How to Scout for the Best Wonderkids & Newgens in Football Manager

Do you want to master the art of scouting for wonderkids on Football Manager? Do you want to beat your mates, or your opponents at securing the best wonderkids and newgens in Football Manager? Then our ultimate scouting guide about how to find the best wonderkids and newgens on Football Manager 2024 will be essential for you!

Today we will be revealing the secrets on how to scout for the best wonderkids and newgens in Football Manager 2024, so you can find all those cheap top talents and hidden gems that are popping up in Football Manager as you advance in the game. Our approach to scouting for wonderkids has been used for creating all those wonderkids recommendations you find on the website and gives you a better insight into the art of scouting for wonderkids.

By sharing our wonderkids scouting tips and tricks, we give you all the tools at hand to easily identify the best young players with world-class potential and the next generation of talents coming through, as you advance in your save! With these FM24 scouting tips you can more easily improve your squad into a title challenger, whilst also making huge profit from developing talents into wonderkids before putting them up for sale.

PS. If you wish to skip the introduction part and background information on what to focus on for your scouting team before you start searching for wonderkids, then jump directly into our scouting tips, jump directly into section 3 for our six quick scouting methods.

Scouting for Wonderkids & Newgens 101

Scouting for wonderkids on Football Manager is an art that needs to be harnessed. It requires effort and patience to scour the world for the best wonderkids and newgens. However, there are a few tips and tricks that you can take advantage of to find the best Football Manager 2024 wonderkids and newgens.

However, by understanding what to look for and how to set up your scouting network, you can easily spot the best wonderkids and newgens in Football Manager, and let your scouting centre be filled with highly recommended players that will be classed as an excellent signing, high priority signing or a terrific signing for the future.

Some of these tips to identify the best young players on Football Manager are pretty basic, but as you will discover, combining these quick tips with a more methodically approach will pay off as you advance in the future and you really need to find the next big thing to lead your club to future glories.

In this essential guide to scouting for wonderkids and newgens we will cover both some of the EASIEST methods at how to find the best wonderkids in Football Manager, as well as going through some of the advanced methods to undertake when scouting for wonderkids.

This guide will take a closer look at how you can use recruitment focuses, player search and other methods to find those young football players who got that something extra to develop into superstars. It will be a rather extensive guide covering all the topics of scouting, so make sure you find your notebook and take notes!

Basically, it’s something for everyone, regardless of whether you’re a newbie to Football Manager, or an experienced player who might have overlooked some of the greater benefits of taking advantage of the recruitment focuses to find the best young players in Football Manager.

If you want to better understand how scouting works in Football Manager or wish to learn how to scout for players, we have a number of other relating scouting guides for Football Manager, that can be of value!

1. The Optimal Database Size to Find Wonderkids on Football Manager?

When starting a new save, you need to consider what kind of save you would like to have and the number of players you ‘need’ for your project. If you’re playing in the lower leagues, the number of playable nations can be restricted to neighbouring nations and a few selected nations and playable leagues that you need for your planned transfer policy.

When it comes to embarking on a youth development save, you should increase the player count by using a custom database setup to enable you to track down the best wonderkids and newgens from across the world!

Selecting all available nations in Football Manager will have a drastic impact on the speed of the game and the processing powers it needs to simulate all those matches. Rather than selecting 10+ nations with every division within the country made playable, you can determine the database size to increase the number of players and staff available in the save.

Browsing the internet enables you to find a number of different tips on how to setup the ultimate game setup for Football Manager 2024, such as this guide by SecondYellowCard, which you can watch in the video below.

Personally and similar to SecondYellowCard, when trying to optimize the database size to make Football Manager run as quick and smooth as possible, I take advantage of the ‘Advanced options’ to increase the number of player count by creating a large database.

The option to customize the database size on Football Manager 2024 is available by clicking on the Advanced Setup. This button will appear in the same screen you select the Game Mode: Original, Real World or Your World on Football Manager.

Once you click Advanced Setup you can pick the number of active nations and playable leagues for your save, but also influence on the approximate player count and thereby the database size!

When selecting your preferred number of active nations and leagues, you will see the game speed (displayed in star ratings being affected). Selecting the top 12 nations in the world with all available divisions made playable will dramatically reduce the game speed, unless you have a brand new high-end computer with one of the newest processor powers.

However, by clicking the Advanced option under the Approxiate Player Count, you can instead of selecting a Small, Medium or Large Database size, enable all players within a region, nation or continent to let you spot more players without dramatically affecting the game speed!

Personally, regardless of the type of save I’m doing, I prefer to have around 100K players and staff available in the save.

Although guys like SecondYellowCard or Daveincid has done research on the optimal database size, my preference in the matter of a custom database setup is:

A) Add Continents of your preference. Personally, I only pick Europe, South America and Africa but which continents you pick will be determined by where you manage.

B) Select ‘Players from top division clubs‘ AND ‘Players from top Clubs’

C) Select ‘Players with National Reputation’

This will take the approximate player count to ~110K players without reducing the speed of Football Manager, and enable you to find more hidden wonderkids, bargains and cheap gems from these selected continents.

2. Take Control of Scouting

When starting a new save, scouting is often delegated to the chief scout who will automatically handle the job of setting up scouting assignments and decide on which scouts shall travel where. The chief scout will prioritize nations, divisions or competitions he believes will be of value.

By taking charge of scouting yourself, you will have more control of extending and improving your club’s scouting network. In many ways, you’ll be able to set up a recruitment vision that fits your transfer policy and interests when recruiting players.

The main idea by taking full control of scouting is to enable you to set the recruitment focuses and scout the nation’s of your preferance. You’ll be able to be more hands-on and assign scouts to areas of the world that’s most valuable to scout, for instance in terms of nations that has an higher likeliness of producing quality newgens.

2.1 How to change the responsibility of assigning scouts on Football Manager 2024?

If you want more freedom to set up scouting assignments and determine which nations to scout you can take charge of scouting by handling the responsibilities. Simply select:

Staff < Responsibilities < Scouting < Click Take Control under Assigning Scouts

In fact, if you’d like to benefit from our tips and ensure you locate the most promising talents as quickly and early on as possible, you’ll need to take control of scouting yourself! You can futher tips on how to find newgens and promising talents in our guide on how to scout for players in Football Manager.

2.3 The Quality of Scouting Team

Before we can even begin hunting for wonderkids, the size and quality of the scouting team, or recruitment team including analysts, can’t be underestimated. Regardless of who you manage, the number of scouts at your disposal will determine how you can set up your scouting network and which areas of the world you’re able to hunt for wonderkids in.

