create scouting assignments fm21

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Compare games, what is fm, scouting for success: a guide to assignments in fm21.

The Scouting Centre… it’s the place where legendary wonderkids are found and it’s the key to taking your squad to the next level. It’s also the place where many tenured FM players have seen their scouting instructions return strong recommendations, only for those players not turn out to be quite what they seemed. Will Goddard aims to rectify those issues, detailing what the Scouting Centre is, how it works in FM21 and how to maximise the assignments you use it to create.

On the face of it, the many different tabs and dropdowns in the Scouting Centre can be daunting for the less experienced player. However, with care and practice, they can become valuable tools in your quest to find the missing puzzle piece to take your team from contenders to champions. This guide will help you to understand two key aspects of the scouting centre; Assignments and World Knowledge.

The Scouting Centre is your hub for all incoming signings and the pace where you discover new players from across the globe. The Scouting Centre offers a variety of options, but I’m going to concentrate on maximising the use of assignments.

Setting up an Assignment

Click on the Scouting Responsibility tab and you’re presented with the option to take full control of assigning your scouts. Taking full control of everything isn’t for everyone in FM21 (indeed delegation is often the name of the game) but this is one area where I’d recommend you take charge, if you’re serious about scouting.

Once you’ve assumed control, you can begin setting up some assignments. Think of assignments as a scout’s shopping list, a detailed set of instructions to develop a winning recipe for your squad. If you hover over the Assignments tab, you’ll see that there are three options; Assignments, Scout Priorities and Analyst Priorities. Click on the Assignment page and there’s an option to Create a new assignment. Here you can let your Scouts know exactly what it is you’re looking for – for example, you might need a right-back who’s both defensively solid and a vital attacking asset.

The beauty of assignments is that they can be as broad or specific as you would like. If you navigate to the Player Type drop-down, you will see that there are four preset options. If you don’t have any specific requirements in mind and are happy to just give your scouts something broad to work towards, these are a good starting place. For example, you might want to sign some younger players to reduce the average age of your squad (potentially working towards a Club Vision objective) so the Hot Prospect option is ideal for you. This means your scouts will look for players under the age of 24 who have good potential for you team (minimum three stars). To introduce more specific criteria, simply click through the Attributes options and/or the Additional Conditions seen above.

Where in the world?

Once you’ve decided the type of player you’re looking for, the next thing to consider is where in the world you would like to look for that player. To do this, select the Scope drop-down menu – here you’re greeted with a plethora of options. Getting the Scope right on an assignment can make a vast difference to your scouts’ effectiveness and the value of the reports they provide you with.

Every scout in Football Manager has a unique level of knowledge for certain areas of the world. This is usually based on where they’re from and the places they’ve worked. You can discover their World Knowledge by looking at their profile. If you decide to send an English scout who has only ever worked in England to Denmark, for example, they’ll struggle to find the right players because they simply won’t know where to look. The scout will learn, eventually, but it’s not a particularly efficient approach and you’d be better served using them somewhere they’re familiar with. It’s important to keep this in mind when selecting a country, or region, for your scouts to explore.

Who’s doing the looking?

The last two aspects to consider when setting up an assignment are its duration and the person you want to undertake it. Duration is self-explanatory – if you send a scout to a place for longer, they are more likely to find the player that you are looking for. However, there is a trade-off. The longer you keep your scout there, the more it will deplete your scouting budget.

We’ve already addressed the World Knowledge of individual scouts, but considering World Knowledge for the club as a whole is also a key tool. It’s a pool of all the knowledge possessed by your scouts, affiliates and staff on regions they’re able to scout. At club level, this increases the number of players that your scouts can find or be aware of. As such, it’s a brilliant tool to use when it comes to finding the next global superstar in a faraway region. However, while this will increase your knowledge of players, it will not find you the players on its own. This is where you intertwine the scouts you’ve hired, the scouting package you’re paying for and the assignments you’ve setup to maximise this World Knowledge and find the missing link for your squad.

Once you have completed your assignment and sent your scouts off to the far reaches of the world, you begin to reap what you’ve sown. After about a month, your scouts’ recommendations will begin to appear in the Scouting Centre and in news items, ready for your assessment. You might even get some additional recommendations that make you rethink your transfer business. But, if you’ve set everything up right in advance, you’ll see more of the type of player you’re looking for and will be recruiting smarter for the seasons ahead.

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Guide to football manager tactics, roles, scouting and transfers, the best way to set up scouting assignments in football manager.

Nothing beats the feeling of being promoted to the Premier League, or any other first division for that matter, and your board finally getting generous and giving you the leeway to sign some extra staff, most importantly scouts.

But how do you go about optimally using these scouts to scour the best regions in the world and in turn giving you the best chance of unearthing some good regens before they are snatched by the likes of PSG and Barcelona.

When you are first promoted to the Premier League, you will most likely have around 15 scouts to work with. Bigger clubs with higher reputation will have a few more, while smaller clubs will understandably have less.

Increase your Scouting Range

The first thing you need to do before setting any scouting assignment is making sure you can scout the entire world. If your scouting range is only at national or regional level, go to the Club Vision tab and make a board request to increase the scouting range for your club. Ideally, you should have the ability to scout globally to get the best out of your scouts.

Buy World Scouting Packages

Once you have the ability to scout globally, the next step is making sure you have bought the best scouting package for both your first team and the youth team.

Scouting Packages in Football Manager determine the number of players that are available to you, to search from. You can think of it as buying a scouting database, the more expensive the database is, the higher the number of players will be available to you.  

Scouting Packages will also increase the knowledge level of the players covered as well as their role capabilities. But to get full knowledge of the players with details such as consistency, injury proneness etc, you will have to individually scout them further.

Scouting Packages are divided in two, the Senior Packages and the Youth Packages. The Youth Packages only cover players under the age of 21.

You should ideally buy the World Packages for both the Senior and Youth Players. They will cost a pretty penny, but they are totally worth it as they will potentially save you millions in the transfer market.

Once we have the right scouting package and also allowed to scout the whole world by the board, the next step is assigning our scouts to these areas. There are a lot of ways in how you can go about doing this, but I will lay out what works for me in my saves. There might be more effective ways out there in the wild, but I always try to maintain some realism in the game.

I will assume if you are managing a Premier League Club, or any other club in the top five leagues, you have at least 15 scouts. If not, speak to your board and ask for more.

Assigning Scouts to Different Regions of the World

Scouting the next opposition.

The first assignment should be given to a scout with decent tactical knowledge. This scout will be responsible for giving a report on your next opposition before every match. 

To set the scout up to give you an ongoing report on the next opposition; 

• Navigate to the scouting assignment page 
• Create a new assignment 
• Choose team, then select ongoing reports on next opposition.

Scouting for first team players

The next 6 or 7 scouts should be set up to scout the best leagues in the world for first team players. Create an assignment for each of the 7 scouts. To do this, on the scouting assignment page, select add competition on the scope, then the country that competition is played in, i.e. England if you want to scout the EPL, then finally choose the competition to be scouted.

On the additional conditions option, set the required scouted ability to be ‘at least good’ so that your scouts can give you players that will challenge for a place in your first team. 

Repeat this process, sending different scouts to scout La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and EPL. If you have a few more scouts to spare, you can also scout the top divisions in Portugal, Scotland, Belgium and a few more top division leagues from the European countries you loaded at the beginning of the save game.

Scouting for bargains in South America

The next step is scouting South America, where it is normally possible to get some excellent players for a fraction of what they would cost if they were playing in Europe.

Send 2 or 3 scouts first to scout Brazil, Argentina and Colombia. I also normally add a condition for their age to be not greater than 24 and their current ability to be ‘at least good’. 

This will provide you with players who are currently good enough for your first team while still having some space to develop further. After a few months or half a season, you can switch these scouts from the two or three nations you selected earlier, then allocate them to different nations like Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay.

Scouting youth competitions

At this stage, if you had 15 scouts at the beginning, you will have around 4 that you have not assigned a role. Depending on the number of scouts you have left over, send at most three of them to scout the youth competitions of countries where signing their young prospects is not expensive.

Countries in South America or Eastern Europe are great candidates for this. It is wise to avoid the top five leagues’ youth competitions for the time being, unless you have a large transfer budget, as their youth players are normally too expensive, especially for sides that have just earned promotion .

Scouting the rest of the world in football manager

If you still have one or two scouts left without an assignment, send them to scout different regions, such as Scandinavia or Central America, where the other scouts, already on different assignments, are unlikely to cover.

This scouting set up is normally able to carry me through a few seasons until the board adds a few more slots for scouts. This gives me the ability to scout a few more youth competitions to unearth gems before they are picked up by the top sides.

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Scouting assignments determine how your scouting team is utilised to provide you information on different players and teams.

To use your scouts most effectively you should take the time to set up scouting assignments yourself. To do this you will first need to make sure that you have not assigned this responsibility to either your chief scout or director of football on the Responsibilities tab of the Staff screen.

Scouting Range

Your scouting range is set by your club’s board and determines the areas of the world that you are allowed to send scouts to. Depending on the stature of your club you may be restricted to scouting in your club’s nation, region or continent, or you may be allowed to scout globally.

You can view your current scouting range on the Overview tab of the Board screen or on the left-hand panel of the Scouting screen.

You can ask the board to increase the scouting range from the Board Overview screen by using the Make Board Request button and choosing Scouting Range from the Networking category. However, the board may reject your request if you have not yet increased the stature of your club.

Managing Scouting Assignments

On the Assignments tab of the Scouting screen you can create new scouting assignments and view details of existing assignments. You can also change the priority of existing assignments.

The Reports column shows the number of players that have been reported on in each assignment. You can view the players reported on in an assignment by clicking this number. This will take you to the relevant scout’s Reports screen where you can use different conditions to filter the players as you desire, while you can also use the filter by assignment drop-down to view players the scout has reported on outside this assignment.

You can request an update on the players a scout has found on his current assignment by viewing or right-clicking the scout and then selecting Get Update On Scouting Assignments .

Types of Scouting Assignment

You can send a scout on a player assignment or a team assignment by clicking the Create New Assignment button.

Player Assignments

A player assignment requires a scout to find and report on players that meet your specified conditions .

Scout reports on players are discussed in the Scout Reports guide.

There are several different player assignment templates that you can select from. Each template specifies a different set of default conditions to be applied by the scout undertaking the assignment. The player assignment templates are:

• First Team Player, Backup Player and Hot Prospect – These templates can be used to search for players who could have sufficient quality to be of use to your senior squad, either now (in the case of the first team player and backup player templates) or after further development (in the case of the hot prospect template). As such, the template that you choose determines the minimum current ability and minimum potential ability specified in the default conditions. You can refine the template if you wish by specifying a position and role . The position and role that you choose, if any, are also specified in the default conditions, while the role that you choose, if any, determines the desirable attributes that are specified in the default conditions.
• Replacement For – This template can be used to search for players who could potentially become at least as good as a particular player in your squad could potentially become, and therefore could potentially replace that player. You must specify a position and then a player in your squad who can play in that position. Your choice of player determines the desirable attributes and the minimum potential ability that are specified in the default conditions. The desirable attributes specified are based on the player’s best attributes and the minimum potential ability specified is equal to the player’s potential ability.
• Report From a Competition, Nation or Region – These templates can be used to search for players in a geographical area or a competition, and to build up scouting knowledge levels for the nations scouted. You must choose the competition, nation or region and this determines the scope that is specified in the default conditions.

After choosing a player assignment template to specify appropriate default conditions you can then modify the conditions of the assignment as you desire. The conditions include:

• Transfer Type – The type of transfer, either full transfer , loan or end of contract agreement , that the scout believes could be used to sign a player.
• Transfer Budget – The maximum transfer fee that a player should be available for as assessed by the scout. This can help you to split your transfer budget between players and to avoid overspending on a single player.
• Age – The age range that a player should currently be in. This can allow you to search specifically for young players who can be developed at your club or for older players who can add experience to your team or be used for tutoring .
• Minimum Current Ability – The minimum current ability star rating (including black stars) that a player should have as assessed by the scout. This can help you to find players who could immediately contribute to your squad (or to another team on loan), whether as a first team player, rotational player or backup player depending on their current ability compared to that of players in the same position already in your squad.
• Minimum Potential Ability – The minimum potential ability star rating (including black stars) that a player should have as assessed by the scout. This can help you to find hot prospects who could possibly be developed to reach a certain ability level. Combining a minimum potential ability with a lower minimum current ability can help you to find players who can perhaps be signed at a cheaper price than those who have already reached the specified minimum potential ability.
• Desirable Attributes – The particular attributes that a player should ideally have relatively good ratings in. You can set minimum required ratings for particular attributes by clicking the Specify Attribute Values button after selecting desirable attributes.
• Additional Conditions – These include the position and role that a player can play or partially play, among other conditions. Specifying a position can help you to find players for a position where you need an extra man as either a first team player, rotational player, backup player or hot prospect in order to build a balanced squad . Specifying a role can help you to find players who would suit your tactical requirements in a position.
• Scope – The competition , nation or region that a player should be based in. If you select a region then the scout will choose a nation to scout within that region. Alternatively, you can set the scope to Scouting Range to allow the scout to choose a nation within your club’s scouting range. Therefore, to gain control over the specific nations that the scout goes to (and therefore the nations for which scouting knowledge levels are built up) you must select a nation (or a competition in a nation).
• Scout – The scout who will undertake the assignment. You can choose a scout yourself or ask your chief scout to choose. If you want the scout to find players with a specified minimum current ability who can immediately contribute to your squad then it is advisable to use a scout with good Judging Player Ability . If you want the scout to find young players with a specified minimum potential ability who you can develop then it is advisable to use a scout with good Judging Player Potential . If you are sending a scout to a nation or region then it is advisable to use a scout who already has good knowledge of the nation or of nations in the region if possible so that he can undertake the assignment more efficiently, as explained in the Scouting Knowledge guide. Otherwise, the scout should ideally have good Adaptability.

