Youth Intakes - How to get better Regens

It's everybodys dream to get a 5 star regen in the yearly youth intake, a promising talent who can develop into the new Lionel Messi, next Cristiano Ronaldo or even have the current ability to feature in the first team from time to time as a sub.

Youth intakes, are quite simply acquiring new players in Football Manager – so called regens – through your youth system. This happens once a season, on a different date depending on the country. It is easy to spot in game as a message in your inbox will appear – for example: "Real Madrid announce intake of new youth players". You can see the full list of all the youth intake days for Football Manager and FMC in this list to regen dates.

How do I get a good youth intake?

The players you take in to your club will differ in potential, but there are ways of ensuring that you will get more quality players than not. This will depend on your clubs reputation and facilities.

Important facilities, when developing your own players are as follows in descending order of importance;

1. Junior coaching
2. Youth recruitment
3. What staff you choose to handle intakes
4. Scouting network/knowledge
5. Youth facilities 

 I will now cover each of them explaining the different mechanisms that influence youth intakes. Most of your current level of facilities can be found in your club overview screen menu – facilities sub-menu.

Junior coaching - Increase Current Ability of Regens produced

Junior Coaching, is in my opinion, one of the most important facilities when it comes to developing better youth talents, and is an important facility to upgrade in the Talent Factory Challenge.

Junior Coaching is a term for how good all the regens in your youth recruitment program have been trained and developed before they enter your club through youth intake. Having a better coaching team of junior coaches will affect the regens average level in regard to current ability. By spending more money in this area it will make the regens to a closer level to the reserve team, or even a potential option for the first team bench. This will give you an opportunity to introduce them faster to higher levels of football, enchancing their development.

As seen in the screen above my current level of junior coaching with AFC Wimbledon is excellent.
All available levels of junior coaching are as follows, in order from worst to best:

- Minimal
- Basic
- Adequate
- Average
- Good
- Excellent
- Exceptional

Upgrading your junior coaching facilities comes down to talking to your board and your state of finances. Maintaining higher levels of junior coaching is more demanding from your finances, and your board will usually consider that. In addition, some boards may be more reluctant to invest in youth, and would rather bring in established players.

Youth recruitment - Increase Potential Ability of Regens produced

The youth recruitment can be explained as the scouting range of the regens that are coming into your youth academies. In other words, it determines how broad the area you secure youngsters from is, depending on your level of youth recruitment facilities. It can vary from recruiting from your local area to the entire world!

While junior coaching influences the levels of current ability of your regens, the youth recruitment increases the chances of getting players with more potential. The different levels of youth recruitment are as follows, from worst to best:

- Limited
- Basic
- Fairly Basic
- Average
- Above Average
- Established
- Well Established
- Extensive

As mentioned in the beginning of the article, your club reputation will be of importance if you want to upgrade your current youth recruitment levels, as well as stable finances to cover the expenses. Clubs like Hayes & Yeading will never be able to have high levels for youth recruitment, compared to a club like Juventus. There is a huge difference in reputation between a non-league club and a Serie A champion. It is fairly logical as well – you don't need extensive recruitment at H&Y, as you will never be able to attract and recruit youngsters from other countries or continents. If you are Juventus on the other hand, you will. In other words – who would you rather play for, Juventus or Hayes & Yeading? (Unless you're a local who supports H&Y, of course...)

Again, have a look at my facilities at AFC Wimbledon. It says fairly basic youth recruitment, and it rightly reflects it, as I get players from a broader area than just Wimbledon, with youngster coming from other cities and even nearby countries like Wales or Ireland.

Head of Youth development - The Importance of Backroom Staff

With the release of Football Manager 2013 a new backroom staff role was introduced: The Head of Youth Development will supervise the youngsters in training and give you feedback on their training progress. The Head of Youth Development will act as a coach for your youth players, but is also able to handle youth intakes.

A successful youth intake will simply come down to his personality and judging ability by deciding which player who will make the youth squad from the intake and who he recommends you to sign. I primarily look at his judging player potential attribute, so that he can pick the youngsters with highest potential from the intake. Secondarily I look at his coaching attributes with working with youngsters being the most important, so that he may be a good addition on the training ground as well. Tactical knowledge attribute is a nice bonus, so that he may pick youngsters who would fit my tactical system in the future.

You can read more about what this staff role requires in regard to the most important staff attributes and who can be described as good personnel for this staff role.

Even though it is advantageous to sign a head of youth development staff member, you can also choose other staff members to handle the youth intake such as the assistant manager, under-18 Manager or Director of Football. You can decide who shall handle the youth intake at the staff responsibilities and section Youth Development. Personally I choose the Head of Youth Development staff member for this task, as it's what the staff role is intended for.

An example of, and my favorite Head of Youth Development staff member is Phil Cannon from Blackburn.