A lesser size of scouts means you’ll need to be more creative hunting for wonderkids as you’re not able to set up the amount of recuitment focuses you need to scour the world for the best talents. It’s the same thing if you’re limited to a lower scouting budget or a limited scouting range.

In order to find the best wonderkids and newgens, you should put an extra effort as early on as possible to improve your scouting team. It should be a continious project to build a worldwide scouting network by signing the best scouts possible by always extending the recruitment team with more scouts and analysts with knowledge of new nations your club doesn’t got knowledge of. As soon as an opportunity to increase the number of allowed staff opens up, do it!

For any newbies to Football Manager, a scout needs high level of:

• Judging Player Ability (JPA) to more accurately judge a players’ ability
• Judging Potential Ability (JPP) to more accurately judge a players’ potential ability. It may be evaluate his future performances according to several factors that can affect the outcome
• Adaptability to quickly adapt to foreign cultures and more effectively provide scout reports of players within a foreign nation or a region

Our list of the best Football Manager 2024 scouts can be of great value and give a better insight to who you need to sign in order to set up an extensive and efficiently scouting team. Since we have written about how to build and set up your scouting network in this guide, we won’t go deeper into this matter in this guide.

2.3.1 Taking Advantage of your Scouting Team

Once in control of scouting and you’re able to setting up scouting assignments, it’s important to get an overview of the scouts at your disposal and send the appropriate staff to attend assignments suited to his skills.

To increase the number of scout reports and the number of players found, it’s important to assign the scout to nations he got Extensive Knowledge of. If he also got high Adaptability, you can consider sending him out to scout regions that includes nations he’s already familiar of.

Cliking on the Scouting Coverage on the Recruitment Focus page gives you a list of all the scouts within your recruitment team and their current recruitment focusing area, if any set, and the number of recruitment focuses they are assigned to. From there you can either hover over their name profile avatar to discover their attributes or scouting knowledge.

By sending scouts to nations they already got full knowledge of it ensures that the scout can start the process of gathering and delivering player reports immediately, as the scout does not need to get accustomed to the nation and its culture.

Then, in the matter of scouting for wonderkids, you want to send out the best scouts in terms of judging player potential out on assignments to identify the best Under-21/Under-23 players. Once you have control of your scouting team and knows their best abilities, then, the fun begins!

READ MORE | How to build an extensive scouting network

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2.4 Scout Reports & Knowledge

When hunting for wonderkids, you can gather and flick through thousands of scout reports, but it’s basically a waste of time if the entire scouting team got average to poor judging player ability and potential. In these circumstances, how they rate the players scouted and their recommendations will most likely be highly inaccurate, and thereby needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

At the same time, you can’t judge a player’s potential or abilities until you have extensive knowledge of the player. It requires you to scout the player for at least 2 weeks until full knowledge has been gained. You can even gain knowledge by attending a match the player is featured in, or ask your scouts to watch the match to gain quicker knowledge of the team’s players.

Once you have gained full knowledge you’ll be able to get a better understanding of the players’ abilities including hidden attributes that may impact on his performances and development.

When requesting and assessing scout reports of multiple players, the recommendation grade and star ratings will be influenced by a number of factors, which will impact on the recommendation grade. These elements can affect the recommendation grade both positively or negatively;

• Current Ability relative to your average squad current abilities for the position
• Potential Ability relative to other players within your squad for that particular position
• Transfer Cost & Wage Demands relative to your transfer budget and other notable Transfer clauses
• Personality (e.g Professionalism, Pressure, Ambitions, Sportsmanship, Adaptability, Controversy, Loyalty, Temperament)
• Hidden Attributes (Consistency, Important Matches, Dirtiness, Injury Proneness, Versatility)
• Notable Attributes according to his natural position and best player role
• Registration Rules
• Influence on Social Groups and Dynamics – how well they will fit into the current squad

A similar recommendation rating will be provided by the recruitment analyst when you request an Analyst report. He will look and assess all statistical data he can find, and rate the performances of the player. In the top section of the Player Analysis, you will get valueable information about the league standard and how it compares to your division.

• Career Apps
• Performance (e.g goals, shots, tackles, average rating or other statistical data relevant to their position and/or role)
• Form (Average Rating Last 5 Matches)

The result is that how the two types of staff rates the players will be different, as one look at his abilities (read attributes and CA/PA) and compare it to your squad, whilst the recruitment analyst only looks at performance by assessing statistical data and other metrics.

This means that if you’re squad is full of players with an lower current ability, you will easily find more five star current and potential ability players. On the other hand, if you have a strong squad with lots of quality players for instance in a specific position like at centre backs, the star rating of current ability or potential ability of other centre back wonderkids will suffer, two and a half star compared to 5-stars.

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With a brief background information, we are ready to delve deeper into the matter of finding the best wonderkids and newgens on Football Manager 2024 and what quick steps you can take to scout for wonderkids.

So without further ado, let us take a closer look at some scouting methods to take. We start off with 6 quick methods before looking closer at how to use player search as a way to scout for the best wonderkids and newgens.

#3. Six Quick Methods | How to Scout for the Best Wonderkids & Newgens in Football Manager

#1 Filter by Media Description in Player Search

One of the quickest methods to identify wonderkids on Football Manager is to filter players by their Media Description. This is possible when you customize the view of the Players in Range tab and add Media Description as a new coloumn.

Then browse by alphabetical order to spot the players labelled by ‘Wonderkids’ by the media, by clicking on the Media Description coloumn so Young Wingers are on top. Scroll down to the find those players labelled as Wonderkids.

For a quicker progress, edit the search filter by only showing players between the age of 15 and 21.

NB! As mentioned in the list of best FM24 Wonderkids, players are only labelled as Wonderkids by the Media when their current ability is either above 135, or got an home reputation of more than 5750, regardless of their potential ability.

This means you might miss out of young talents with a potential of -95 or -8 if you only look at the media description. In fact, most players under the age of 18 got a current ability far below the minimum of 135 and will therefore not be described as wonderkids for several seasons, or until they gain an higher reputation – for instance by signing for a top club, gain matches in continental competitions or perform well in matches which results in awards.

In Football Manager, the media description of young players will change from Wonderkids to e.g. Explosive Striker, Attacking Fullback or Hard-working Midfielder players once they turn 21. This doesn’t mean that they will suddenly have their potential ability reduced, but that due to their age the media will classify them differently.

Apart from browsing through the list of players according to those listed as Wonderkids by the media, I tend to scout players labeled with the term ‘Promising’. It may require some browsing through the list of all players found, but it may be worth it!