Further advice on how to assign your scouts is provided below.

• Duration – How long the scout should continue the assignment for. Until Finished means that the scout will end his assignment when he has finished looking for players in the chosen nation or competition and will then start any other assignment that you have set up for him. Ongoing means that the scout will continue on his assignment even after he has finished looking for players and will not start any other assignments that you have set up for him until you manually end the assignment. If the scope is set to region or scouting range then ongoing means that the scout will roam from one nation to another each time he has finished looking for players in a nation. If you want a scout to stay in one nation and continue to look for players there then you should set the scope to a particular competition in that nation and set the duration to ongoing .

The time it takes a scout to finish looking for players in a nation depends on his knowledge level for the nation, as explained in the Scouting Knowledge guide.

• Priority – Whether the assignment is normal or very urgent . A very urgent priority instructs the scout to find and report on players more quickly. However, he will find less players as a result.

Regardless of the conditions you set, you will be able to filter the players a scout has reported on during his assignment on his Reports screen if you want to search for specific types of player. Therefore, you may not want to restrict an assignment too much by setting conditions that are too specific. For example, by not using the role condition you can allow your scout to find and report on more players and then use your own judgement as to whether a player would be suitable for a particular role.

Team Assignments

A team assignment ( report on a team ) requires a scout to provide a team report rather than reports on individual players. A team report includes a variety of information, including statistical information and a squad depth report, that can help you to identify a team’s strengths and weaknesses .

You will receive a summary of a requested team report in your inbox and can then view the full report by clicking Team Report . This takes you to the club’s Team Report screen where you can navigate the different sections of the report from the Team Report drop-down.

The scout with the highest Tactical Knowledge attribute will undertake team assignments. It is advisable to avoid giving this scout other assignments if possible so that he does not have to travel between assignments frequently.

You can select from the following two types of team assignment:

• Ongoing reports on next opposition – The scout will provide you with a team report on the next opposition team a few days before each match. He will also advise you on an appropriate match preparation training focus to use before each match. It is advisable to ensure that you have this assignment activated before the start of a season so that you will receive team reports for each competitive match.

Using a team report on your next opposition to plan your tactical approach for the match is discussed in the Tactical Planning guide.

• Report on specific team – The scout will provide you with a team report on a team of your choice. You can use this assignment to assess rival teams or to get scout reports on multiple players who are at the same club.

How to Assign Your Scouts

Although you are free to decide how to assign your scouts, a recommended approach is to:

• Allow one scout to concentrate on scouting your next opposition , as explained above.
• Leave at least one scout with very good Judging Player Ability and Judging Player Potential free to scout specific players , as explained below.
• Ensure that a selection of scouts are generally placed on assignments scouting different nations . It is advisable to scout specified nations rather than regions so that you can choose the nations that the scouts go to. You can instruct a scout to go to multiple specific nations by creating a different assignment for each nation and setting the duration of each assignment to until finished . As explained in the Scouting Knowledge guide, it is advisable to focus mainly on nations that are more important for your club and to ensure that the knowledge of each scout remains manageable. You can achieve this by instructing each scout to concentrate on building and maintaining knowledge levels for a separate, manageable selection of nations. Eventually, this will result in scouts being assigned to nations that they have high knowledge levels for, therefore increasing the efficiency of your scouting. Generally, it is best to assign each scout to nations within a particular region, with the focus being on scouting more important nations in each region. Once a scout has built up a 100% knowledge level for all of the more important nations in a region then you may want to allow him to roam the region so that he can maintain these knowledge levels and also build knowledge levels in less important nations within the region automatically. You can do this by setting the scope of the assignment to the region and the duration to ongoing . If you have, or are able to sign, scouts who already have good knowledge levels for nations in particular regions then this will help to speed up this process.
• Any further scouts can be used to find specific types of players, such as players for your senior squad or hot prospects, or to scout competitions. In particular, you may want to scout the competitions that your club plays in so as to increase knowledge levels for the players in the opposition teams, therefore making tactical planning and setting opposition instructions easier, while you may also want to scout youth competitions for hot prospects.

Scouting Specific Players

You can also ask any of your scouts, or any of your coaches , to scout a specific player. This may be a player who you have identified yourself, or it may be a player who a scout has already reported on and you want an updated report, a more detailed report or simply a report from a scout with higher ability.

You should do this whenever you have highlighted a player who you may be interested in signing . If you are still interested in the player following an initial scout report then it is advisable to increase your player knowledge level , as explained in the Scouting Knowledge guide, by using a scout with very good Judging Player Ability and Judging Player Potential to scout the player for a period of time or a number of matches. This will enable you to gain as accurate a report as possible before deciding whether to try to sign the player.

You should only send a scout to watch a player in matches if his team plays in a competition that is loaded in your game.

To scout a player select Assign Scout from his Reports drop-down and then select your desired scout. Alternatively, you can choose to add the player to your scouting pool to be scouted whenever a member of your scouting team becomes available. You can view and edit the list of players on your scouting pool on the Queue tab of the Scouting screen.

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The 4 easy steps for setting up Scouting in FM (GUIDE)

by @guidosteve

Scouts in FM… exciting to read their reports and boring to send them out on assignments.

In the guide today, we will show you how to set hire scouts and set up a system at the start of the game, so you never have to worry about it again…

… and just focus on those sweet scout reports instead.

Getting started quickly: Don’t do anything to your data analysts. Their attributes do not matter!

Check the scout cap

The first thing we want to do is to check that scout cap.

To do so go to the board overview and scroll down to scouts as shown below.

We see that we have way more scouts than the board wants.

This means that if we fire any scouts, we cannot replace them until we have less than 14 scouts.

Sack deadweight scouts

Following this we want to get rid of scouts that are just not good enough.

To do so go to the scouting team overview as shown below.

From here, choose mental attributes, sort by judging ability and scroll to the bottom.

The attributes you want to look for now is the following:

For evaluating the players: Judging player ability and judging player potential

For getting the job done: Determination

For getting the job done quickly in a foreign country: Adaptability

In the screenshot below, I have highlighted who I will be giving mutual termination.

The way I have judged this is to say, that a scout should have a rating of 15 or higher in either judging player ability or judging player potential as well as a good rating in determination.

I rarely put high emphasis on adaptability.

Hire new scouts

Now, we cannot hire more scouts, but I’ll show you how to do it anyway.

First thing do to is go to staff search and apply the filters.

And we hire the scouts we need with high attributes in judging player ability, judging player potential, determination and if he is to go to a country where he doesn’t know the language, adaptability.

Bonus tip: If you want to quickly increase your knowledge of a certain area hire a scout that has knowledge in that area.

In other words, if you sign a guy like Massimiliano Mirabelli, you will not only get a very good scout, you will also get a high level of knowledge and Italy and England.

Send scouts out on assignments

The next step is really important and will ensure you will not have to think about scouts again.

The first thing to do is go to the scouting overview and cancel all current assignments.

Do that by clicking the minus sign in the highlighted row on the right.

With that done we are going to do a bit of planning and I have a set of rules when coaching a Premier League team.

SCOUT PRIORITIES

1. I want one scout to only focus on scouting next opposition

2. I want to keep one scout free for doing reports on players I am interested in

3. I want to always monitor the ten best leagues in Europe + Brazil and Argentina. I will thus dedicate a total of 12 scouts to only this

4. I want to scout the entire world

Starting with number 1, we set our scout with the best tactical knowledge to scout the next opposition. That is the only thing he’ll do.

Next, we want to figure out who will not be getting any assignments.

We want one of our very best scouts to do this job.

He should thus have high judging player ability, judging player potential, determination and adaptability as he will be travelling everywhere.

David Williams is the chosen one.

Next thing to do is set up our 12 country coaches.

Here I want the scout to both search for established players and youth players.

First, we set up a scout for England to look for established players.

Next step is to:

1. Set duration to ongoing (very important)

2. Go and select the scout to do the job

3. Click start assignment

After having pressed “recommended by chief scout” you can select who you want to do the job. Here you should select a scout with high knowledge of the country (England) and someone who hasn’t been given an assignment yet.

And remember, David Williams we do not give any assignments.

Click confirm and start assignment.

Now go do the same for the other nine leagues in Europe + Brazil and Argentina. The countries you want to scout are:

• ​Spain

Finally, we want to make sure we scout the entire globe for both senior and youth players.

To do so, assign a scout to every region there as above and you’re good to go.

Here you should look to have scouts with high adaptability and determination as they will be travelling a lot.

Note: You will be finding a lot of players, that are not suitable for your team with this method. However, this method also allows you to never have to touch the scouting setup again and once the scout is up to speed in a country, he will get faster at scouting.

Now you try it

We hope this guide and our checklist helps you get through all the backroom stuff when joining a new club in FM 17.

It takes some extra time and effort, but once you have done it you never have to do it again

I hope you’ve liked the guide and I’ll be around to reply to comments and answer questions.

So, if you have a question or thought, leave a comment right now.

– Steve

Further Reading...

Best FM YouTubers: The only guide you’ll need

The 6-step approach to 5-star coaches in FM

FM Guide: The 5-step approach to read Scout Reports and uncover a hidden Wonderkid

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Mastering Scouting in FM: Scouts, Setting Up Scouting, and Expanding Your Football Manager Network

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How To Scout The Best Wonderkids In Football Manager

Scouting wonderkids is one of the most exciting things to do in Football Manager.

There’s nothing quite like a scout report showing an 18 year old from Serbia or some other random country having 5 star potential and a very good current ability to match.

The problem is finding these wonderkids can be difficult if you’re not looking in the right places or using the scouting system correctly.

Let’s go through the best way to scout wonderkids in FM.

What Is A Wonderkid

How to scout wonderkids, where to scout wonderkids, best staff for scouting wonderkids, evaluating the potential of a wonderkid, competing against other clubs.

I’m sure you already know, but it’s important we understand before we go ahead trying to scout every single one of them in your save.

• A player under 21 years old
• A player whose potential ability is above 150 out of 200.

Each player in game has a potential ability, so as the game progresses their current ability will rise up to their potential ability.

Usually, potential ability will be a range, for example, 150 – 165. This means that not every player reaches their max potential if they’re not developed properly.

Finding Wonderkids Quickly

You can find a list of wonderkids your recruitment team are currently aware of by going to the Scouting screen and selecting the Players tab.

Next, ensure you have no specific search criteria set and change the current view by selecting the eye button above the player name column and then selecting Customise Current View.

Scroll down the Available list of columns and find “media description”. Select it and click the Add button to move it over to the right.

Click OK and you’ll be able to see the media description column in your current view. Sort your shortlist by media description and scroll down to wonderkids.

You may need to buy a better scouting package if none are showing, or, your scouting team hasn’t found any yet. Read on to discover how to scout for wonderkids.

If you want to focus your scouting purely on finding the best wonderkids , you’ll need to configure your scouting network appropriately.

Go to Scouting and select the Assignments tab. This screen will display a list of your scouts, their key attributes and what task they’re currently working on.

From this screen you can set scouting assignments by clicking the purple button “Create new assignment”.

If you can’t see this button, it’s likely that your scouting responsibility is set to your chief scout or another staff member.

You can change who is responsible for setting scout assignments by going to Scouting, then clicking the Assignments tab, and clicking the button Scouting Responsibility.

This is also accessible on the Staff Responsibilities screen.

Select yourself and the “Create new assignment” button should appear, click it to begin creating a new assignment.

Creating A Wonderkid Scout Assignment

On the Create Assignment window ensure that you’ve selected the player scouting tab.

Next, you’ll need to set two conditions if you want to search specifically for wonderkids:

• Age is at most 21 years old
• Scouted potential is at least superb (but this can depend, see below)

The age condition is easy enough to understand, but what does “ superb potential ” actually mean.

Based on your first team’s current ability on average, the players that are scouted will have the potential to become a superb player for YOUR squad .

This means that if you’re Real Madrid, a superb player is likely to be a top/world class player when they’ve reached their potential, as a lot of Real Madrid players are some of the best in the world.

If you’re an English League 2 club such as Tranmere Rovers, a superb player might only have the potential of a solid League 1 player, because a solid League 1 player would be superb for YOUR team .

So, if you’re a lower league club, consider scouting players that have a scouted potential ability of excellent or star as a minimum. Just remember that it’ll be difficult to attract some wonderkids if your club has a low reputation, which is why being more realistic and looking for a hot prospect could be a better idea.

When you’ve selected the conditions, select the best or most appropriate scout from the Scouting Pool dropdown, then click Start Assignment .

Now your scout will travel to their selected region and begin watching games and producing scout reports for you to view.

Building A Shortlist Of Wonderkids

I recommend scouting all players who look promising until full knowledge has been reached. This will uncover hidden attributes and various other information that’s useful to know.

You will also be able to see the media’s description of a player which is a great indicator of whether or not you’ve found a wonderkid.

Once you have populated your shortlist with potential wonderkids, you can go to the shortlist (click the scouting menu followed by the tab Shortlist) and customise the current view to see media descriptions .

Click the eye icon just above the player names column to change the view. Next, click Custom and “Customise current view”.

This will open up a window where you can add or remove columns to your shortlist view.

Click OK and you’ll be able to see the media description column in your current view. Sort your shortlist by media description and scroll down to your wonderkids.

Above the button “New Search” will be the selected shortlist. Click the shortlists dropdown and you’ll be able to create a new shortlist. I called mine “wonderkids”.

You can then right click on all of your wonderkid’s names and add them to this shortlist. Use the dropdown to switch the shortlist you’re currently seeing.

Scouting Hot Prospects

If you’re just looking for young players with great potential in general and not necessarily one labelled as a wonderkid, or you’re a lower league club that can’t attract a talented wonderkid, you can create a hot prospect assignment which is something I use quite a lot.

On the “ Player Type ” dropdown, select “ hot prospect ”.

