Good morning,

I’ve read time and time again that youth training has become boring, formulaic and too predictable. It’s true that these days, all you need to do is stick to one training session a day and a match every other day, and you can be pretty much certain that the player will reach a NG equal to their potential with 15 stamina points. In fact, in the long term, 80 per cent of the game’s club players with a Level 10 Youth Academy will all have a NG of 85, with little variation. (This was already the case with NG99 players.)

In other games, such as the Club Career mode in FIFA 16 to 20, each youth player recruited via the Youth Academy was assigned not a single potential rating but a range, the width of which narrowed depending on the quality of the youth scout (75–95, 83–88, etc.). In fact, it was impossible to know a young player’s exact trajectory before training them. It was often even necessary to recruit two young players for the same position and ultimately keep the better one.

The idea here is to add a random parameter to the progression coefficient for each season: a form factor that would take the values -2, -1, 0, +1 or +2. This parameter would even continue to apply once the player’s training was complete! So a 26-year-old player might end up with a coefficient of -2, then +2 the following year.

By the end of their development, following a Gaussian curve, the majority of young players would still have a NG corresponding to their potential. But a few players would deviate both positively and negatively. Some perennial prospects might end up 8 points below their potential, whilst others 8 points above. Some players might regress at 25 and then improve again at 26. Each player’s peak form would not necessarily occur at the age of 30 (before regression sets in).

This uncertainty would force clubs to manage their squads on a season-by-season basis, and there would be much greater variation among the good players. (With a handful of players who stand out from the crowd but whom we could not identify in advance)

From a development perspective, the feature requires a random parameter (which already exists on Virtuafoot) and the handling of a negative coefficient (which is less straightforward as the logic does not currently exist…). It remains to be seen to what extent this is feasible from a technical standpoint.

The graph below provides an example:

• the grey dotted line is the graph as we know it today
• the other three coloured lines represent three possible scenarios (green being the most optimistic, red the most pessimistic)

Thanks for not reading this, and have a lovely day! :)

Personally, I’m in favour of a radical change to player development.
The way I see it, it would be a matter of chance, with the big clubs ultimately recruiting those who stand out from the crowd.
Personally, I’d like a system where the coach really has a huge impact on the player’s final rating.
That would give many disappointed fans a new goal: to fully optimise the young players.

Personally, I’d envisage something along the lines of a young player scoring a goal earning +0.02 XP, or a clean sheet earning +0.02 for the goalkeeper and defence.
These are just off-the-cuff examples – I’ve never really given it much thought.

At the very least, we should see a difference between a good and an excellent coach.
As you say, one day in two and that’s it – anyone can do that.