#1.1 Look for Wanted Players

When browsing through the list of youngsters within your filtered search, I also tend to look for players who got a player status information described as Wanted – ‘Wnt’.

This means that they are wanted by another club. If there are big clubs targeting the player, it may signal that he has an higher potential and could become an international star later on in his career.

The only way to know, is to scout the player to get more information about his potential and other hidden attributes that may describe his potential to develop into a useful player in the future.

#2 Locate Newgens by Youth Intake

Another quick method when searching for wonderkids, besides setting up recruitment focuses, is to find the latest newgens arriving at the annual youth intake. In this instance, you’ll look to browse through the latest newgens being created within your save.

This easy method for scouting for newgens is only possible once the youth intakes has started to be generating – normally from January to May.

To find newgens arriving at youth intakes, here’s a step by step guide;

1. Select the world icon located to the top right corner.
2. Click ‘World’ in the top menu
3. Select ‘Transfers’ listed under ‘General’
4. Click ‘Youth Intake’
5. Browse the list of ‘Youth Intake’
6. or check the ‘Youth Departures’

These two options will provide you with a monthly list of clubs who have had their youth intake, either the players are moved from the junior team to the youth sides (U18/U17) or are released as they did not get a professional contract.

You can further minimize the result by filtering and removing specific nations. Simply click ‘Filter’, which gives you a list of all nations in the world (or in a particular region) and untick the ones you’re not interested in.

NB! You can even look for youth intake players by a specific region or nation by selecting Europe or South America, instead of ‘World’, and select the nations you’re most interesting in, or that’s most beneficial to scout, according to the Nation’s level of Youth Rating.

For instance, I would go through the players arriving at Youth intakes in Argentina, Brazil, France, Spain and other useful nations close to my club’s location to identify useful prospects. Selecting Colombia, Peru, Paraguay, South Korea and Serbia could reveal lots of cheap gems coming through at some of the many hidden wonderkids factories in Football Manager.

You can either hover over the little player profile icon to the left of the player’s names to check out their player profile and single out interesting players that you like to take further actions on.

Or, use the next tip to select multiple players at once and right click on the player’s names to either:

OPTION 1: Select Report - 'Scout players for one week' to gain further knowledge of the players

This method can be a costly affair as travel cost will be taken out of the club’s scouting budget. Scouting, let’s say, 100 players this way, can quickly see you spend the entire scouting budget, as scouting one player can cost anywhere from 1K to 5K per player depending on their location, and your club’s allowed scouting range.

NB! The Youth departures list all players that have been released on a free transfer. Here you might pick up on some bargains (especially if you’re playing on a lower level than the club that released the player).

OPTION 2: Create a shortlist called ‘Newgens’ or ‘U17 Players’. Add the most interesting youth players into that shortlist so you can use a custom view and other filters to gain more knowledge about the players, and monitor their progress over the next 6-24 months.

Browsing through the players coming through at Youth Intakes will be a time consuming job as you will need to methological go through nation by nation, club by club and player by player to single out interesting candidates.

If you have ‘Attribute masking’ turned on, attributes will be displayed as no knowledge (e.g ‘-‘) or in ranges (e.g ‘5-15’), meaning you can’t make a particular judgement of the player until you have gained more knowledge.

Below is a Colombian youngster coming through the youth academy of Barranquilla which I found by scouring the list of players coming through at youth intake in South America. At the moment, I don’t know how good he is, or will be, but standing out with Work Rate 12-20, Determination 6 to 14 (this value should ideally be 12-20…) and 11-17 in acceleration alerted my attention.

READ MORE | Complete list of Nation’s Youth Intake Dates on Football Manager

#2.1 | How To Select Multiple Players At Once

When browsing through the list of players found within a search, or when browsing the list of youth intakes / youth departures, a handy tip may be to select multiple players at once. With a quick shortcut you can select hundreds of players at once and make an action.

Here’s how to proceed:

• Click on the first row or tick box
• Hold in Shift
• Tick a row further down
• Voila! Suddenly all rows between is selected

With X amount of players selected you can decide whether to scout them all, put them into a new shortlist, make an enquiry or follow them to monitore their progress.

NB! This will save you time, especially in terms of getting scout reports of them.
However, do remember that due to the scouting cost, this type of multi-scouting can cost your club a lot of money and totally ruin your scouting budget. We don’t recommend to use this method on more than 20 players at once.

#2.2 | Offer on Trial

When browsing through the list of newly generated players, such as the youth intake list, or browsing the list of players in range, a quick way to increase the knowledge of players is to Offer a Trial.

By getting the player on a trial you can get a sneak peak of their level of attributes and approximate current and potential ability at no extra cost. The problem is that the best wonderkids and talents, who have just signed a new contract, will probably not be allowed to go on a trial, or doesn’t want to, since they are happy with their new contract.

#3. Scout Youth National Teams to Identify Talents

Monitoring which players who gets called up to represent their National team can be a quick way to discover new talents and amazing wonderkids. The old tried and tested method that I have used for the past 10 years is to browse through the Under-21 to Under-18 National teams to identify players who may have high potential.

It’s a very methodical job where you browse all international players called up to represent the youth teams of e.g Brazil, Argentina, England, Germany, France and so on.

Now, I have to remind you that the AI Manager won’t necessary call up the best newgens or talents for every tournament or qualifiers. Most often they will prioritize calling up players with high CA rather than the highest PA.

However, who gets called up to represent the Under-18 National team can be a source to identify some future gems. Put them into a shortlist, scout the players with the highest transfer value (as it seems transfer value often correlates to their potential), or individual scout the most interesting players.

For instance, scouting the Under-18s National Teams has let me discover Zoran Alilovic (Partizan Belgrade), Rafael Camacho (Sporting CP), Mudasar Sadat (Bayern Münich), David Pejicic (Udinese) or Mauro Echegoyen (Osasuna), apart from other future newgens that will appear as season progresses.

For a lower league team, scouting the youth national teams can be a real gold mine as there are players with the ability to play at League 1 or Championship level being called-up to represent their country. Some are even available on a free, or got an asking price below €2Million. Just don’t expect these players to have the potential to become leading players within the world five to ten years into the future.

NB! Our opposition team squad view enables you to get more information about the players and let you track players with great form or see how much knowledge you got over the players. You’ll get the opposition squad view by downloading our custom views megapack.

#4. Browse the NXGN Awards

The NxGN Awards list is a yearly list celebrating the top 50 best young talents in world football. The NxGN list was initially created by Goal.com in 2016 but has later become the household way of ranking the best wonderkids in world football that year. This has been picked up by Sports Interactive and included in Football Manager 2024.