This will set two conditions:

• Age is at most 24 years old
• Scouted potential is at least good

Overtime, your scouts will bring you plenty of scout reports for young talented players that could even be a wonderkid.

This provides you with plenty of players that could develop into a real star for your team.

Make sure to setup your scouts in the best countries as listed in the next section.

You’ll need to setup scouting assignments in the right countries or regions around the world to ensure your world knowledge is boosted and your chances of finding a wonderkid become high.

The Best Countries To Scout Wonderkids

Some countries produce more wonderkids than others, based on a few factors such as the youth rating and game importance in that particular country.

Therefore, we need to ensure out scouting networks are setup in areas where there will be a wealth of wonderkids being produced in game.

The youth rating attribute is assigned to each nation, the higher the rating, the better the quality of regens coming through on average in that country.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t find world class talent as a low youth rated country.

Here’s a table of the best countries to scout for wonderkids based on youth rating and game importance…

Improving Your World Knowledge

Make sure you’ve selected the best scouting package possible for your scouting budget. This will immediately populate your known player list with tons of players and give your world knowledge a boost .

If you don’t have a big enough scouting budget, click the Scouting Budget button and slide some transfer budget over to the scouting budget.

If there isn’t enough money in the transfer budget, go to the transfer/wages budget adjustment by clicking either the transfer or wage budget button and bump up your transfer budget by removing some of the available wage money.

And if that’s still not given you enough money, you’ll need to improve your clubs finances by getting rid of players on a high wage or by selling a player for a decent transfer fee. You could also ask the board for an increase to your budget, but this is likely to be denied if you’re new to the club or if they’re struggling financially.

You can also hire scouts that have knowledge on players in different areas of the world.

Assigning Your Scouts Around The World

I recommend putting each of your scouts in a different area, and not setting the area they scout in to be too little that they’ll run out of clubs to watch.

As I’m managing an English club, I want to ensure I have good scouting across the UK and Ireland, so I set one scout to work in just that area. The reason for this is so I can work within my foreign player limit more easily if I have top English youth talent at my club.

The next place I want to focus on is Europe. Europe is split into central, south, eastern as well as a separate option for Scandinavia. I’m more likely to be granted work permits from European countries.

I set a scout to each of these areas with the same criteria as mentioned above.

Then, I assign another scout to South America, another to Africa and another to Asia and Oceania.

Add more scouts to the regions that are likely to produce the most wonderkids such as South America.

What about if you don’t have enough scouts to cover all of these areas?

Focus on the regions or countries in which you’re most likely to be granted a work permit from, as well as the countries that are likely to generate the most wonderkids, see “ where to scout wonderkids ” above.

It should be pretty obvious what you need to uncover wonderkids quickly and with the most reliable data – quality scouts.

Important Attributes For Wonderkid Scouts

You’ll need scouts that have high attributes in the following:

• Judging Player Ability ( important )
• Judging Player Potential ( very important )
• Adaptability ( very important )

It also helps if they have good determination and a suitable personality, but don’t worry about these too much.

Obviously, you should aim to get the staff with the highest in those attributes that are available and give them long-term contracts and this may hard if your club isn’t very reputable.

Judging Current Ability Attribute

You may be wondering why being able to judge current ability is important if we’re only looking towards the future…

By looking at a player’s current ability and attributes along with their age, we can see the likelihood of that player reaching their full potential.

If you find a 17 year old whose stats are extremely good for their age already, then it won’t take too much time or effort for them to progress into a world class player.

Whereas, if you find someone of the same age that isn’t particularly showing any exciting quality in the relevant attributes currently, it could be a waste of time signing them and waiting years for them to reach a potential ability that was hard to reach in the first place.

Judging Potential Ability Attribute

It’s key for a scout to be able to work out the potential of a young player, otherwise, you could waste your time signing the wrong players only for them to turn out to be horrible.

Scouts who have a high judging player potential attribute will be able to better pinpoint how good a player can become and do it quicker than other scouts too.

We need to know if a player is going to develop into a beast, or just turn out to be average.

When we know this information, we can work out whether it’s worth spending a lot of money on a wonderkid or whether we have to negotiate hard and pray there are no ridiculous release clauses.

Scout Adaptability Attribute

Scouts are often travelling around to different countries, regions or continents, therefore it’s important they can adapt to the different cultures of the many countries that they may be visiting for the first time.

A high adaptability allows them to scout more effectively, potentially providing you with more scout reports per area scouted than a scout with low adaptability.

I’ve always found my scouts with higher adaptability to do better overall. They’ll often boost their world knowledge more quickly as they venture out to different nations.

Scout World Knowledge

Different members of staff bring their own “world knowledge” which benefits the amount of known players you have in your scouting list.

It’s worth hiring scouts that have different sets of world knowledge if possible to quickly boost the amount of players your scouting team knows about, giving you more options for transfers.

However, scouts will gain more world knowledge when they’re performing their scouting duties in countries they’ve not been to before.

Expand Your Scouting Team

When I feel it’s appropriate and when the option is available, I ask the board to expand the amount of scouts allowed at the club.

Having a large scouting team is key to boosting world knowledge and having eyes all over the world looking for young talented players.

Honestly, I tend to ignore the recruitment analyst and other recruitment roles when it comes to looking for wonderkids.

Recruitment analysts can provide match stats about the player you’re targeting as well as suggest potential targets based on their match stats, but I don’t really find it very useful when searching for wonderkids.

Often wonderkids will be too young to be playing in a first team and if they are, they’re usually not in a league that matches their current ability, so match stats tend to be unimportant here.

Just focus on signing the best scouts you’re able to.

Sometimes you can sign a player labelled as a wonderkid, but they don’t turn out to be the player you dreamed of.

This could happen for a number of reasons in the complex universe of a Football Manager save, but here are some things to check before signing…

Current Ability

I always find my better wonderkids are those that already have the foundations in place to become a solid player in the future.

I like to use the below table as a rough way of evaluating the potential of a wonderkid, based on their age and their current ability.

If I see an 18 year old who can play in the Championship confidently then I know that providing the other factors required for a world class wonderkid are there, the youngster should turn out to be a solid player in the future and reach their potential.

As mentioned, this is a very rough and quick way of evaluating whether a player will turn out strong, there are many other factors discussed below.

Players who are high in their current ability at a young age will also fit into your first team quickly, allowing them to get the playing time they need in a reputable league to progress more efficiently.

Game time is key for developing a player’s attributes quickly – don’t let wonderkids rot in the reserves.

Of course, they may attract loan offers too, but a player won’t progress as well if they’re playing in a league that isn’t a challenging difficulty.

For example, don’t play an 18 year old who is well suited to the English Championship, in a league equivalent to League 1 or League 2. If they find the league easy to play in, they’ll struggle to develop quickly if at all.

Current Attributes

Similar to above, you could look at the current attributes of a player to determine their current ability compared with a similar player.

If you think you’ve found the next Paul Pogba, go to Google and find a screenshot of Pogba’s Football Manager stats from a previous version of the game, one that’s a similar age to the wonderkid you’ve found.

Compare the stats important for that player’s position and you’ll be able to understand just how good a player may be at their current age.

Alternatively, use the comparison tab on the player’s screen and select “Find similar players” to see players that have similar high attributes. Or compare them with players in your club.

Look for the most important attributes for that player’s position.

For example, let’s say you’ve found a 17 year old center back with an attribute of 14 for tackling, marking, positioning, anticipation, or of a similar level in attributes important to a center back, you’ve potentially got yourself a very valuable player.

Personality & Determination

Always look for players who have a high determination .

It’s always been an FM player favourite attribute for a reason – it helps your player develop.

A highly determined player who has a personality such as “ driven ” will aim to be the best player they can, that includes training and when playing in a match too.

However, it’s still very possible that a player with a mediocre determination and a balanced personality will progress well, but it’s less likely.

Remember, if we utilise the mentoring groups correctly we can help shape and mould a player’s personality and mental attributes including determination.

Player Traits (Pros & Cons)

Always scout a potential wonderkid until full knowledge and uncover clues about their hidden attributes/traits .

You don’t want to sign someone without knowing that they have an awful personality , they’re extremely injury prone , they don’t adapt well and might become homesick , they’re inconsistent , etc.

Those sort of players struggle to reach their full potential.

Work Permit Potential

If you’re an English club, thanks to Brexit, it may be difficult to even get a work permit for the wonderkid you want to sign.

Usually, it’s easier to sign EU wonderkids than it is from less reputable continents such as Africa, but it all depends on what league you’re playing in, wages, and other factors.

Gaining enough scouting knowledge about a player will often inform you their chances of obtaining a work permit.

Sometimes, on the transfer offer screen for that player there will be an alert at the bottom to provide information on what’s required for that player to achieve a work permit in your club’s country.

Usually, the more reputable your club and league is, the more likely the chances are the work permit will be granted, along with various other factors.

Wonderkids are often gaining appearances at an international level too which massively helps towards getting a work permit.

It’s important to understand that while you’ll discover some wonderkids before other teams, for others there could be fierce competition from bigger clubs than your own that have already scouted the player.

This means there is an argument for trying to scout in more obscure countries not listed above where other clubs may not focus their wonderkid scouting.

The more obscure the location you find a wonderkid in, the easier they should be to sign. When I say obscure, I mean countries that have low reputation leagues.

You should be scouting everywhere possible in theory with if you have enough scouts.

Agents often like to drum up interest for their clients and leak stories to the media. This is particularly annoying as it can attract bigger clubs with bigger wage budgets to take a look at the player. That’s if they weren’t already keeping an eye on them.

Tips For Signing A Wonderkid

If you’re worried that the wonderkid you’re after might sign for someone else , try out the below tips:

• Don’t try to bargain too much with wonderkids if there’s transfer interest from other clubs with a higher reputation or those that play in a more reputable competition.
• Give them the wage they ask for and maybe a few other bonuses if other clubs are interested in buying your target. If you have the money, perhaps even give them a little more than they were after originally to help sway their decision.
• Offer them a suitable status or a good amount of playing time within the club if you feel like you can give it them.
• Add promises that you know you’ll be able to fulfil.

Remember, if the player you’re trying to sign won’t be good enough for your first team straight away, you can still offer them a good amount of playing time, and instead loan them out elsewhere.

Make sure you DO actually loan the player out though, otherwise you’ll quickly upset your wonderkid, and nobody wants that.

Scouting Wonderkids Can Be Difficult

If you follow the above guide, you’ll quickly uncover some very exciting wonderkids in Football Manager.

Scouting can be easy once you know the basics, and you don’t really have to play around with the settings too much once your scouting network has been setup.

Good luck on finding wonderkids in your Football Manager save, there are plenty out there.

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• How to set up a scouting network

This guide will help you turn your local scouting team into a world-wide scouting network.

One of the coolest areas on Football Manager is finding that new super newgen that will develop into a world class player. Finding newgens (or regens) can be done in various ways.

Before we start the guide we would like to add that this guide provides guidelines to improve the chances of finding the best newgens. Following the tips and tricks from this guide will not guarantee a Messi-like newgen every year.

Setting up the team

First thing you will have to do is setting up the scouting team, depending on the size of your club and the possibilities you have available. The first position you will have to fill is the position of Chief Scout .

He is the person that will act in two different areas. Firstly he will need to set assignments for your scouting team (for which he needs high Man Management and Motivation), secondly he will need to be your ‘master adviser‘. The Chief Scout should always have the final say when scouting possible signings.

Once you have signed a Chief Scout you can continue setting up the scouting team. If you want to expand your scouting network, you will have to fill every possible position. You could even ask your board for extra scouts through a board request (keep in mind that they will only agree when all positions are already filled).

When signing scouts you have to make sure you only sign the best scouts possible (duh!).

Attributes your scouts definitely need are:

• Judging Player Ability
• Judging Player Potential
• Determination
• Adaptability

Learn more on scouts in Football Manager

Different scouts

A thing you will have to keep in mind whilst setting up the scouting network is you should sign different types of scouts. You have scouts that are looking for the next Lionel Messi, but you should also have scouts that can determine a players current ability.

That way you will not only find players for the future, but will always keep your current squad in mind as well.

Master scout

It is advised you appoint at least one ‘Master Scout’ . This is the best scout available for your club. This Master Scout will not be used to roam the world for new players. No, his key assignment will be giving the final judgement on players you have on your shortlist and really want to sign.

This scout is the one who will watch players during games and will give you an extensive report for those players. When your Master Scout has finished scouting several players for one position, you will know for sure which one you will need to sign.

Sign scouts from different countries

What is highly valuable for a scouting network? Scouting Knowledge . Scouts can develop their knowledge by spending time in certain parts of the world, but why develop something if you can get it for free? Make sure you create a scouting team with various nationalities from all available continents on Football Manager. The better the knowledge, the better players you will find.

Off course it will not be possible to sign scouts with knowledge from every single country in the world, but concentrate on the countries that will generate the best regens.

Set up & expand your network

After reading the first section of this Guide, you will be able to select the best scouts and have the knowledge to set-up your very own scoutingteam on Football Manager. For the next part of this Guide we will take a look at setting up and expanding your scouting network across the globe.

Scouting Package

The first thing you will need is a scouting package. Consider this to be a database of players you will be able to use for a certain fee. This pack varies from a single league, single nation to an entire continent or even the world.

Scout regions

The first step you will have to take to increase the knowledge of your scouting team is by scouting Regions. This way your scout will travel between countries for a certain amount of time and will gain knowledge of every single country in that region.

Scout nations

After your scouts gain enough knowledge of a certain region (approximately 60%) it is advised to switch to countries instead of regions. For example; your scout has been roaming South America for a year know and has a good knowledge of the continent.

The next step is to assign the scout for individual countries. That way you can skip countries that do not matter (Bolivia, Surinam, Guyana) and focus on countries that dó matter like Brazil, Argentina and Colombia.

