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Youth & Scouting

Talent decides how fast and how far a player can develop. It's secret – but with patience, good training and a strong youth setup you raise your own stars.

What is talent?

Every player has a secret talent cap per attribute, in the range 30–130 – values above 100 are reserved for absolute once-in-a-generation talents. It sets the development pace: a highly talented attribute grows fast, a low-talent one only slowly. Talent is a rough guideline, not a hard wall – with consistently good coaching a player can grow beyond it, with poor coaching he never reaches it (more under development).

Scouting categories

Scouting gives a rough estimate of overall talent. From weak to strong:

• Recreational player
• Solid player
• First division
• Star player
• Prodigy

… and rumour has it there's an even rarer category. Important: the categories are only for orientation and overlap a lot – a strong "Solid player" can come close to a weak "First division".

The same talent categories apply to your pros: how to scout finished players (your own or from the transfer market) and what fair play and injury proneness mean is covered in Pro players & scouting.

Your own youth

• Scouting: brings new youth players; one scouting takes about 8 days (6 days with the sponsor Woof Spielerberatung). Most talents come from your own country, some from all over the world.
• Squad size: depends on your youth academy upgrade (see Stadium & facilities).
• Development support: how many youth players you can actively develop is set by the youth academy. Pick the position each is developed for – he then realises his potential best in the relevant attributes.
• Development: youth PSDs take place three times per season. The more potential, the faster the progress.
• Promotion: from age 18 you can promote a youth player to the first team; the licence costs 50,000. At the latest on his 19th birthday he leaves the youth team – if not promoted, he retires.

The player file of your talents

Every youth player has his own file with two tabs. Under Info you'll find his origin, his strong foot, your youth coach's assessment and the position he's being developed for; under Attributes you see all his individual attributes as bars – for keepers the five goalkeeping values, for outfield players the seven field values. Right at the top, the head of the file shows you his position, current strength and age at a glance, along with his birthday and a countdown of how long he stays a youth player.

The youth coach's talent assessment is the most important value of all – it costs a one-off 7,000 from the slush fund and stays visible for good afterwards.