Every year on March 31st, you will receive an inbox message where your press officer hands you the list of the 50 best wonderkids in the game that year.

As you process through the seasons, it may be a valueable source to get to know some amazing wonderkids popping up through the game.

#5. Scout Specific Clubs Famous For Their Youth Academy

This is probably the most simple quick tip possible!

Sometimes you don’t need to be a genius to find players, sometimes you just need to know where to look, clubs with the ability to develop young players year after year, season after season.

If you got all the time in the world, then browsing through the youth ranks of all the best wonderkids factories across the world, can be valuable. Here you put effort into scouting clubs with great youth facilities and thereby a considerable better chance to produce quality newgens at the annual youth intake.

The idea to scout specific clubs famous for their youth academy and state of the art youth training facilities, either because of their history of producing excellent talents or due to their setup of coaching staff, can be a highly beneficial approach as these clubs are most likely to produce quality newgens time and time again!

It requires a considerable amount of work browsing through all the players to unearth the best hidden gems and potential wonderkids with world class potential. However, when you find a future star in the Under-18s of one of the hidden wonderkids factories, it’s well worth the job.

*NOTE! Clubs can both upgrade and downgrade their youth facilities in Football Manager as you advance years into the future, resulting that there are new clubs who got similar training facility standards 10 or 20 years into the future.

Some clubs famed for their youth production is:

• Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City and Arsenal
• Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord (Holland)
• Paris SG and Stade Rennais (France)
• KRC Genk and Anderlecht (Belgium)
• Sporting Lisbon and Benfica (Portugal)
• Barcelona and Real Madrid (Spain)
• Palmeiras (Brazil)
• Dinamo Zagreb (Croatia)
• Partizan and Crvena Zvezda (Serbia)

For a closer look at the clubs we recommend to visit, please check out our ranking of the best youth academy clubs in Football Manager, or find hidden gems and cheap wonderkids talents by browsing the youth squads of the hidden wonderkids factories on Football Manager.

#6. Scout Youth Tournaments & Under-21 Competitions

Another beneficial approach to find the best wonderkids and talents is to scout specific youth tournaments, such as the UEFA Youth League, Torneo di Viareggio or the Maurice Revello Tournament. In fact, there are many international competitions for under-21 players across the world that may be beneficial to scout.

Quick List of major Under-21 Competitions;

• FIFA U20 World Cup (every second year – next event 2025)
• UEFA Euro Under-19 and UEFA Euro Under-21 (every second year – next event 2025 with qualification beginning at the end of November 2024.
• TotalEnergies U-20 Africa Cup of Nations (equivalent to the UEFA Euro)
• Maurice Revello Tournament (formerly known as Toulon tournament) – an annual Under-20 tournament for National teams – great source to international players from across the world e.g South Korea, Australia, Algeria and Croatia to name a few nations apart from top 10 footballing nations
• UEFA Youth League (annual club tournament equivalent to the Champions League)
• CONMEBOL Libertadores sub-20 (annual under-20 tournament featuring South American clubs)
  Source to identify Argentinian, Colombian, Uruguayan, Paraguayan and Chilean talents
• Torneo di Viareggio (annual regional tournament held in the commune of Viareggio)
  Source to find Italian, Hungarian and Turkish players, amongst other

To find the different youth competitions in Football Manager, go to;

Method 1:

• Select World Icon > World > Rankings > Competitions > Cups
• or Select Worl Icon – World - Navigate to International competitions or Club Competitions and click on preferred competition

Method 2:

• Select World Icon > Click Specific Region > Select Nation or scroll down to the bottom of the list of Nations to find Club or International Competitions

Then click the competition of choice and click ‘Overview’ and ‘Follow’ it. This will let you get information about what’s happening in the tournament delivered to you in your inbox.

Method 3:

• Select Scouting Centre > Click Assignments > Select a scout > Create New Recruitment Focus - Pick a specific Competition*

* Select the competition of preference, either it’s the U19’s league in Italy or the Brazilian U20’s. Once the preferred competition is selected you can add additional conditions such as specific attributes, based in or scout by specific scouting potential. I’d like to limit the search results on these youth competition assignments by asking the scout to find players with at least good potential.

In the next part of our guide to scouting for wonderkids, we’ll delve deeper into the matter by looking at the opportunities you as the manager can take advantage of, if you take control of scouting, by setting up specific recruitment focuses to find wonderkids and hidden gems.

#6.1 Utilize the Screen Flow Interface Option

The screen flow is probably one of the most hidden and underused tools in Football Manager. Some would deem it to be an awesome tool to get information about a specific tournament or competition that’s taking place, perhaps outside any of the selected playable leagues. Whilst others may not have heard about it at all!

The screen flow option can be found by heading to:

Click the FM drop down menu > Click Preferences > select Advanced > Screen Flow

From here, you can ask Football Manager to provide you with both basic and more detailed information about a specific tournament of your choice, delivered straight to your news inbox as soon as the tournament is taking place, either you want the news to appear on match days or at the end of the competition.

Below we’ve provided with just an example of major competitions and youth tournaments that may be proficient to scout. Even though this illustration is from a previous version of FM, the interface and how you go about setting it up, is identical.

Once set up, you can get an overview of the competition before it begins, gain information about statistics and performances about players or teams whilst it is ongoing or get notified by who are the award winners at completion.

Then, you can simply scout the players that looks the most intriguing to get more knowledge of the player’s potential and likeliness to be a great fit to your squad.

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3.2 Utilizing the Player Search

Since we have setup a custom database size of over 100,000 players, we should be able to find more players. Although we will take a closer look at more advanced scouting methods to identify wonderkids later on, one of the easiest methods is to utilize the player search by filtering by age and reputation.

In this matter, we’re manually searching for players based on specific criterias, and the number of players appearing in the list of ‘Players in Range‘ will be determined by several factors, such as:

• Database size & active leagues
• Allowed Scouting Range
• Club’s Scouting Knowledge

For a lower league team with a restricted scouting budget will see less players found than a world-class team with the ability to scout the entire world.

But regardless of the club’s scouting budget, which affects the scouting packages you’re able to select, there are options to manually search for players despite not having the finances.

If you’re managing a club in the third division (e.g. Nancy in France) you can benefit from selecting the highest possible scouting package despite not being able to afford the cost of a more extensive scouting range. Instead, select the highest possible, e.g. Europe BUT never advance in the save after conducting a manual search! If you click Continue, the club will need to pay the monthly cost of that Scouting Range package.

The cost of the scouting range will be deducted from the scouting budget at the end of the month, so enabling a higher scouting package a month or two before the transfer window opens up could be highly beneficial before using the minimal scouting package when you’re not in search of new players.