Create a cycle

When your scout will be focusing on individual countries, make sure that you create an ongoing cycle of those countries. A period of 1 month per country should be enough for him to find the best players and keep his knowledge on a high level.

But be wary not to assign to much countries to a scout or have him scout a country for too long. That way his knowledge will drop and you will have to start all over again.

Feeder & Parent Clubs

Did you know that you gain knowledge when selecting a Feeder and/or Parent club? If your board agrees to selecting a Feeder club, don’t forget to check your overall scouting knowledge.

Selecting a Feeder or Parent club will give you automatic knowledge of the region and country it plays in. So that is basically free knowledge you get! So if you want to gain knowledge from Brazil, choose a Brazilian club as your feeder club (if possible).

Pick a second nationality

Even though your are fully English or Dutch; pick a second nationality at the start of the game. Why? Because it will give your club automatic scouting knowledge of that country and region.

To close this guide, here are some pointers to take with you.

• Sign a large scouting team
• Scouts for different jobs
• Look for scouts with different nationalities
• Set-up your network by scouting regions
• Expand the network by scouting countries
• Create a scouting cycle
• Pick your Feeder/Parent clubs from area’s you would like to gain knowledge
• Pick a second nationality when starting a new save.
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Scouting in Football Manager 2024 | The Definitive Guide

With major changes to scouting and recruitment in Football Manager 2024 this ultimate guide brings you all the scouting tips and tricks you need to master the art of scouting in Football Manager 2024.

Scouting in Football Manager can be a straightforward affair but by immersing yourself with scouting and recruitment, it will give you long-term joy and success. Whether you are scouring through the world for the best Football Manager 2024 wonderkids and talents or searching after a new star player, how you scout will be essential to your success!

Our definitive guide to scouting in Football Manager 2024 let you get a closer insight into the different methods of scouting and its main objectives, as we guide you through how to scout in Football Manager. Here’s everything you need to be successful at scouting, recruitment and expanding your scouting network to spot more players!

To improve your take on scouting and make it more enjoyable, more knowledge about how scouting in Football Manager works, together with specific scouting tips, can lead to more successful results when you shall search for potential targets or identify future stars on your own. Our guide to scouting aims to give you everything you need in one place!

PS. I know the length of this scouting guide is massive but feel free to use our table of content to jump around to the sections that interest you the most.

This article is aimed at both FM novices and veterans, as it’s packed with information and tips on how I approach the scouting area. It’s the first post in a wider series relating to scouting in Football Manager. Get a full overview of the other scouting guides here!

How to approach scouting in Football Manager 2024?

It’s easy to relate the success of a football club to tactics and what’s been done at the training ground. In reality, much of the success can be related to the hard work and effort put into scouting and recruitment. Often the key to success isn’t whether the right tactical instructions were given in the 80th minutes to take home the victory but through a long-term plan of signing the best players for your team.

This is a statement with a deeper meaning. In order to find the best players, they must both:

• fit your tactics
• and, easily blend into your squad.

Scouting is as essential as training or tactics, and enables you to take your team to the next level by recruiting players that fit your system. Your setup of the scouting and recruitment team, how you look to expand your reach or how you send out scouts on a mission to get more knowledge about the teams and players around you can be a contributing factor to long-term success.

Today I’ll take a closer look at how to approach scouting in Football Manager 2024 by looking at the different areas related to scouting and recruitment of players. You’ll perhaps get some useful Football Manager scouting tips to take with you into your own save, or get a deeper insight into how scouting and its underlying features works.

Our Football Manager 2024 scouting guide gives you everything you need to know about scouting and recruitment in Football Manager 2024 and its terms. In this guide to scouting in Football Manager we will take a closer look at how to set up your scouting network and assign scouts to assignments, how to set up recruitment focus in the best way possible to identify potential signings, whether it may be finding some of the best FM24 bargains , hidden wonderkids in Football Manager 2024 , or or spot quality newgens in the future.

Basically, we can divide scouting in Football Manager into two main parts:

• Everything you do to affect the organizational structure (e.g how you set up your scouting network)
• Specific scouting activities and how you scout for players

1. The Objectives of Scouting

Creating a foundation for all scouting activities starts by understanding what your missions are. Getting an insight into the objectives of scouting helps to better set up an efficient scouting program that provides long-term results.

In order to fully grasp how to set up the most efficient scouting program, it’s important to understand why you should take scouting seriously. The reasons for scouting might seem simple, but by clarifying the main objectives it may be easier to set up an efficient scouting network or scouting program which delivers great results.

Having a clear idea about why you should put effort and time into setting up a scouting program will make things easier when approaching the different methods of Football Manager scouting. By getting an overview of the different areas the recruitment team is responsible for and what options at hand, it will be easier to set up appropriate recruitment focuses (previously known as scouting assignments), search filters and shortlists according to your ambitions.

There are basically eight different objectives with scouting . These objectives basically summarize everything relating to scouting and recruitment and will affect how you intend to approach scouting in Football Manager. It literally summaries and connects all of our published and coming scouting guides together, clarifying the overall mission of why we scout players and set up assignments.

• Improve the squad with suitable targets for your tactical system
• Increase competitiveness by improving the squad depth
• Learn more about the next opposition’s strength and weaknesses
• Improve the club’s financial situation by selling for profit (short-term and long-term objectives)
• Replace aging players or players not good enough for your system.
• Provide tactical options or more versatility in systems used
• Consistency in performance (back-up and/or rotation options)
• Improve the overall performance level in regard to statistical data.
• Modify the squad dynamics to improve player’s performance by making changes to squad personality, morale and interpersonal relationships on and off the pitch (aka player partnerships , team cohesion and dressing room atmosphere).

The way you set up your scouting program must revolve around these objectives. After all, the aim of scouting is to be better prepared for situations where you need to improve your squad, either it’s due to long-term injuries on key players or not able to get the most out of squad players, for whatever reasons.

Your take on scouting and recruiting is all depending on the situation within your squad. There’s no such thing as a ‘good or bad’ approach to scouting but it helps to have an overall mission relating to how you approach it.

The key to scouting is to get to know as much about the player and how he fits into your team. You want to learn as much as possible about the player to make more informed decisions relating to the final recruitment.

1.1 The Club Vision’s influence on your Scouting Program

Setting up a scouting program will determine the club’s overall recruitment focus , whether it’s for the short- or long-term. My preference is always to think long-term and be strategic with how I scout players in Football Manager .

Your recruitment focus and how you set up your scouting network should adhere to two important aspects within your club:

• It must link to the Club Vision relating to recruitment, which can be described as your club’s transfer policy
• It must fit the playing style and football philosophy (e.g. fit your tactical system(s) and club DNA!).

Most often when entering a new club it already exists an established club culture relating to the recruitment and development of players. They got a way of doing things that have either worked successfully in the past or which the Board (and the fans) believes will take the club to success. The club vision can be seen as the club’s mission statement. What’s stated is simply the preferences and expectations the club has on your managerial achievements. Here you’ll see specific recruitment philosophies – the transfer policies within the club.

Despite you’re not forced to follow the established cultures relating to scouting and recruitment, the preferred club vision relating to recruitment can act as a limitation for your leeway. It can both increase the challenge level for your save and intensify your focus in all scouting matters.

In some ways, the influence of club vision for your scouting program must be taken into account when setting up assignments. Whether you keep full focus on it or not, throughout the save, doesn’t matter. There will be times where you simply must sign a back-up player due to an injury crisis or you’re forced to pay more attention to recruiting more experienced players since most of your starting XI wants to play at a higher level and will soon be out of the doors. Perhaps a larger fraction of your squad is not good enough to play at the level you want to take the club to, either.

Club Visions

In Football Manager 2024, there are eight club visions relating to the recruitment focus – which should affect how you scout for players.

• Sign Players Under X age for the future (e.g. under the age of 21)
• Sign Players Under X age for the first team (e.g. under the age of 30)
• Sign players based in a specific nation (e.g. homegrown players in the same country you’re managing in)
• Sign Players of a specific nationality (e.g. of Senegalese origin or only Basque players)
• Sign Players of high-reputation
• Sign players from lower levels of Domestic game (e.g. a good percentage of recruitment’s must come from divisions lower than yourself)
• Sign Players from Domestic Rivals
• Don’t Sign Players over the age of X (e.g over the age of 23)

These club vision provides you both with restrictions and possibilities in regard to how you set up your scouting network and the way you scout for players. Most importantly it affects the level of scouting range necessary to live up to the club’s expectations, according to the scouting coverage.

For one, it’s not necessary to scout the regions of Asia or Africa if you got a transfer policy of only recruiting homegrown players under the age of 23. Likewise, it’s not necessary to ask your scouts to provide reports on players over the age of 30 if your transfer policy is to buy young players for the future.

Your club vision and transfer policy will therefore set restrictions on the types of recruitment focuses you shall set up and the scouting range you need to identify the best players for yourself.

Creating a foundation for all scouting activities

Before you can have any hopes of having regular success with scouting and recruitment it’s important to lay down the foundation for an effective scouting program. It’s a matter of creating a wide-reach scouting network that finds the right players for your club – those players who with their status, personality and skills can get the most out of his teammate and make each other better both on the training ground and on the pitch.

In your quest to identify potential targets, it is important that your approach to scouting is both strategic and methodical.

It’s a matter of setting some guidelines to follow that will limit your leeway in all your upcoming scouting activities. How you set up your scouting network depends on your objectives and football philosophy. Learn more about how I set up my scouting network in Football Manager here.

2. Assessing the Scouting & Recruitment Team

Once you enter a new save in Football Manager, one of the first things you need to do is to analyze your scouting team and make any necessary adjustments in order to find the best players for your club. Your scouting and recruitment team must include scouts and data analysts that helps you to effectively visualize your scouting objectives.

To assess your clubs scouting and recruitment team, you’ll be able to get a full overviews of the current staff’s level of abilities by heading to:

Staff > Overview > Recruitment Team

After entering the screen, you shall pay close attention to their level of Judging Player Ability (aka JPA), Judging Player Potential (aka JPP) which are the most crucial attributes for any scouts or analysts who shall determine a player’s current standard of skills, and potential future standard of his abilities.

All scouts required to travel the world for players should also have high Adaptability . This is essential if he’s required to roam around regions or multiple nations and needs to settle down quickly to bring you more reports of players, sooner rather than later.

Your team also needs a chief scout who can oversee all scouting assignments. Alongside JPP and JPA, the great chief scout needs a decent level of people management. This attribute determines his level of keeping people below and around him happy and monitor their workload to an appropriate level so they doesn’t overload them with too many assignments and reduce their effectiveness.

The level of the scouts attributes will depend on your playing level, but I try to find any scouts with an higher score than 15 if you are managing an elite club. At lower levels, 10 might be decent enough but as always, the higher attributes as possible, the better.

The Recruitment Team Comparison within the same page, will give you a great insight to how your scouting team ranks within your league.

With a specific custom view, you’re able to analyze your scouting and recruitment team to a whole new level than what the standard staff view provides of options.

Within the Recruitment Team Overview, you can even see the current size of the recruitment team, and the maximum number of scouts, data analysts and Directors allowed. From here, you can easily place advert to fill any vacancies spots available, or make any requests to the board to increase wages or allocate more spots to expand your scouting team.

One of the first tasks on the agenda within the first week of management, is to hire and fire scouts and other necessary staff for the Recruitment team. This way, I can poach some of the best free scouts, as well as tie up any scouts which can expand the world knowledge at a great cost.

You can use the current World Knowledge status (found within the Scouting Coverage screen), and the current staff’s abilities, to determine what type of scouts you need.

As described in our guide to finding the best scouts , there are four types of scouts I wish to have within my scouting team – how many depends on the club’s finances.

• roaming scouts – expand club’s world knowledge – highest priority on Adaptability
• youth scouts – used to identify future players (e.g. wonderkids & talents) – highest priority judging player potential
• next Opponent scout – used to scout teams – highest priority tactical knowledge and judging player ability
• general scouts – identify players who can improve the current squad – highest priority judging player ability & JPP

READ MORE | Ranking the Best Football Manager 2024 scouts

3. The Scouting Centre

The Scouting Centre in Football Manager is the go-to place in all matters relating to any scouting activities. From here you’ll able to manage your entire scouting project; from setting up recruitment focuses and other assignments to flicking through scout reports and recommendations . Even though identifying potential signings is a huge part of the Scouting Centre, as player recommendations take up 90% of the screen, it includes valuable information about your Recruitment Team, the current level of scouting knowledge and scouting budget.

The purpose of the Scouting Centre is to be a one-stop place to find a collection of potential signings your Recruitment Team has identified and which they believe you should be aware of. Most of the players that are recommended have been found by your scouts or analysts from specific scouting focuses, such as scouting priorities you’ve set in Recruitment Meetings.

However, it may even include highly recommended players or offers from agents.

The Scouting Centre features literally everything we’re going to talk about in this guide, whether it’s more related to managing organizational purposes that helps you manage the foundation for any future scouting activities or more actionable steps to take. For instance, setting up your scouting assignments or other long-term or short-term recruitment focuses.

This overview gives you an insight into how we can divide the different aspects of the Scouting Centre in Football Manager;

Organizational Structure

• Scouting Responsibilities
• Scouting and Recruitment Team (Staff Abilities)
• Scouting Knowledge or Scouting Coverage
• Scouting budget
• Scouting Range (previously Recruitment package)
• Scouting Priorities
• Delivery of Reports and Recommendations

Scouting Activities

• Recruitment Focus aka Scouting assignments
• Scout Reports / Analyst Reports (of Individual Players or Next Opposition)
• Player Search – Basic, Quick and Advanced Methods
• Basic Scouting Focus on Player types, roles or according to club vision
• Quick Searches (player status and availability)
• Advanced Player Searches (Filters and Shortlists)

* The different scouting activities will be covered in our upcoming article about how to scout for players in Football Manager .

