only 3 of these to be 'normal' (given a realistic PA), so the other 35 will be given a low PA to make up the numbers and simply to fulfill demand (but with a 1 in a 100 chance of being given a realistic PA).

When I say the system expects, this is based on the composition of players-per-country in the starting GW DB, so basically Bolivia should be churning out 3 regens per season.

Some other examples:

Brazil - academies demand 1230 players per season.
System expects 198.

Serbia - academies demand 180, System expects 35.

Belarus - academies demand 62, System expects 8.

England - academies demand 1010, System expects 438

Holland - academies demand 295, System expects 60

Poland - academies demand 80, System expects 32

The pattern is pretty conclusive, just a handful of nations are not over-subscribed (and no, I'm not saying which ones )

Bottom line is there are way too many academies and so once the system has created the "system expects" figure above, the rest are, by and large going to be rubbish.

Simply put, the youth generation system only creates a fixed number of "normal" potential ability youths every season - just what comprises a "normal" PA youth is a little unclear so for the sake of argument we will assume it is 3* potential and above. When academies start demanding more youths than this system is able to provide, all of the remaining youths that are generated will be of low potential. As you can see in the example above, the academies in Miller beta GW were demanding thousands of more youths than the system was set up to provide - this result in large quantities of "garbage" youth players being generated by academies. The same thing is happening in Voller GW today. Although I do not know the exact number of youths that the system is looking to generate, I think that the numbers I have gathered are around what is correct for the gameworld:

• Argentina - academies demand 541 players per season, system expects 79 players
• England - academies demand 578 players per season, system expects 91 players
• Sweden - academies demand 176 players per season, system expects 29 players
  

You don't have to be a math wiz to see that having an academy in these countries will result in a very large number of "garbage" youths coming through your academy. On average, a youth academy in Argentina in GW Voller is set up to have 84% of the youths that are generated be "garbage" youths with low potential.

WHY BUILD IN AN OBSCURE NATION?
At first glance, given the numbers above, building a Youth Academy in an obscure nation may seem like a very bad idea. After all, if Sweden is only generating 29 players per season, surely Nepal is generating less than 1? Although this line of thinking may intuitively make sense, it does not accurately describe how Youth Academies work in FML.

Another important change made in beta due to the same thread mentioned above was in the way players from obscure nations are generated by youth academies. Some managers were complaining because they had been building their academies in obscure nations and were getting literally NO youths through their academy despite large investments of money. Ov and the SI team agreed that this was not how they would like the YA system to work and made another important change:

Yes, it means that if YAs dictate there is demand for 16 players (e.g. one 5-star academy, or 4 1-star academies, etc) then 16 players will be created and given a normal PA for that nation.

Remaining players will mostly be rubbish to satisfy the YA demand, but with a 1/100 chance of one of these being given a normal PA for that nation.

This change has been made for 1.5.

Simply put, this means that if there is demand (i.e. youth academies) for youths to be created from an obscure nation, the first 16 of them WILL be created with "normal" potential. In other words, 16 is the absolute minimum "normal" PA youths that can be created in each nation. Although this may seem complicated, the implications of this change are rather simple. Rather than creating a 5* youth academy in Argentina and getting 13 garbage youths and 3 capable ones, you can opt to create a youth academy in a nation where none exist so far and be guaranteed 16 capable youth players.

While the example above may seem like a no-brainer, we have to be careful when making the blanket statement that it is always better to build in a obscure footballing nation rather than one that has become overpopulated with youth academies. Consider the following statement from Ov:

This will mean a small rise in ability of the Gameworld over time, but not something too extreme, since the PAs it will generate for small nations still won't tend to be all that great anyway, i.e. Brazil will still generally produce better players than Belize.

So while you may getting 16 quality players building a youth academy in the US Virgin Islands, it is very unlikely that any of these players will ever get to the level of 1 great Brazilian youth player. Therefore, in a fully-developed and realized Youth Academy market, the manager still has an important choice to make - do I attempt to build in an obscure nation and guarantee myself a steady stream of quality prospects or do I build in an overpopulated but higher quality footballing nation and try to hit the jackpot on that one superstar youth per season?

The choice is up to you!