To save money, you can always reduce the scouting range when you are not in need for new signings… but who wouldn’t want to continue scouting for new wonderkids for the entire season?!

#3.1 | Manually Search for Players by Filtering by Reputation & Age

But let us take into account you have enabled the highest possible scouting range package. Besides letting you to set up recuitment focuses that covers more regions and nations, you’ll find more players in the Players In Range tab – hopefully closing in on to the huge database size you’ve selected for your save.

Now you’re able to search for players by selecting specific filters. In this instance, we could search for players between the age of 15 and 21. This to restrict the number of players. In this case, you can even add the critera to only search for players based in a country – e.g players under the age of 21 based in Colombia.

Then, if you have downloaded our custom views megapack, our ‘Player Search View – Detailed’ view has everything you need to identify wonderkids, such as Media Description and World Reputation.

A quick method when scouting for wonderkids is to browse the list of players by their age and reputation. You can limit the number of players to players at the age of 15 or 17 and sort by the players with highest reputation on the top.

You can even browse by the player’s highest transfer value for their age group to quickly identify the best wonderkids and talents. Through this method, I’ve quickly discovered some of the best newgens coming through in the game, as those with higher CA and PA will be more highly rated by the club.

#3.2 | Scout for Approach to Sign Wonderkids & Talents

Using filters to scout for wonderkids and talents isn’t only limited to reputation or transfer value. Another quick method is to filter by the players’ contract status.

Edit the search criteria and change Contract Status from ‘Any’ to players with a Youth Contract to find young players available on an ‘Approach to Sign’. Those players who are under the age of being eligible to sign a professional contract, or has not yet been offered a pro contract.

This way, you can try to identify talents with great potential that you can pick up for a reduced fee. All you need is to pay a compensation fee.

If you prioritize to include only players in range who are very interested in joining your club, either by transfer or loan, you can spot the players who you can come to an agreement with more easily.

Locate the ‘Interested In‘ section within the Players in Range tab, click on the little cog aside of Transfer or Loan and reduce the list to only those ‘Interested’, ‘Very Interested’ or ‘Extremely Interested’ in a transfer.

However, I would recommend to ask ‘Agent about his availability’ or scout the player for a week before clicking the ‘Approach to Sign’ button.

Chances are that the player will be less likely to join your team, especially if you’re inexperienced or newly started your save. Then you must take into account the club’s current level compared to the level of the player’s current club. A player based in one of the top teams with high PA will never want to join a team in a minor league that has a lower reputation than their own, unless we are speaking of a loan move.

#3.3 | Sort by Recommendation Grade

If you have an extensive souting network with multiple recruitment focuses and manually scouted several players, you can use the player search feature to sort players by their recommendation grade.

The scouting team’s recommendation is basically a quick way to judge a player’s skills as it summarizes all the pros and cons within the scout report.

This opportunity requires that you have scouted a lot of players and simply needs a better way to identify the best wonderkids and talents in your save.

Visit the Scouted Players section and setup a custom filter where you sort by the players between the age of 15 and 21 (or a limited range e.g 17 to 19) and then select all players with a scouting recommendation grade from the recruitment team from C+ or above!

“The Scout Recommendation score takes all the pros and cons within the scout’s report on a player and distils all the information provided into a grade from A to E (where + and – within each grade indicate an additional positive or negative to the overall grade, so A+ is the strongest possible recommendation). In essence, it makes for a much easier comparison when attempting to weigh up the pros and cons of multiple potential targets. There will naturally be times when even this isn’t enough to separate them, meaning you must dig even deeper to determine the best of the bunch, but it’s yet another tool at your disposal in the quest for greatness”.

Football Manager 2024 Manual

Since the scout recommendation grade will be influenced by all the pros and cons of a player’s profile, it may be advantage to scout players with a lower recommendation grade of B for a second or a third time over a longer period to keep tracks of his development. Poor form, unhappiness or a minor injury could potentially lower the recommendation grade.

For instance, after a sneak peak with the in-game editor I quickly revealed that players with a potential ability of 150+ received a recommendation grade of C+, such as Morten Frendrup. The major cons within his scout report was that he would find it hard to adapt into the core group of the squad but could fit into the secondary social group. This reveals how important it is to weigh up the pros and cons within his player profile and take the judgement of the scouts with a pinch of salt.

#3.4 Other Search Filters to Find Wonderkids

When searching for wonderkids, you can create certain search filters to identify players who got an higher likeliness to reach their maximum potential by developing more quicker and better, or who will simply perform better in matches and thereby be of more value to your squad’s performances and future success.

Whether you look for players who are better able to withstand more intensive training, or perform better in matches, it’s in reality two sides of the same coin, as both will aid their development to become better players. These matters comes in additional to the potential ability score – that will be hidden unless we cheat and use the in-game editor.

Beneath I’ll just quickly list some of the filters and additional conditions you might want to use to track down wonderkids and talents on Football Manager:

Filter by Specific ‘Wonderkids’ Attributes:

One idea is to focus on certain favorable player attributes, as well as hidden attributes, that will influence on their training and match performance and will aid the player throughout their career, whether it is reducing the risk of jadedness or injuries, or impacting how well they play.

It’s a reason why you shouldn’t only pay attention to the star ratings when judging a players potential. In fact, it will be beneficial to look at the player’s level of Attributes, Determination, Professionalism, Natural Fitness and other hidden attributes such as his injury susceptibility, consistency, versatility and adaptability rather than simply judging the player by his star rating . Then, his personality needs to be taken into account as well.

All these factors affects how well they will develop and how much effort they will put into training. A more professional and determined player will be able to undergo a harder training regime and thereby wish to improve himself into a better player – meaning he will have better chances to close into his maximum potential by making better progress, perhaps far quicker despite there are players that can be labelled as ‘late bloomers’ in Football Manager 2024.

SI has stated that both Determination, Ambition and Professionalism are all important factors for how well players will develop¹ as they will contribute to the progression calculation score. Even though there’s a whole range of other factors including a chance factor that may hinder* or aid their development, we can limit the search for wonderkids by certain attributes that improves the player’s chances to develop to a greater degree, along with their personality.

For a research about how important Professionalism, Determination and Ambition is for player’s development I can recommend this wonderful experiment by FMStats.com².

* A players’ development ratio will depend on hidden attributes such as injury susceptibility, your club’s training facilities, the quality of the coaching team and other factors that may affect their happiness, morale and training and match performances.

In this matter, from most important to the least, we can create a search filter that looks for players with:

Determination – “Reflects a players commitment to succeed and do his very best on and off the pitch”.