3.1 A Closer Insight to the Recommendation Panel

The recommendation panel features Reports from the Scouting Team and Analyst Team, in addition to files and offers sent from Agents, Affiliates or players who alerts you of their interest.

These reports are often collated by the person in charge of providing feedback on scouting assignments. They are delivered according to your current transfer strategies and preferences relating to how you want these reports filtered.

TIP! By clicking on the little cog drop down button next to Filter you are able to select what types of recommendation cards you like to receive. Learn more in the section about how to set up recommendation filters .

For instance, it may include players you have little to no knowledge of, since an Agents wish to bring attention to one of his players, or may include unattached players, who get in touch with you. It can even include players that your Scouting team will suggest at an upcoming Recruitment Meeting or players who have been identified at these meetings.

Most of the players in the recommendation panel are just suggestions on potential signings the Scouting or Recruitment team believes you should take further actions on, as the recommendations are collated from your ongoing scouting assignments or Analysts reports.

The Scouting Centre ensures you never miss out on potential signings that could be a perfect match for your team!

The benefits of the Recommendation panel is to make you aware of players for positions the Scouting and Recruitment believe you lack depth in. They may take into account current transfer interest, transfer status, abilities, age and performances and link their recommendations to your wishes and demands specified in Recruitment meetings and through specific recruitment focuses.

In some ways, it summarizes your current transfer strategy by collating scout reports of players who best fit your current scouting instructions into a list which are handed to you at Scouting Meetings.

How do you want to see the reports?

The reports compiled to the Scouting Centre can be seen in two different ways; Cards or List view. Both views have their benefits.

The List View simply collects all the recommended players in one view. It includes a fairly brief report about basic information such as positional abilities, age, Recommendation rating and star ratings (CA and PA) in addition to the scout’s opinion about the maximum asking price and wage demands.

The Cards View enables you to focus your attention at individual players, getting access to more information about each. You’ll get a more detailed report about the recommendation, his transfer interest and an opportunity to read the scout report featuring pros and cons or check his attributes, position and role suitability or fitness level.

Taking further actions

At the bottom of the list of recommendations you’ll get the chance to take further actions to either dismiss or follow up on the recommendations. Here’s a quick overview of what happens when you click the action buttons.

PS. These action buttons will only appear when you select one or multiple players in the list view.

• Tick the Shortlist button to add the player to a shortlist. If the player is already on a shortlist, ticking the button will see the player getting removed from the shortlist.
• Fully Scout Player will only be actionable as long as the scouts does not have extensive knowledge about the player. If the knowledge is poor, the scout will watch the player according to the Recruitment Actions within the Recommendation View preferences menu (see the small cog in the upper right corner)
• Discuss With Agent gives you a quick way to monitor a player’s interest, availability and demands. By clicking the button you’ll get a deeper insight to the player’s transfer cost and wage demands, along with other expectations the player may have if you should sign him.
• Make Offer gives you a quick way to make a bid on the player. Even though it’s smart to contact the Agent before making a bid, the option is there.
• Not Interested will inform the Recruitment team that you no longer wish to get recommendations of the player. It includes if the player will match a specific recruitment focus later on (RF Matches).
• Acknowledge will remove the player from the Scouting Centre. You will signalize that no further actions is required to be taken.

3.2 How to Set up Recommendation Filters to Reduce the Number of Recommendations Delivered?

A major part of the Scouting centre is to let your Chief Scout sort through the number of scout reports and deliver the most useful recommendations to you. As you receive reports and offers from players, agents and your scouting and recruitment team, the Recommendation panel may feature a whole lot of players out of your interest. By all means, there might be some handy players there, but going through hundreds of reports from 15+ scouts will take time.

The Scouting Centre features several options to limit the number of reports and recommendations sent to you, either it’s players to discuss in the Scouting Meetings or scout reports and feedback sent to your inbox.

Let us take a look at how you can set up your recommendation filters and preferences to receive the reports that matter the most to you!

Show All vs Specific

Whichever view you prefer, Football Manager enables you to show only recommendations from a specific department, whether it’s from the Scouting Team, Recruitment Team, Analyst Team, Agents, Players or candidates to discuss at the upcoming Recruitment Meeting, which your closest staff believes would make a good fit for your squad. By displaying only players from a specific department within your club you can focus your attention to these recommendations without having to deal with offers on players most likely out of your ability level.

Filtering the Recommendations

Football Manager enables you to decide which type of recommendations you want to receive and where you want them to be delivered. The recommendations can be delivered in different ways, all according to your preferences:

• i. Don’t receive. . You reject to be notified about recommendations or offers. Personally, I tend to use this option for Free Agent Offering his services and for Agent offers.
• ii. Show in Scouting centre . You want these reports to be delivered only to the Scouting Center, from there you can take further actions.
• iii. Forward to Inbox . The person in charge of collating and providing feedback will forward the recommendation to your inbox when it happens. I find it useful to be informed about when scouting assignments or individual scouting trips are finished, suggestions on upcoming competitions, potential hot prospects and suggestions the Recruitment Team and Analyst have. It can even be used to get information about when players you’ve scouted are out on the transfer or loan list enabling you to take actions immediately!
• iv. Mixed Delivery which will vary where the recommendations will be sent – all depending on the Scouting rating, cost, transfer availability and how he fit your transfer policy.

Minimum Recommendation Levels

It’s not only which types of recommendations you receive and who you want to receive from which will affect the number of Recommended players in the Scouting Centre. You can even ask the Scouting Team to filter away any scout reports under a given minimum recommendation level .

When it comes to receiving these recommendations from the scouting team I prefer to receive reports with a minimum scouting grade of B+ delivered to my inbox. It means I might have to pay attention to the Scouted Players and the ongoing gathering of Reports from my scouts and Analyst to keep track of other players that they have identified, that could potentially be useful.

For a full overview of Scouted players go to either;

• Scouting > Players > Scouted Players
• Scouting > Scouting coverage > Scouts > Name > Scout Reports
• Scouting > Players Players in Range > Sort by Recommendation Rating *(Column must be added to the search view)

3.2.1 Taking advantage of Advanced Filters

A major part of scouting is to receive feedback from the scouts whenever they got something to report. It may be players they have spotted whilst out on a mission, when a player has been transfer listed or other events happening around the world.

Setting up the advanced filters relating to scouting can provide the feedback you need to stay informed.

Managing these advanced filters is possible when clicking on the cog drop down menu within Scouting Centre. Once you’ve entered the overlay (see illustration on the left side of 3.2 section), you’ll be able to click the Advanced Filter.

Here you can decide when you want email notifications delivered straight to your Inbox and when certain news can be sent to the Scouting Centre. Since you don’t want to be flooded with hundreds of Inbox messages you can tailor the filter to not receive notifications about certain items.

Personally, I find it beneficial to receive inbox messages about players the Scout has spotted out on another duty that he can recommend. Similarly, I like to get a reminder from the Scouting team when competitions they can suggest to scout is about to start. With a range of possibilities, you can instruct the person in charge of providing scout feedback to deliver the notifications that are most relevant for you.

Perhaps you’ll even spot a few bargains or cheap transfer targets as you get valuable information as soon as a potential signing have been spotted!

4. The Recruitment Team

The recruitment team includes all backroom staff responsible for either scouting, recruiting and analyzing the abilities or performances of both the next opposition, other teams and players within or outside your own club.

A wide-reach recruitment team includes six different staff roles;

• Director of Football ; normally handles ‘all’ ingoing and outgoing player transfers in addition to negotiating contract extensions.
• Technical Director ; is responsible for handling all affairs relating to recruiting backroom staff no matter if it’s hiring or firing personnel to the scouting team, medical team or coaching team, both for your senior and youth teams. He can even decide who should undertake coaching courses and thereby decide the overall development of coaches qualifications and abilities.
• Chief Scout ; is originally responsible for managing the scouting team and its assignments, and is the link between the scouting pool and you.
• Scouts ; perform assignments and identify potential targets by delivering scout reports-
• Recruitment Analyst ; assesses the performance of players outside your club and potential targets by gathering and analyzing statistical data to compare scouted players’ abilities, performances and playing level to the standard within your league and the club.
• Loan Manager ; will focus his attention to track the development of, and performance of, players out on loan. He will track their happiness and form whilst even being able to suggest player’s who can aid on loan moves.

How you set up your recruitment team depends on your finances and playing level. It even depends on how much control you’d like within your club and what you favor to delegate of responsibilities to your staff.

In our guide on how to find the best scouts in Football Manager , you’ll learn more about the different types of scouts and their most important staff attributes. It even looks closer at the chief scout’s responsibilities and his role in your scouting team.

All in all, the most important thing is to focus your attention to bring in more and more scouts whenever you can to expand the current scouting knowledge. How to assign the scouts will be covered in our guide to setting up a scouting network .

You can ask your board to increase the number of scouts allowed by making a board request. Whether this item is in the list depends on whether you’ve reached the maximum allowed in your Recruitment team.

The allowed size of Recruitment team is displayed in the Staff > Overview > Recruitment Team .

There you can also compare your current average levels of key attributes compared to your league level.

Making a board request to increase the scouts allowed; Club Vision > Make board Request > Staff > Scouts Allowed

Making a board request can also let you increase the scout wages or increase the allowed size of staff for any other staff position. for a lower league team that climbs the ladder, it might be a question of asking the board the permission to sign a Technical Director by allocating the funds necessary for it.

4.1 Required Staff Attributes for Scouting

What’s required of the personnel within your scouting and recruitment team will depend on their job and overall responsibilities. While I cover this topic more specifically in pieces about each of the staff roles we can broadly speaking say they need;

A) For Scouting:

• Judging Player Ability ; describes the ability of a Staff to estimate the current standard of a given player or team.
• Judging Player Potential ; describes the ability of a Staff to estimate the potential future levels of performance of a given player or team whilst taking into account several other factors that could influence on the outcome.
• Adaptability ; describes the ability of a Staff to settle in at a new country, new role or at a new club. It determines how fast the person is able to adjust to cultures and new working environments. Higher ratings means the person will be able to quicker deliver reports once entering a new nation to gain knowledge of.

B) For Analyzing Players/Teams:

• Analyzing Data ; describes the ability of an Analyst to comprehend data of a player or a team and interpret it in a manner useful to the Manager.
• Tactical Knowledge ; describes their level of experience in the game. His knowledge of a certain tactical style or formation may affect how accurate reports about certain teams are.
• Judging Player Ability

C) For Recruiting players:

• Negotiating ; shows how good the staff member is at negotiating transfer deals and contracts. A lesser skilled person will more likely agree to less favorable contracts and transfer packages, whilst a person with higher ratings will be more skilled and seek better financial deals for his club or a player.

5. Scouting Coverage

The main intention of the Scouting Coverage screen is to give you a real-time insight to the current knowledge level within the world.

The scouting coverage screen has basically three intentions:

• provide you with a quick overview of the current scouting assignments by placing the different scouts on the world map. It enables you to see which areas of the world the different scouts are gaining knowledge of, or perhaps who is currently without a task – helping you to address that ‘issue’. Frankly, you’ll be able to see what types of recruitment focuses the specific scout are assigned to.
• provide you with a deeper insight to the club’s World Knowledge by detailing which nations or regions you have partly or full knowledge of – helping you to address which areas you need to focus on in order to expand your current scouting network to be able to discover more players.
• provide you with more information about specific clubs as you’ll able to request analyst reports about specific teams of interest, the next opposition, or perhaps information about a Specific Match – helping you to get Match and Team Analysis to identify strengths and weaknesses of the next opposition.

5.1 World Knowledge

The World Knowledge screen gives you an entire overview of the club’s knowledge level of regions and nations. This screen gives you a valuable insight to areas of the world you could considering scouting to enhance your knowledge of players, or which areas it’s probably best to send out your scouts on a mission, as you’ll receive extensive reports of players far quicker.

The club’s overall knowledge of a (scouting) region can vary from worst to best:

• None (grey)
• Minimal (Dark Orange)
• Nominal (Light Orange)
• Broad (Yellow)
• Widespread (Light Green)
• Comprehensive (Green)
• Exhaustive (Green)
• Unrestricted (Green)

The level of scouting knowledge of a nation or region will have a huge impact on your knowledge level of players based in those nations and regions.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that having an exhaustive knowledge will automatic lead to identifying the best talents within a nation, but that it’s an higher chance to identify more players of higher abilities.

Your Regional or National Scouting Knowledge will impact on the degree of individual player knowledge. It will affect who’s visible in Player search and what’s visible within a player’s profile. With greater knowledge comes a more complete picture of the player’s capabilities and a higher detail level of the players based in that specific nation/region.

The knowledge level of a region, or a nation, is basically determined by three factors :

i) Non-Playing Staff Regional Knowledge The level of knowledge of a given nation depends on the experience the non-playing staff have gained throughout his career. He may have had a past playing career in Argentine, or have worked as a youth coach or assistant manager in China before moving to your English club. The length of his spell within a specific nation or region will affect his individual scouting knowledge.

It’s not only his past experience that affect his knowledge level, how long time they have spent in certain countries affects the level of knowledge. The longer they reside in a nation, the more knowledge they will gain about neighboring and nearby nations.

If you select the ‘Nations’ overview, and click on the magnifying glass, you’ll be able to discover which staff or club that provides you with a certain level of knowledge.

A golden rule is; the higher knowledge level, the more effective the staff will work to gain information about the players within that particular nation. The result is that he’s able to do a more comprehensive work quicker.

You can learn more about how to find the best scouts in Football Manager in this guide.

ii) Affiliated Clubs Acquiring senior affiliates that are either financial or just mutually beneficial can help to increase your scouting knowledge since both clubs will share scouting knowledge.

