Football Manager 2018: 10 Essential Fan Demands It Must Include
6. Enhanced Youth Academies
Developing youth players in Football Manager has always been a relatively straightforward experience. You invest money in building the best possible facilities and acquiring a crack coaching team, set the routine, and leave them to it. It’s a largely automated process that only really requires intervention when it comes to choosing what to do with a player’s contract, and one that could use a revamp.
Seeing exciting young talents develop into world-beaters is one of FM’s great pleasures, and it’d make sense for SI to make this a more hands-on experience. Clubs like Barcelona have cultivated a tremendous identity with their La Masia youth academy, particularly when it comes to building and maintaining a club-wide footballing philosophy. This allows them to develop swathes of players that seamlessly fit into the first team’s tactical system every year, but there’s little scope to do that in FM.
Players should have the opportunity to take a larger role in nurturing young talent, and guiding their coaching team’s hand. A tiered age group system would also help make this a more comprehensive and realistic facet of the game, allowing managers to mould youngsters in their own image from an earlier age, and not whatever predetermined set of stats the game has in mind.