Determination is one of the factors that is included into the game’s pogression calculation and will impact how well the players will train each month. Players with high Determination will naturally have a more positive personality which is one important element when searching for wonderkids. Determination can not be improved via training but only through Mentoring.

• You can set the criteria to search for players above 14 to identify the most determined players, or lower the value to all players above 11 to increase the pool of talents that you can develop through mentoring.

Natural Fitness – “Reflects how well players stays fit when injured or not in training. It is also used to determine how well they maintain their physical attributes past their peak and maintain fitness between matches”.

These players is more likely to withstand an higher match load as their physical attributes will be less likely to reduce between matches or if getting serious injuries.

• You can set the criteria to search for players with Natural fitness of above 12

Work Rate – “Reflects the player’s willingness to work at his full capacity, going above and beyond the call of duty”.

Work rate is one of the most important attributes within the match engine. It’s a useful attribute for all players and determines their positioning and ability to cover more grounds on the pitch, and use more physical efforts to help his team in both non-pressing and pressing situations.

• You can set the criteria to search for players with Work Rate of above 10

When creating a search filter that only looks at attributes, you could also include Acceleration, Decisions and Anticipation – all necessary attributes for a good footballer these days.

How to filter search by attributes?

To create a search for players with specific attributes, click Edit Search and select pick attributes. Go back to search criteria and adjust the threshold to something similar to the above for players under the age of 18, or adjust it according to your own preferences to spot less/more players.

The result of the search…

Filter by Personality

Along with a player’s level of Determination (which influences on their personality), a players personality and hereby meaning how Professional the player is, could have a major effect on their development and future CA ability increase.

By searching for wonderkids with a positive personality you increase the probability to identify players who has an higher likeliness to reach their maximum potential.

Players with high Professionalism will most likely develop into world-class players, both quicker and better, as their attitude to training and playing matches, work ethic and dedication to improve is better than a player who is more likely to slack off. (Slack Personality, which is the contrary to Model Professional).

The best Personalities?

• Model Citizen
• Born Leader
• Iron willed
• Perfectionist
• Model Professional, Professional, Fairly Professional,
• Resolute
• Determined, Fairly Determined,
• Ambitious, Fairly ambitious
• Resilient
• … not necessarily in that order

Download a specific search filter to find players with positive personalities here.

Search Players by Performance

• Average Rating: With this condition you aims to identify the young talents who performs. With an average rating of above 6.5 you are more likely to spot those players with an higher Consistency than the rest.
• You can even look at player’s performance in goals, assists and other statistics and add additional conditions found under Stats (general).

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#3.5 Search for Cheap Wonderkids with a Maximum Transfer Value

Hunting for the best wonderkids on Football Manager is all well and good but if you’re managing in the lower leagues or at a club with minimal financial resources, chances are that you will never afford signing any of the best wonderkids and talents. Instead, you need to scout for cheap wonderkids and hidden gems.

In this instance, you can search for wonderkids and talents under the age of 21, but with a specific maximum transfer value, e.g. Transfer Value is at most €5Million or €2Million. Or, you can set it according to your available transfer budget.

Select Additional Condition < Transfer Value < 'Is At Most' < Pick preferred maximum transfer value

3.5.1 Filter by Contract Status – Expiring in 6 months

Besides searching for players under the age of 21 with a maximum transfer value of €2Million, you can also filter by players with a specific transfer status. As you close in on the Winter Transfer window, you have the opportunity to filter by players on an expiring contract. If you select ‘Expiring (6 months), you will be able to get a list of all players who will be available on an ‘Approach to sign’ and which can be signed as a free agent at the end of the season.

READ MORE | Football Manager 2024 Best Free Agents

Filtering by players on an expiring contract in 1 year can also be useful. If you declare interest in the player and unsettle him, he might be more unlikely to sign a new deal and wants to join your club instead!

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Below we’ll take a closer look at other actionable steps to find the best wonderkids and newgens in Football Manager through setting up appropriate recruitment focuses. But first, we’ll take a closer look at the best countries to scout for wonderkids in Football Manager 24.

#4. How to set up Recruitment Focuses to Scout for Wonderkids?

When scouting for wonderkids there area number of essential recruitment focuses desired to track down the best wonderkids and newgens coming through in the game.

The first priority is to identify the best Under-21 players within your region. You can even include players under the age of 23 if you like to identify potential ‘late bloomers’, or wish to improve the first team with suitable breakthrough players.

Anyway, since we are searching for young players which we can develop and sell for profit, there are a specific template I use to scout for these potential future stars.

#4.1 The General U21 Wonderkids Recruitment Focus

To create the primary Recruitment Focus to identify wonderkids, follow these steps:

Go to Scouting - Recruitment Focus and click 'Create Recruitment Focus'

Step 1: Select Any Tactic and tick ‘Any Position From Tactic’ *
Scouting for players for a particular position and for your preferred tactic is only used for scouting for potential first team players, so there’s no need to consider how they fit into your tactics at this point as they can develop and grow over the next few years. Some of them will probably help to evolve your tactics, whilst others can be re-trained to fit your current tactics.

Step 2: Change the transfer type to Transfers –
You can also keep it as default ‘Transfer and Loan’ to identify potential loan signings that you can tie down for a potential Optional Future Fee. That way you can reduce the cost and risk by using the first year to test him out with a loan move before you make the transfer permanent.

Step 3: Reduce the Minimum Current Ability to 4.5 to 5 silver stars – and keep the minimum potential ability stars between 2 to 3 stars depending on your squad’s quality.

You need to reduce it to 2 star minimum PA, if you are managing a world class team with lots of players with high potential (e.g. Man City or other similar teams). If you’re managing a lower league club you would like to increase the maximum potential ability stars to 3.5 or above depending on how far down in the divisions you are and the average current ability of your squad.

Step 4: Change Age between from Maximum age of 50 to players up to the age of 21, for this case.

Step 5: Select Ongoing Priority

This will ensure the recruitment focus will continue regardless of the season ends. If you select Standard, the recruitment focus will finish at the end of the season, whilst a top priority recruitment focus is more like a short-term scouting focus when you’re in need of making a quick signing, perhaps due to an injury crisis or your best player has been sold.

Step 6: Determine scouting area – in this case we will identify the best under-21 wonderkids in Europe.

• Click choose an area – hover the mouse over continents and select Europe (or South America). You can also go by Any Area to identify the best wonderkids within your allowed scouting range.

Step 7: Click on the Assigned Scouts Any button. Untick Assign any scouts
Select at least two to four scouts to travel around Europe to identify the best Under-21 wonderkids.