This means that for any affiliate links where your club has first option to buy players from a second club, or where the other club can send their players to train and develop, will let you profit from the knowledge the minor club has gained from the presence within a nation and/or region and specific members world knowledge (e.g. their managers or director of football’s scouting knowledge.

iii) Sending scouts out on assignments It’s not only a non-playing personnel’s past career history which influences the knowledge score. Sending the staff (typically a scout) out on assignments to a specific nation or region will enhance the knowledge of that particular area. The more time spent within a nation, the better knowledge. The better knowledge, the more information revealed about the players within that nation.

A scout out on a scouting assignment will gain first and foremost knowledge of that particular nation but also about neighboring or nearby countries. How effective and accurate he is in delivering reports and recommendations of players, depends on his Adaptability and his abilities to settle in quickly, as well as his Judging Player Ability (aka JPA) and Judging Player Potential (aka JPP).

Finally, the non-playing staff’s Current Abilities together with how long he’s been stationed in a nation/region and how good is it at his job will affect how fast he can accumulate knowledge of a nation.

Setting up an efficient scouting network should go to expanding the club’s regional knowledge by setting up scouts assignments and improving the scouting team with scouts with knowledge of nations or regions outside your current regional knowledge.

Which regions or nations you prefer to gain knowledge of comes down to your own preferences. Our overview of the different scouting regions and nation’s youth rating gives you a better insight into nations and regions beneficial to scout.

4.1 What’s the benefits of improving the scouting knowledge?

The main objective of scouting is to enhance your knowledge level of players and teams around you. With more information about the evolving world around you, you’ll able to make better decisions both in terms of recruitment but also about what to do when facing the player in upcoming fixtures. As you increase your scouting knowledge, hidden bargains, potential future stars and likely key members for your future squad may be revealed to you.

Basically, when we refer to scouting knowledge we can divide it into what you know about; individual players, teams, competitions, nations, regions and continents.

Improving the knowledge level of a region or nation will basically increase the number of players visible in the Search and add more real players to teams around the world, both senior and youth players. The higher knowledge level of that region or nation, the more information available to you, especially about the player based in that area.

Improving your scouting knowledge of specific teams will give you more information about the way they play both relating to tactics and systems used, but also give you an insight to key players, strong partnerships together with form and statistical trends. With more information about the team’s strength and weaknesses, it will be easier to make decisions relating to how you want to counter their threat. For instance, in the likes of applying certain tactical instructions or using specific systems or strategies that might make you victorious. It enables you to work on specific weaknesses or strength in training that increase your chance of a favourable result in the upcoming fixture, such as set-piece routines.

The most essential part of improving the scouting knowledge relates to learning more about the players around you, whether they are part of future opponents, potential signings or just peripheral player’s based in your country, that could be likely targets in the future.

By improving the player knowledge , more information within the player profile will be available to you, which would be valuable when facing the player and you need to set up opposition instructions. Similarly, the information you get can enable you to make better decisions in recruiting players.

In addition to enabling basic information to you, such as his current and potential abilities, positional abilities, increasing the player knowledge by compiling scout reports will go to assessing four aspects of a player’s profile.

This overview will let you see some of the benefits of improving the scouting knowledge of players:

Basic Information

• Current Abilities
• Potential Abilities
• Positional Abilities
• Hidden Attributes
• Media Description
• Media Handling Style
• Favored Personnel
• Player Style

On-Pitch Performance

• Player Attributes (Strongest & Weakest)
• Role Suitability
• Player form
• Games played in position

Personality & Dynamics

• Personality
• Player Happiness (Positive & Negative)
• Adaptability
• Dressing Room; How he will fit into the club’s Social groups
• Future Plans (long-term & Short-term)
• Relationships

Contract Status

• Availability e.g Transfer & Loan Status
• Actual Playing Time
• Minimum/Maximum Asking Price
• Estimated Cost e.g Agent Fees

By increasing the knowledge about players hidden attributes will be revealed. These hidden attributes are related to a person’s Adaptability, Consistency, Dirtiness, Versatility, Injury Proneness and Important Matches.

4.2 Setting up Your Manager Profile | Specific Scouting Trick to Enhance National & Player Knowledge

Every non-playing staff have the potential to influence the club’s scouting knowledge no matter they are a scout, Performance Analyst, Coach or U23 Manager. It’s not only the current backroom staff which can affect a club’s scouting knowledge.

You have the potential to affect it as well!

Besides signing non-playing staff with knowledge outside your current scope you can set up your Manager Profile in a way which enhances both the knowledge of specific nations as well as senior and junior (Under-23) players. There are two important sections when setting up your Manager Profile that will affect both your knowledge of players and potential influence on the club’s scouting knowledge.

1. Nationality and Second Nationality

One way to improve a minor club’s scouting knowledge is by setting your Nationality (and/or Second Nationality) to one outside the nation you’ll be managing in. Whilst your primary nation will give you full knowledge of that particular nation, a second nationality will give you widespread knowledge (50-80%) of your second nation.

Without the required scouting scope or suited scouting package, your knowledge through Nationalities can actually increase the number of players visible in the Player Search.

The second way to improve your knowledge of players can be done when setting up your Managerial Style. I’m talking about using some of your points to boost the mental attributes ‘ Player Knowledge ‘ and/or ‘ Youngster Knowledge ‘.

While Player Knowledge will affect your knowledge of senior player’s player attributes, Youngster Knowledge will do the same by affecting your default knowledge of Under-23 player’s attributes.

With Attributes Masking ‘ON’, a player’s attributes are either displayed as ranges or not revealed at all – meaning you reduce your knowledge of the player’s within your database size. The only way to gain knowledge of these players is by scouting them for a longer time or interacting with the player. Information about him may also be revealed through matches or as part of a team in the same division. As a result, it may be beneficial to boost Youngster and Player Knowledge to increase your default knowledge level of players around the world.

Attribute Masking makes certain attributes not visible to the Human Manager as FM assumes the manager will not know everything about every player in the world. It’s one of the advanced options when selecting active leagues and game start date. By ticking the box you’ll disable attributes masking and make attributes and personality visible to you. It will increase your general knowledge of the players. Disabling attribute masking will remove the effect of the points allocated to Youngster or Player Knowledge when setting up your Manager’s attributes.

Disabling Attributes Masking will make you less dependent on the level of the Youngster or Player Knowledge within your Manager Profile as attributes and basic player information is visible by default.

4.3 How Scouting Range & Database Size Relates?

Scouting is a widespread process where the recruitment team scour through thousands of prospects to identify targets that fits your tactics, the club DNA or the club vision. To refine the massive pool of players, you have scouting ranges, which limit the search results according to the database size.

The database size determines the approximate player count and is influenced by the number of nations and leagues loaded. It takes into account whether you opt for an advanced, large or minimal database size when setting up your save. As you know, Football Manager enables you to load all players from a continent, region or nation within the advanced function as well as letting you select the playable nations and leagues.

It’s important to consider which active nations and leagues you should load according to the transfer policy and club vision you want to incorporate with your team.

It may be beneficial to load neighboring countries and nations with a similar reputation level as the club you intend to manage in, in order to be able to sign players at a similar level, both financially and in terms of player’s ability levels. It also enables you to send out players on loan to give them playing time at an appropriate level.

It’s wise to consider the pool of available players right from the start when setting up your career.

There’s no use of loading all players from Asia or from Asian countries if you’re looking to do a youth development save in France – aiming to develop players from your own academy. Similarly, it may be smart to load all Scandinavian nations or nations like Poland, Croatia or Serbia if you’re managing in Holland or Germany due to the club’s finances and availability in signing affordable players.

Another aspect, is to consider nations with high youth rating and features club’s with great youth academies if you restrict yourself to a transfer policy of mostly signing players under the age of 21.

Yet again, you’ll see the link between club vision, transfer policy and your objectives and challenges with the preferred save.

4.3.1 The Different levels of Recruitment Packages: Scouting Range

4.5 How to take advantage of the scouting range? Money saving tips!

Depending on your club’s financial situation, what scouting range is allowed by the Board, the club’s level and your available Scouting budget, you’re able to edit the allowed scouting range by selecting the appropriate scouting range.

Not every team will have the necessary funds available to take advantage of the higher-end scouting packages. If you’re struggling with low transfer budgets and/or scouting budgets, it may be financially smart to decrease the Scouting range to National or Surrounding Divisions outside transfer windows, or when you’re not looking for players and are happy with your current squad. With this approach you’re able to save money on a monthly basis!

However, since the scouting range determines the number of available players it’s smart to take advantage of the higher-end scouting ranges. But if you’re playing in the lower leagues, or not having the financial strength to acquire an global, continental or regional scouting range, there are one trick to take advantage of.

• Whenever you’re in the process of scouting for players, select the highest available scouting range. Go to players in range and use filters to search for players. Now, it’s important to NOT advance in the game by clicking the Continue button. Instead, take your time to finish your business and put the players you’re interested in, in a shortlist. This way, you’ll be able to receive more players in the Player Pool without having to pay for the monthly cost of that Scouting Range.

5. Scouting Responsibilities

Like with everything else in Football Manager, you’ll have the options to take charge or delegate responsibilities to your backroom staff.

Whether you are more of a hands-on manager who likes to be involved in the smallest affair, or you prefer to delegate and spread responsibilities around, your decisions in this area will affect how involved you’ll be with any Scouting Activities. It’s a decision of going for a more basic approach, where you trust your scouts to find suitable targets that fit your system or rely on more advanced methods to search for players by scheduling assignments and use filters to both improve your overall scouting knowledge and identify more players.

The Scouting Centre gives you a quick way to manage your scouting responsibilities . In total there are six areas which you can take control of regarding scouting and data analysis, but it’s only the ones specifically aimed at scouting which you can take control over from the Scouting Centre. For managing responsibilities relating to analysis reports, you’ll need to head to; Staff > staff responsibilities > Scouting .

The different scouting responsibilities are;

• providing scout feedback
• assigning scouts (e.g, setting up scouting assignments for your scouting team)
• handling scouting meetings

Apart from affecting how you scout for players, this area will decide upon how much feedback you’ll get from the scouting team and their recommendations.

Let us take a deeper look into the different responsibilities areas and what they do.

5.1 Providing Scouts Feedback

The person in charge of providing scouts feedback , normally a Chief Scout, Scout or Director of Football, will give feedback on the scouting assignments. He will sort out a list of Player Recommendations which the scouting team has gathered out on missions and send his feedback about the reports to you in your preferred way; inbox messages, emails or make them visible in the Scouting Centre.

Besides providing you with feedback about recommendations, the person in charge will notify you about when scouting assignments have finished, or when a scout starts/finish scouting individual players.

I tend to let my Chief Scout handle this responsibility as he will update you on everything concerned with your scouting program.

5.2 Assigning Scouts

Whoever in charge of assigning scouts will basically determine who will set up the assignments for your scouting team and keep your scouts busy with compiling reports and recommendations.

By delegating this area to either your Director of Football or Chief Scout, depending on which role you got, will mean scouting assignments are handled automatically by the staff in charge. He will then randomly decide which nations, competitions or matches to watch, meaning he will basically run your entire scouting program, regardless of your objectives.

He will keep track of how the ongoing assignments go and schedule new assignments once the previous assignment is finished without letting you have any influence on how scouting knowledge is improved. Instead, he’ll use his own judgement of favorable places to scout within the current scouting range and will literally manage the scouting team.

If you shall have any influence on the scouting program and establishing a specific scouting policy it’s of utmost importance to take charge of setting up scouting assignments yourself!

By taking charge of it yourself, you’ll be able to set your personal mark on all scouting affairs and take advantage of advanced tips and tricks to identify likely prospects. You’ll have total control of every scouting activity as you can prioritize assignments according to your ambitions and objectives, or according to your preferred scouting philosophy and recruitment policy.

This is one of the few set and forget options. Changing the person who shall manage this in the middle of the season will cancel and delete every current ongoing scouting assignments. Despite the assignment is cancelled and all scouts are called back home, none of the compiled scout reports is lost, even though the shortcut of players found out on the mission is removed from the overall assignment page.

In addition to being forced to start from scratch, you’ll lose all progress made in improving the scouting knowledge. It’s not like the knowledge the scout has built up is deleted, but rather kept on hold. This can be devastating for your scouting program for a longer period as gaining knowledge of a nation takes a vast amount of time!

5.3 Scouting Meetings & Handling its Responsibilities

Scouting meetings provides you with a summary of Reports your Scouting Team recommends you to look at. You can look at these meetings as reminders that occur in intervals, and makes you aware of potential targets which you are encouraged to browse through and take actions on.

In some ways, it’s an extension of the Scouting Centre as it brings awareness to the recommended players from the Recommendation panel. To grab your attention about these players, the Scouting Team will forward an inbox message at specific intervals determined in the Scouting Centre Preferences. It enables you to get feedback on the determined scouting strategies and focuses decided in Recruitment meetings.

You can handle these meetings yourself, or delegate the task to the most suited person in the Scouting Team – most often the Chief Scout.

When handling these meetings yourself you’ll be provided with a list of players which you can take further actions on, either you want to keep scouting the player, acknowledge or discard interest, put him on a shortlist or the transfer target list, or formalize a bid.

The number of players which you can go through at Scouting Meetings depends on the number of recruitment focuses and scouting assignment you have set up to identify potential signings.

When handing scouting meetings to one of your Scouts, you delegate the responsibility of going through all the player recommendations. He will then take the actions he deems necessary, whether it’s to keep scouting the player, discard interest or notify you about the player.

This could be an option if you don’t want to browse through hundreds of players but simply receive inbox messages about the best players you should be aware of. This will reduce the amount of reports delivered but makes your involvement with Scouting more pinpointed in regard to feedback from assignments as you hand over some control to scouting.

Delegating the responsibility:

There are two ways to delegate the responsibility of handling Scouting Meetings to the Chief scout, or one in your Scouting Team;

• Scouting > Scouting Coverage > Scouting Responsibility > Handling Scouting Meetings > Delegate to (by using the drop down menu)
• Staff > Responsibilities > Scouting > Handling Scouting Meetings

NB! You will find more options to delegate the responsibilities of your Analysis team relating to Analysis Reports in the Staff Responsibilities.

