How to bring youth players through your academy: scout guide

Learning how to bring youth players through your academy is the cheapest way to get good players in a football manager game. In ELDT, youngsters do not appear by magic: scouts bring them in, they grow week by week at your training ground, play their own tournament and, at some point, move up to the first team. It is a long process, but managed properly it saves you millions in the market. Here’s the lot from top to bottom.

Scouts: the ones who bring you the youngsters

It all starts with the scouts. You can have up to 3 at the same time, and there are four levels: Junior, Experienced, Senior and Elite. Each one has a hiring cost and a weekly wage, and the pricier ones bring more youngsters per search and better odds of finding talent.

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One important thing: a scout’s level improves the odds, it does not guarantee them. Any scout can bring you a youngster of any potential. An Elite scout buys you better dice, not the result.

On top of that, each scout specialises in a region (areas of Greater Buenos Aires, CABA, the interior or neighbouring countries) or can be General and search anywhere. The region affects the sort of youngsters that turn up.

How to bring youth players through the academy: the search schedule

Scouts go out looking on the 1st and 16th of each month, at 03:00 (Argentina time). On each search, every scout you have under contract brings you youth player options. When you go into the Academy, you see them and decide who to add.

Each youngster has a potential, which is their ceiling, and a current OVR. Do not mix them up: a youngster with very high potential can start with a low OVR and take time to get there. Potential tells you how far they can grow, not how well they play today.

How youngsters grow

Youngsters grow every Monday at 01:00 (Argentina time). Each week they move a little closer to their potential. How much they grow depends on several things:

• Distance to potential: the further they are from their ceiling, the more room they have. When they reach their potential, they stop improving.
• The training ground: each level of the academy speeds up growth for all your youngsters and adds more academy places.
• Minutes in the Youth Tournament: every match they play during the week adds extra growth.
• Personality and morale: each youngster has a personality that speeds up or slows down development, and high morale helps.
• Youth coordinator: if you have one in Staff, they boost growth across the whole academy.
• Pending events: if a youngster has an unresolved event, they grow less. The longer you leave it, the worse it gets.

That last point is easy to forget. When a youth event pops up, it is best to sort it quickly: leaving it hanging around for days slows their growth.

Time moves faster in the academy

In the academy, time runs differently: youngsters turn a year older every 45 real days. A 16-year-old youth player reaches 18 in about three months. That matters because age changes everything:

• The younger they are, the faster they grow.
• From 19 onwards, growth slows down.
• At 20, the youngster moves up automatically to the first team, whatever their state.

The Youth Tournament

Your youth team plays the Youth Tournament, with fixtures on Thursdays and Saturdays between 10:00 and 10:45 (Argentina time), played on the same match engine as first-team matches. The groups are home and away, and at the end the group champions play a final phase for the national youth title.

You can set the youth line-up yourself. If you do not, the best automatic eleven is picked. Doing it yourself has a double benefit: you choose who gets the minutes, and minutes help youngsters grow. If you have a youngster with loads of potential on the bench, you are wasting development.

When to promote a youngster to the first team

To promote a youngster to the senior squad they need 18 years and OVR 12. Once they have both, they are marked as ready to promote.

The decision has some nuance:

• If you promote them as soon as they meet the requirements, they start collecting first-team minutes and training like a professional. Players under 19 benefit most from training.
• If you leave them a bit longer in the academy, they can keep growing through the Youth Tournament. But from 19 the pace drops, and at 20 they go up on their own.

In general, it is better to choose the moment yourself between 18 and 19, rather than waiting for the automatic promotion. Once they are up, training works like it does for any player: we explain that in how to train players.

What an academy costs

The academy is not free. Every week you pay for:

• The wage of each scout.
• The wage of each youngster you have in the academy.
• The upkeep of the training ground, depending on what you have invested in the academy.

A youngster who clearly will not make it costs you money every week. Releasing them is a decision too. All these costs appear in Finance, in upcoming payments and in the Monday closing. If you want to understand how it all fits into the budget, have a look at the club finances guide.

Selling what you have developed

Youngsters cannot be sold while they are in the academy: first they need to be promoted to the first team. Once promoted, they are auctioned like any other player. And if a youngster you developed is later sold by another club, your club receives a training club percentage. We cover that in how to sell players.

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For more detail

The academy help has all the details on scouts, the training ground and events, and the academy page shows you what it looks like in the game.

Create your club and hire your first scout →