Here you might want to pick scouts with extensive knowledge of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, as well as Belgium and the Netherlands.

You would like to keep ‘Include results found in other Recruitment Focuses’ enabled in order to gain more reports and recommendations.

If you have an extensive scouting network with scouts with extensive knowledge of different top nations in Europe, select the ones with the highest Judging Player Potential.

This general scouting focus is primarily used for clubs with a large recruitment team and is primarily used the first 6 months of a new save, or at the beginning of every season.

Finally, the recruitment focus will look like this:

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#4.2 How to scout for the best newgens?

When scouting for newgens, the recruitment focus I use to track down the best newgens that has just arrived at the annual youth intake, focuses on limiting the search for players under the age of 17.

You will use the same procedures as above with the minor change of lowering the maximum age to 17.

Whilst this is a rather generic recruitment focus that aims to identify the best Under-17 talents within any areas of your allowed scouting range, it gives you a quick way to find young players that you can develop and sell for profit.

Remember to select the scout with the highest judging player potential. In this case, I’ve selected João Luis Afonso who got knowledge of 16 nations and JPA of 18 and JPP of 18.

Did you know?!
When scouts are on assignments their judging player ability and judging player potential will improve the longer they are out on that specific assignment, just like players will improve their player attributes when playing matches in a specific position. In the case of Afonso, his JPP was improved from 18 to 19 within a season.

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#5 Scouting for Wonderkids by expanding The Club’s Scouting Network

When searching for wonderkids, it’s a matter of covering all the corners of the world to track down the next big thing. Since we are hunting for young talents that we can develop and incorporate to our youth system, it’s important to set up scouting assignments that enables us to expand on the club’s world knowledge by taking advantage of our extensive scouting network.

Ideally, we want to send our scouts out to nations (and regions) across the world that is brilliant at generating quality newgens in the future. How you set up your scouting network comes down to your transfer policy, but within a youth development save where you doesn’t only sign homegrown talents, you want to set up a range of recruitment focuses that prioritizes scouting for wonderkids within certain nations.

As mentioned in our guide to building an extensive scouting network, you need certain types of scouts with their specific expertize. Personally, I favor to have one head scout for each major region – for instance a scout with +15 in Judging Player Ability and Potential for South America (South), one for Central Europe and one for Western Europe. And the more scouts I got, the more corners of the world I will be able to cover.

This means that you want to sign scouts with extensive knowledge of different nations across the world – ideally with the highest JPA and JPP as possible. Then, you might want some roaming scouts that might not have the best JPA and JPP but has top notch Adaptability and hopefully Extensive Knowledge, or Very Good knowledge of multiple nations.

Søren Lerby is a prime example for a scout that could travel around the Nordic countries to identify the next Erling Haaland or Martin Ødegaard. Lerby got 18 in adaptability and extensive knowledge of all the nations in Scandinavia.

Bojan Krkic is ideally a great scout to travel Eastern Europe due to his extensive knowledge of Serbia and Bosnia.

#5.1 What are the Best Countries to Scout for Wonderkids in Football Manager 24?

As detailed in our guide to scouting regions and nations youth rating, there are specific nations that are more proficient to scout for wonderkids and talents compared to others. Mostly it’s because of the amount of football players in the country, the economic stature and the probability to generate more newgens with a certain current and potential ability level compared to another.

We can use this knowledge of nation’s youth ratings in Football Manager to determine which areas of the world to prioritize when setting up recruitment focuses.

The top 12 nations includes;

• Brazil – South America (South) (NYR -163)
• Germany – Central Europe (NYR – 155)
• France – Western Europe (NYR – 155)
• Spain – Western Europe (NYR – 145)
• Italy – South Europe (NYR – 144)
• Argentina – South America (South) (NYR -140)
• England – UK & Ireland (NYR – 135)
• Portugal – Western Europe (NYR – 134)
• Netherlands – Central Europe (NYR – 132)
• Belgium – Central Europe (NYR – 120)
• Mexico – North America (NYR – 120)

NYR = Nation’s Youth Rating according to FM24 24.2 DB

These are just a few countries within the world that will be as likely to produce world class players in the future alongside these top footballing nations. There are many other minor nations that has the potential to generate wonderkids and future hidden cheap gems. Just think about the rise of all those talents coming through at Independiente del Valle in Ecuador, or how Envigado in Colombia has managed to produce world-class players.

The nations’ youth rating has the potential to increase now that the game has implemented dynamic youth ratings from FM22 and onwards.

#5.2 Scouting Nations for Wonderkids & Hidden Gems

A major project within my recruitment team is to unearth wonderkids and hidden gems across the world. As mentioned above, I favor to set up scouting assignments that looks to identify the best under-21 players from each specific nations, including their neighbouring country. Since travelling a region requires multiple scouts to roam the region, it will be more effective if you have a limited scouting team to prioritize certain nations.

When you create a recruitment focus, rather than selecting Any Area or Region you want to send your best scout to travel to a nation of his expertize.

#5.2.1 Scouting for wonderkids on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain & Portugal)

In this case, I have asked Javier Ribalta and Pedro Ferreira to scout the nation of Portugal and Spain for Under-21 talents. As always, I select ongoing assignment and ask the scout to find players with a minimum ability of 5 silver stars and a minimum potential of 3 golden stars (depending on the squad’s quality).

Here’s an illustration of the recruitment focus I’ve called ‘SPA POR U21’, but you can title them whatever you want. For instance, a great tip could be to add the name of the scout at the end of the recruitment focus, or how many scouts are conducting the search.

#5.2.2 Scouting for Wonderkids in South America

Due to its reputation of generating world-class wonderkids, South America is probably the area of the world you wish to use great resources to track down the next Brazilian wonderkids and other hidden gems found within this region.

Since the continent of South America is large with many nations favourable to scout, we need to split the region up in multiple recruitment focuses. This is a quick list of the recruitment focuses I use to find hot prospects and the best wonderkids and talents in South America:

• Brazil U23 – Assign the scout with extensive knowledge of Brazil with plus 14 in JPA and JPP
• Brazil U21 – Assign the scout with highest judging player potential to identify those young talents that can become wonderkids.
• Argentina U23 – Assign the scout with extensive knowledge of Argentina with plus 14 in JPA and JPP
  In this instance, you could include Chile into the areas of focus.
• Colombia, Venezuela & Ecuador U23 – This scouting focus groups three ‘smaller nations’ together. I prioritize assigning a scout with great Adaptability to roam these nations famed for their cheap wonderkids bargains and hidden gems
• Uruguay & Paraguay U23

For such a huge project to scout for wonderkids in South America, you will notice that it requires at least five different scouts to roam that continent. In this illustration, I got 4 different recruitment focuses prioritizing the region of South America.