How frequent should Scouting Meetings be held?

The frequency of the scouting meetings depends on you, the situation within your team and how effective your scouting team is to find players and gather reports. It can be held from every day to once a month, no matter if it’s within or outside transfer windows.

How frequent they should be held is up to you and how important you deem it necessary to keep track of the ongoing scouting activities. My personal preference is to increase the frequency of when these meetings are held within transfer windows to avoid missing out on likely targets and great suggestions.

In the Scouting Preferences you can decide how frequent recommendations of players should be delivered to your inbox. You can set an quicker interval during transfer windows, and a longer interval outside transfer windows.

In fact, I tend to set the frequency to once a week at the beginning of the pre-season or transfer window, increasing it to every second day if I’m in desperate need of strengthening my squad in the latter stages of the transfer window. This means I like to handle these meetings myself.

Outside transfer windows I want these meetings with the scouting team to occur on a monthly basis. It lets me get a better picture of the efficiency of my scouts and enables me to judge their job while browsing through scout reports of potential signings.

Actionable Steps to take at Scouting Meetings

As you browse through the reports either in the Scouting Centre or in Inbox messages, you’ll have several options to take further actions for each individual. There are eight different types of actions you can take.

• Discard: Signals you have no interest in the player what so ever. clicking the button will inform the Scouting Team that you don’t want the player to be recommended or appear in any future player searches. Basically, you dismiss the report and removes him from any future suggestions.
• Acknowledge: means no further actions are required on this player and simply want to remove this entry from the Scouting Centre.
• Get Analyst Report: If the report card hasn’t been provided by an Analyst, you can request that a member of that department files a full statistical report on the player.
• Scout Player: Will look to scout the player at the length of time determined in the Scouting Centre Preferences.
• Keep Scouting: Add the player to your scouting assignments to generate a full Report Card.
• Make Offer: Immediately begin negotiations to sign the player.
• Offer Trial: Formalize an inquiry about trial according to the specified length of time determined in the notifications preferences relating to action buttons.
• Agent Availability: Lets you get in touch with the Player’s Agent to monitor the player’s interest in joining your club. It opens a remote chat with the agent which let you get information about what it may require from the agent or the club to come to an agreement. The agent may describe some of the player’s needs or the cost relating to a potential transfer.

In addition to these actions, you’ll also get the option to:

• add the player to the Shortlist
• add as a transfer target puts the player on your wishlist and gives your Director of Football to formalize a bid. He will then make an offer based on the instructions you’ve given to him if any. If no instructions are given, he will proceed with a transfer offer according to his own preferences; what he deems necessary to successfully sign the player.
• Declare as Top Targets will notify the club and media about your interest. You are only limited to declare one (1!) Top Target, which means you should carefully consider whom to pick. You can take further actions about the priority of the transfer and which other preferences you got relating to the overall transfer cost (e.g. maximum wage and transfer offer amount) – giving your Director of Football specific instructions when making an offer.

If your club possesses a Director of Football, he will automatically handle all incoming transfer activities relating to players on the transfer target list. You can find your current list of Transfer Targets at: Transfers > Director of Football > Transfer Targets You can set specific instructions for your DoF when handling offers on potential targets such as setting the maximum cost, clarify the agreed playing time for any contract negotiations and set an expiry date of the offer.

At this screen, you can even let the Director of Football suggest his own transfer targets. You can ask the DoF to suggest potential transfer targets according to position and role according to the four different transfer statuses and scenarios; Transfer, Loan, ‘End of Contract’ and ‘Free Transfer’.

6. Setting up Scouting Assignments & Recruitment Focuses

The next step on the agenda is to look at how you can set up scouting assignments in Football Manager, or what is now called recruitment focuses in Football Manager 2024, and the different types of assignments you can take.

When setting up new assignments you’d like them to conform to your overall transfer policy and philosophy decided in the club vision, along with the overall objectives detailed in the first section. Your assignments will feature a mix of short- and long-term recruitment focuses.

These recruitment focuses may have been decided upon Recruitment meetings or by assessing the squad at the Squad Planner.

When writing this, I take into account you handle scouting assignments yourself. It will be far more effective to spend some extra time assigning scouts yourself rather than letting your Chief Scout or Director of Football randomly scout nations, competitions, teams or players. See Scouting Responsibilities .

How you assign your scouts must coincide with why we need to focus on scouting as much as training or tactics. The reason is simple; to improve our knowledge level of players, teams, competitions, nations and/or regions to further identify more potential signings!

The number of assignments you can set up will depend on the size of your scouting team, which means a team in the lower leagues with less available funds and a more limited scouting scope will need to scout for players quite differently than a top club.

How to set up scouting assignments (aka recruitment focuses)?

Setting up scouting assignments are basically easy. You simply head to either;

• Scouting > Recruitment Focus
• Scouting > Scouting coverage > Specific Scout > click Create a new Focus

New scouting assignments are also created in Recruitment Meetings – all depending on whether you got scouts available to look for new targets.

The scouting coverage screen lets you see which scouts are out on a mission and where. If you’d like to get an overview of all the reports the specific scout has gathered, you need to click on:

Scout > Reports > Scout Reports and/or Scout Assignments

The scout assignment page let you get a total number of reports acquired on the assigned recruitment focus and giving you the ability to adjust the focus if he doesn’t find as many players.

By visiting the Scouting Assignment page fairly regularly you will have full control of your scouting network and track the progress of all your scouting activities.

Types of Scouting Assignments

Generally speaking, there are three different types of missions to assign scouts on, each with their own objectives; Players , Teams and Matches .

• Scouting for players using different filters and preferences that truncate the results. Here you have a huge range of different methods from searching for specific player types to positions and roles, according to transfer status, current and potential abilities, attributes and statistical data.
• Assigning a scout to acquire reports about a specific team or the next opposition more focused on key players and overall strength and weaknesses relating to that team’s abilities.
• Assigning an analyst to get ongoing reports about the next opposition . These reports are more focused on the opponent’s recent performances relating to statistics, overall performance and trends in addition to how they play in an analytical perspective.
• Assigning scouts to attend specific matches to acquire knowledge of future opponent’s players or potential signings you’re highly interested in.

A functional scouting program will include the use of all these three scouting options throughout a season.

Let’s take a closer look at how to set up recruitment focuses for players and teams and their specific benefits.

6.1 Creating A Recruitment Focus

The first option when creating new assignments is the option to look for players. When assigning scouts, 90% of your scouting network will be tasked with working on a Recruitment Focus to find potential transfer targets.

A Recruitment Focus allows you to set a series of specific parameters for your recruitment team to use as the framework for identifying potential new signings.

These types of tasks looks to identify recommended players using a number of different options to help to refine the search results exactly to the type of player you desire. Here you’d like to identify potential signings according to your current needs; whether it’s to find players to develop for the long-term or to simply identify first-team candidates that can take your club to another level in the short-term.

When creating a recruitment focus you’ll be able to select from a set of criteria. The recruitment focus screen is split between main and further details which enables you to set a number of conditions to limit the number of matching recommendations.

When creating a new Recruitment focus you will need choose whether you wish to choose a specific position, or ‘any position’ before entitling the assignment and select from a range of other details.

The main details ranges from anything between the age range to position, role, priority and which scouts to travel on the mission.

The Further details screen enables you to specify and limit the focus by scouting for players transfer value, wage, contract status and other useful criteria that will help you find suitable players according to a certain transfer policy.

A closer insight into the different conditions to select from when searching for players will be covered in our guide on how to scout for players in Football Manager.

6.2 The Different Recruitment Focus Priorities:

These player assignments are basically a number of different Recruitment Focuses with different degrees of priority: Top , Standard and Ongoing.

6.2.1 Top Priority Recruitment Focus

Top Priority will ask the Recruitment Team to put extra effort, and resources on the focus to identify players and bring you the reports as quick as possible. You will ask a minimum of two scouts to work on the assignment. According to size of your scouting team, there will automatically be a limit of the number of Top Priority Scouting Focuses to set up.

These top priority recruitment focuses is basically short-term scouting focuses. Normally they are finished within a few weeks. Therefore I use them to scout for and to identify First Team Players that can be brought in and improve the Squad Depth immediately.

Personally, I use it only within Transfer Windows to find emergency signings, or when I’m in desperate need to replace a player. It may be the Squad Depth is poor for whatever reason, meaning you’re in a need to provide enough cover in that position to cover for injury crisis or fatigue. Perhaps you’ve got a player who have requested to be transfer listed, or is wanted by bigger clubs and you will find it difficult to keep him at the club. Perhaps you have just sold one of your key players, got a long-term injury in a key position or are looking for a short-term signing to improve the team.

Minimum Current Ability: Since you are prioritizing finding first team players, you need to set the parameter for minimum current ability to approximately two and a half star – the average level for the position. This ensures that you’re not missing out of any potential near matches, especially if your squad is loaded with high quality players. If you’re playing in a lower division, there’s nothing wrong to select a minimum three stars.

Assigning Scouts: Requires minimum two scouts to begin. For these missions, I prefer to select the scouts with the highest Judging Player Ability . This ensures that the scout report is as accurate as possible.

Assigning analyst: The same goes for piking the right Recruitment analyst. Select the one with the highest possible Judging Player Ability and Analyzing Data .

Choose Position / Role: When setting up top priority recruitment focuses you would ideally choose the same position and role as within your primary tactics.

Since you are basically looking for a player who can slot in and perform from day one, it’s useful to specify the preferred position and role – e,g if you’re looking for a new striker, choose ST (C) and the same role as within your tactics e.g Deep-lying Forward.

NB! By selecting the desired player role, you’ll limit the number of reports and increase the time it takes to finish the task as less players might match your settings. I recommend to either decrease the minimum proficiency to play the role from Good (Default) to Decent, or simply select ‘Any Role’ by clicking on the ‘Players suited to playing’ drop down menu.

NB! Top priority recruitment focus can be a useful option to get knowledge of a huge pool of players very fast. You may wish to use this option at the start of a new save to let your entire scouting team look for players according to your specific criteria – for instance any players between the age of 15 and 21 with a World Reputation of ‘Okey’ to quickly find those best wonderkids in Football Manager, bargains or players on free transfer.

READ MORE | How to scout for the best wonderkids & newgens on Football Manager

6.2.2 The Standard Focus

The Standard priority recruitment focus will only require one scout to be working on the mission, instead of multiple scouts. The result is that it will take longer time to find suitable recommendations and acquire appropriate reports, but will let you gain more knowledge of players within a nation, region, or a continent.

Normally, it will take around a month before a Standard Focus is finished. It’s therefore useful to set these up at least a few months before the transfer window opens.

You can use Standard priority when you wish to potential long-term signings – perhaps you’re planning for the next transfer window, or simply have a specific transfer policy and club vision that you wish to abide by.

Personally, I use these Standard focuses to increase my knowledge of players and simply extend the number of suitable options if I need to improve my squad. The criteria I go by for these searches is slightly different to the Top Priority.

Rather than choosing a specific position (unless I’m looking to improve a position in the long-term based on analysis in the Squad Planner), I favor to select ‘Any Position from Tactic’ and ‘Any Role’. The minimum current ability is also lowered to two stars, whilst minimum potential ability is set to three stars.

The preferred age of players is also changed – from the default 15 – 50 year old, to 15 to 28 – when players are peaking, or according to the desired Club Vision relating to recruitment.

Assigning Scouts: Requires minimum one scout to begin. Since you’re looking for future signings in a rather broad range, the scouts you select for these missions needs both decent Judging Player Ability and Judging player Potential.

Whether you decide to prioritize scouting specific nations or regions in a Standard Focus is all up to you. Covering the major nations with a Standard focus may give you a large database of player recommendations that you later can go back to in Scouted Players. Then you can create more specific filters to find the best targets.

If you have a limited scouting network, anytime you set up Top Priority scouting focus you will pause any Standard focuses.

A scout will only begin a standard focus once they have finished on a top priority. Football Manager

6.2.3 Ongoing Focuses

Ongoing focuses is more long-term scouting focuses that prioritize maintaining or increasing knowledge of a specific nation or a region. These recruitment focuses will have the lowest priority and do not have an end date.

You can use them to scout a specific nation, region or a specific competition of your preferences. Since these missions never last, how you set up ongoing focuses will be an important part of your club’s scouting network.

I use these to find Hot Prospects for the future – either they focus on players from a specific Nation or a region within a specific age limit but you can also use them to find specific types of players or within a specific transfer cost range.

Often, I ask my scouts to find players between the age of 15 and 21 with a minimum ability of 1 star and maximum potential of three or three and a half star, depending on the club I’m managing.

When creating ongoing recruitment focuses you are not concerned whether the players fit your tactics or not. In fact, you’d like to select ‘Any Tactic’, ‘Any position’ and ‘Any role’, to ensure you’ll get a broad selection of players. The reason is simple, I use these ongoing focuses to simply identify more talents.

While a Standard focus is probably a bit more focused assignment where you have a clear mission on what you’re after – for instance purchasing a new striker, you can look at an ongoing focus as a more basic and overall scouting assignment.

Ultimately, you can use these Ongoing focuses for missions you would like to run season after season regardless of the current quality of the squad and future planning.

NB! It will be useful to keep scouting the same nations/regions as players progress and new players enter the area, either as newgens in youth intakes or from transfers.

6.2.4 Scouting Duration

Prior to Football Manager 2023, you where able to set the duration of each scouting assignment according to the desired period. Now, that is integrated in the different types of recruitment focuses. Anyway, when starting a new scouting assignment it’s important to remember that the scout may take some time to settle in before being able to deliver reports of potential targets. This means that you should consider the desired duration according to the scout’s abilities (read Adaptability), current scouting knowledge (of a particular nation) and what you ask him to find.