#5.2.3 Scouting for wonderkids in Europe

As the illustration above reveals, I create similar recruitment focuses for the major nations in Europe. In fact, I group them together so every recruitment focus prioritize on one major nation and one smaller nation that neighbours the country, or a maximum of three ‘smaller’ footballing nations. In fact, it all comes down to how large the country is both in terms of geographics and population – and the likeliness of how many footballers there are in the country.

For instance, you can set up recruitment focuses that looks at players from nations in close proximity to each other:

• England, Scotland and Ireland
• France, The Netherlands and Belgium grouped into one recruitment focus,
• Germany, Switzerland and Austria as one.
• Italy, Croatia and Slovenia
• Poland, Czechia and Slovakia
• Norway, Sweden and Denmark
• Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria, or just scout the region of Eastern Europe
• Türkiye and Greece

#5.2.4 Scouting for wonderkids in Africa

When it comes to African wonderkids, you can potentially find the best talents by scouting the Western Africa. This region includes major African footballing nations such as Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Senegal.

Whether you set up a specific recruitment focus that looks to find the best talents under-23 in Western Africa, by either focusing on the area or specifically pick these four nations, or go to Players in Range and sort by players under the age of 23 based in these specific nations, are all up to you.

Monitoring the youth academy of either ASEC Mimosas, RC Abidjan (both from Ivory Coast), Enyimba Aba or Remo Stars from Nigeria, Diambars FC or Generation Foot from Senegal, or Ghanasian Accra Lions and Hearts of Oak, could help you identify some amazing African wonderkids on Football Manager.

#5.2.5 Scouting for wonderkids in Asia or Oceania

Unless you have an extensive scouting team, it’s probably impossible to set up recruitment focuses for all the corners of the world. You need to prioritize certain areas of the world ahead of others.

Asia is probably an area of the world people tend to overlook, as the potential to find wonderkids is lower than in Europe or South America. However, it might pay off searching for wonderkids based in four particular nations; Japan, China, South Korea and Australia.

How many players you’ll find from these countries will depend on your database size. It’s here I would conduct a search for players of Nationality under the age of 21, rather than setting up a scouting assignment.

Time and time again, I’ve been able to find wonderkids and cheap gems by conducting such a search before sorting by tansfer value or reputation. Then visit the players that has come through, or are playing for a club with great youth facilities.

In this instance, I would recommend to browse the squads of some specific clubs famed for their youth production.

Some of the best hidden wonderkids factories in Asia are:

• Ulsan (South Korea)
• Pohang Steelers (South Korea)
• Suwon Samsung (South Korea)
• Yokohama F Marinos (Japan)
• Kashima Antlers (Japan)
• Kyoto (Japan)
• Gamba Osaka (Japan)
• Sanfrecce Hiroshima (Japan)
• Melbourne City (Australia)
• CC Mariners (Australia)

#6 Why do I receive few scout reports?

#6.1 Low Adaptability or Knowledge

It’s important to maintain control of your scouting network by assigning appropriate staff to each particular scouting assignment. Never assign a scout with none or marginal knowledge of a particular nation or region to travel to that area. If you do so, you can’t expect quick results as he might spend the first three to six months just trying to settle into the new culture. How quickly he adapts is determined by his Adaptability, but also his Determination can affect how efficient he works.

Sending a scout with low Adaptability to scout a nation or region where he has marginal knowledge of will result in fewer scout reports being generated as well.

If you ask Gilles Grimandi, a chief-scout with adaptability of 7, to scout Germany, which he has no knowledge of, it will probably take one to two seasons before you start seeing results of the assignment. In fact, it takes quite a long time to get knowledge of a country but the longer time he spends out in one particular country, the better results.

It’s important that the scout has knowledge of the nation, or that he has superb rating of ‘adaptability‘ to generate scout reports immediately, due to him being accustomed to the language and the cultural difference in the nation.

#6.2 Too high workload

Another thing that may affect the number of scout reports you receive is his overall workload. If you have too many scouts assignments ongoing and too few scouts to travel the world, you will be met by a message saying: “scouts are busy with other tasks” within the recruitment focus interface.

I recommend to assign scouts to no more than 2 assignments to make sure their focus and quality of their reports is as good as possible. One scout could potentially scout a nation and a competition without ease, but if you use a vaste number of Standard or Top Priority recruitment focuses, which requires minimum two or four scouts, their workload will be intensified – resulting in less results on ongoing focuses as they are paused.

Setting up too many scout assignments relating to the number of scouts allowed will also give you the notice: “Scouts are busy with other tasks, so results will take time”.

This can occur if you set up a Top Priority or Standard Priority recruitment focus on top of your ongoing assignments where you have no available scouts left to conduct the search.

This notice, will not appear when you create the recruitment focus but will show if you head back to the recruitment focus after you have set it up. Normally, you can keep it as thumb of rule that you only set up the number of recruitment focuses that you have available in your scouting team.

#6.3 Near Matches & In Progress

When browsing the results of your recruitment focuses, you should keep a close eye on the ‘Near Matches’ and ‘In Progress’ tab.

Visiting the Near Matches sections every other week or on a monthly basis could help you discover more talents that doesn’t quite match the criterias you’ve set. For instance, if you search for players under the age of 17, a scout might recommend a player at the age of 18 or 19. Those players will then be listed in the Near Matches.

The In Progress section gives you a list of players the scout is currently in process of generating a scout report of. A scout might stop generating a report card if they for whatever reason don’t believe it’s useful to gain full knowledge of the player – perhaps due to a minimum potential ability that is far away from the minimum potential ability of your recruitment focus.

Visiting the Scouted Players tab once in a while, will help to browse through the latest players your scouting team has taken a look at.

From there, you can take further actions – either by moving them into a shortlist to keep track of their development, their transfer value and form or make an offer on the player.

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Conclusion

Here we have gone through a number of ways to scout for the best wonderkids and newgens in Football Manager. From quick methods like using the youth intake list to more advanced measures where you set up recruitment focuses to unearth the biggest talents in your save, it shows there’s no right or wrong way to find the best talents.

What’s the most effective when looking for wonderkids depends on the size of your scouting team and how meticulously you want to go. We hope you have enjoyed our guide to scouting for wonderkids and encourage you to share your methods by dropping a comment below!

Stay tuned for more Football Manager 2024 guides about tactics, training and scouting coming your way!

Thanks for reading and happy managing!

Sources & Credits

1. Determination – Sigames Forum ↩︎
2. Determination, Ambition and Professionalism – FMStats.com ↩︎