The scouting duration depends on the priority:

• Top Priority – a few weeks
• Standard Priority – around a month
• Ongoing priority – lasts until you decide to end them.

6.2.5 Progress & Results of The Recruitment Focus

You can always monitor the progress of your different recruitment focuses. In the Scouting Overview, you’ll have the full list of all the different scouting assignments. Even though I miss the chance to view the number of players from the overview, you can click the > button to view the results of the desired recruitment focus.

This opens a screen with the recommended players. The In Progress tab let you see how many players that the scout is currently creating a report on. It may include recommended players from other recruitment focuses you got running if you have enabled it.

Sometimes you will see there are a huge number of players In Progress while very few or none are being Recommended. In the process the scout will sort the list and only bring through those that match your search criteria. Players that doesn’t quite reach the minimum requirements will either end up in Near Matches or fall through.

If you see a huge difference in players being recommended and ‘In Progress’ you might have set too strict conditions, either you have set an unrealistic low transfer value, or a too high minimum current / potential ability rating. It will be useful to keep track on the In Progress screen from time to time to see which players are missing the cut. You might find gold within that screen!

[image in progress]

The Near Matches list will notify you of any player(s) who have for any reason fallen outside the matching criteria but the scout believes is worthy to know of. These players might have just missed the cut for being recommended due to wrong current ability, different potential ability or is proficient in another role.

6.2.6 Using templates to scout for player types

(Used for Football Manager 2022 or earlier, but you can use these tips to set up appropriate recruitment focuses for FM23.)

To help you on your way to set up player assignments you’ll have different templates at hand. These templates are pre-set conditions that you can use to save time setting up specific missions. Which assignments to use will depend on your recruitment focus and types of players you’re after.

There are four types of player templates that are available in Football Manager by default. Each with their own specific conditions that ease your job.

The First Team Player Assignment will focus the attention on players who can become valuable squad member by improving the current squad with his qualities and skills. The scout will scour the determined scope for players with at least ‘Good’ current ability rating (aka 3 stars). The scout who should take on these assignments requires first and foremost high levels of Judging Player Ability as the objects are most often players above the age of 21 and fully developed.

This can be an option if you got first-team player(s) who wants to play at a higher level or are wanted by another club, which increases the risk of him leaving the club. It can also be an option to use this task when got a player who isn’t performing at the required level (perhaps due to current abilities, weaknesses in attributes or severe injuries that has affected his game).

The Backup player Assignment will prioritize the focus on searching for suitable targets who might not require as much playing time, but who would agree on playing a second fiddle and come into the first team occasionally, either due to provide a cover for injuries or give necessary rest to your star players. The scout will search for players with a minimum current ability of at least two 2 stars.

Choose further details: Actual Playing Time and select either Emergency Backup, Fringe Player or Impact Sub to search for potential back up options.

A Hot Prospect Assignment might be a great solution for any team focusing on youth development. This assignment might be the perfect option for teams with a club vision of signing young players for the future or to develop for profit. The scout will search for players that are 24 or younger and with a minimum potential ability of three stars. The scout who should undertake such assignments requires first and foremost high levels of Judging Potential Ability as the objects are not fully developed and require one who can evaluate the underlying factors that might hinder his future progress.

The Replacement for option lets you create an assignment that looks to find a player who can become a suitable replacement for a specific player within your team. In order to successfully set up this assignment, you need to refine it by selecting the position on the pitch and which player you want to replace. The scout will then use his knowledge about the player’s current abilities, potential and best attributes related to the position to identify targets who can be as good as the one you want to replace.

The scout you select to undertake these missions requires high levels of Judging Player Ability and JPP.

TIP! By using additional conditions like specifying specific attributes you can limit certain weaknesses related to the one you want to replace.

Related | How to use the ‘Find Similar Players To’ to identify future world class players

6.3 Team Assignments

Scouting in Football Manager is not only focused on gaining knowledge of players, nations and regions. A major part of it is to compile team reports by setting up team assignments.

In difference to gathering reports on players and their strengths and weaknesses can you ask your scouts… or should I say Data Analysts, to compile reports about specific teams or ongoing reports about the next opposition.

Gaining knowledge of teams around you has its benefits. By receiving reports on teams you’ll acquire a bunch of useful information you can take advantage of in a future encounter.

In reality, there are two types of team reports. One anyone within your scouting pool can carry out, and one which the Performance Analyst can undertake. The main difference between the Team Report and the Analyst Report are how in-depth they are.

The first focuses on the team’s overall abilities – strength and weaknesses while the latter focuses on the team performance and effectiveness with their tactics.

You can create any of the below team assignments by heading to:

Scouting > Scouting Coverage > Match and Team Analysis

6.3.1 Report on Specific Teams

This assignment type looks to get reports on a specific team’s overall strength and weaknesses, squad depth and other useful information related to their stats. You’ll be able to identify key players and top performers as well as giving you the ability to conduct a squad comparison between the two, focusing more on attributes relating to general stats, positional areas such as goalkeepers, midfielders or attackers, or player attribute’s divided by physical, mental or technical abilities.

You can compile a team report of any teams within Football Manager. Simply type in the name of the team you like to get more information about and conduct a search. Then, select a scout with high ratings in Tactical Knowledge and Judging Player Ability to gather the most accurate report possible.

Once a team report is finished, an inbox message will be forwarded containing links to a more in-depth report. The full report is also available at; Club Name > Team Reports > Scout Report .

6.3.2 Ongoing reports on next opposition

Ongoing reports on the next opposition will gather a somehow similar team report as above. Instead of searching for a team to scout, you will ask a scout to report on the upcoming opposition.

These reports will be available under; Team Report > Next opposition > Scout Report

This type of report is most often used in conjunction with analyst’s reports compiled by the Performance Analyst, or a member of your Analysis Team.

6.3.3 Ongoing Analyst Reports

One of the most important reports is ongoing analyst reports which together with reporting of the opposition’s strength and weaknesses compiles post-match analysis of your opponent and your own team. They will analyze statistical data about recent performances and trends. It enables you to get in-depth knowledge to goal analysis, formation analysis and expected tactical system and style.

A host of information relating to their tactic’s strength and weaknesses along with Stat Packs and Individual Match Analysis can be used to determine how you should counter them. These reports will be forwarded to you via an Inbox message a few days prior to the match.

When setting up an analyst assignment you can determine whether you want a specific Analyst to compile the reports and how many matches he shall analyze. You can decide whether he shall analyze the last one to three matches. More matches analyzed means a greater foundation for the analyst report. You’ll be able to see how your opponent set up their tactics home and away and when facing different opponents.

6.4 Attending Specific Matches

One of the most important aspects of scouting is to watch potential targets in action. Perhaps you’re highly interested in a specific target and you’ve gained full knowledge of him, but needs a better foundation to make the right decision.

Instructing a specific scout to attend a specific match will increase the knowledge level of the players featured in the match. You’ll get a full list of the matches played on that day, or upcoming matches, for all your playable leagues.

Visting the page will even let you see which scouts will attend which matches, displayed by a green magnifying glass together with the scout’s name. A match no one attends is displayed as ‘No Action’. Clicking the drop-down menu lets you select a scout to attend the match or edit the current setup.

Personally, I tend to visit this page just to control which matches are watched. For instance, it might not be highly likely to find a suitable target in a match between two clubs at a lower playing level which one of your scouts will attend. Then you can easily remove him from that duty and instruct him to attend a different match, perhaps the next day.

P.S. If you regularly want your scout to attend matches in a specific competition, I recommend you to scout that specific competition instead of frequently editing matches watched.

7. Scouting Priorities

The scout priorities page lists all requests you’ve made for players to get a scout report of. Here you’ll see all individual scouting trips you have going on and the order of when the scout report will be finished.

With a huge scouting network and many players on your radar, there might be several scouting requests ongoing. Perhaps you have requested multiple scout reports of newgens at youth intakes or a number of players within a player search. These players are added to the scout priority list. Even with a huge scouting pool, the result is most often that the scouts can’t handle the workload as players you wish to get a higher knowledge of get queued up until an available scout can finish the assignment.

Trying to get multiple scout reports of players will apart from increasing the scout’s workload increase the await time.

The solution is to manage the scouting priorities!

By managing your scouting priorities you can easily arrange the order of scout requests, get an overview of the time remaining until the scout report will be delivered, cancel one or multiple scout requests or increase the priority of a specific request.

Changing the order of priority is easy. Simply click and hold over the priority button and drag and drop. If you want to move a player to the top of the priority list, then I recommend clicking the Priorities Assignment which will change the priority to urgent and move him to the top of the list.

To reduce the workload of your scouting team and ensure they are as efficient as possible, I suggest to cancel any assignment for players with a recommendation rating of C+. This is especially useful if you have hundreds of reports on hold.

The list of scouting priorities is found at; Scouting > Recruitment Focus > Scout Priorities

8. Conclusions

Scouting, like training or any other area of Football Manager, can be as basic or complex YOU want it to be. It’s all about understanding when to use the different methods in your scouting toolbox and when to take advantage of the specific scouting tips provided in our guide to scouting in Football Manager.

For me, scouting is a long-term process where the focus can expand from using filters to identify players to more strategical methods where you aim to acquire knowledge of ‘valuable’ nations and regions known to develop great wonderkids and newgens by setting up appropriate recruitment focuses.

Whether you are looking for cheap wonderkids to develop and sell for a profit or search for an immediate first-team signing, knowing as much about the player as possible is important! It’s here scouting comes into play.

The process of scouting and increasing your world knowledge is not done in a year. It requires time and full focus. Attention to details will let you come a long way together with trusting yourself in the given project. Even though you might be required to carefully read hundreds of scout reports to identify targets that fit your system, it will all pay off once you find your gem!

Our ultimate guide to scouting in Football Manager has given you a deeper insight into why you should take a hands-on approach with scouting by interacting with the recruitment team and why it is beneficial.

You’ll have learned how to set up filters to receive feedback and inbox messages that matter the most to you, how to set up your scouting team for the most purposeful function and gained insight into the different types of scouting assignments to take advantage of, to increase your scouting knowledge.

All in all, you’ve received everything you need to set up the foundation for an efficient scouting network. Now it’s time to put it into practice!

In the coming weeks, there will come more in-depth scouting tips looking closer at how I approach scouting in Football Manager and other related aspects. If you have any questions or got any specific inquiries about other Football Manager guides to write, get in touch!

Please give us feedback on this article! If you enjoyed the article, please share it with your friends or give a Like or Retweet on Twitter.

I hope you have found these scouting tips useful. If you got some specific tips you’d like to share, please send them to us at Twitter or at our official Discord server .

Until next time, thanks for reading!

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Owner of Passion4FM since 2012. Football Manager content creator with a special love for tactics, wonderkids and player development.

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Football Manager 2023 Scouting Guide

Every successful club has backroom staff working tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure that processes are managed appropriately. This rule applies just as much in Football Manager as it does in real life, especially with certain categories of staff.

In my opinion, scouts don’t get as much praise as they deserve. They fly to different countries throughout the year, watching several players and deciding if they’re good enough to recommend to the club manager.

In FM23, scouts are just as important as they’ve always been. If you hope to get a lot of quality, accurate player recommendations to improve your squad, you need to make sure that you have the right personnel in those roles.

That said, there’s more to finding the best wonderkids or bargain signings on FM23 than simply hiring the best scouts. Having the right personnel is the first step, but you must also know how to use them to maximum effect.

How do you set up a scouting network? How do you assign scouts to assignments? This Football Manager 2023 scouting guide answers those questions and a few more.

Managing Your Scouting Department

When you start a new game in FM23, the first scout-related move that you need to make is to manage the scouting department. This involves conducting a full review of the staff.

Backroom Staff

When you navigate to the “Staff” section, you will see a full list of the backroom staff at your club. For this guide, we’re only concerned about the scouts.

The best indicators of a good scout are the ratings that they have in two areas – judging player ability and judging player potential. The names are self-explanatory.

You may have to adjust your expectations of how good you want your scouts to be depending on the level of your club. However, a score of 16 and above in each category is generally good enough.

If you review your scouting team and decide that you need upgrades, you can go on to search for new scouts. I included a list of the best free scouts in FM23 a bit further down in this section.

Each club has a minimum and/or a maximum number of scouts allowed by the board so sometimes, you have to let a scout go before you can sign another.

That decision may also become necessary as a result of financial restrictions. If your wage budget is not large enough to allow a new scout signing, you may have to let someone go

A possible solution to these two problems is to make a board request. You can ask the board to increase the wage budget for scouts or to increase the number of scouts allowed in the club at a time. However, these requests could go either way.

Chief Scout

While you’re hiring and/or firing scouts, bear in mind that you need a chief scout that oversees all scouting assignments.

Considering the fact that he’s the leader of the team, I would recommend assigning this role to the scout with the best ratings in the relevant areas. You should also check for good man-management skills as it’s often a good indicator of a strong leader.

The Best Free Scouts in FM23

The table below shows the best free scouts in FM23. I have set a limit of at least a 17 rating in Judging Player Ability and Player Potential for these scouts.

You don’t have to worry about compensation fees, but you should still try to negotiate wage structures that are favorable for your club’s financial standing. If a scout seems to be asking for a lot of money and won’t budge, move on to an alternative.

Managing Your Scouting Budget

As much as you might want to broaden your club’s overall knowledge of the players in world football, you must approach it patiently.

If you send too many scouts on too many assignments to distant places within a short period of time, your scouting budget will drain very quickly.

You can mitigate costs by reallocating funds from your transfer budget to the scouting budget, or you can make a board request.

However, even the teams with the biggest transfer budgets in FM23 can run out of transfer funds, so the most efficient way to manage your scouting budget is to plan better.

Recruitment Focus

In the scouting overview section, there’s a sub-section for recruitment focus. If you select the sub-section, you’ll see an option to create a new recruitment focus. Click on that and a pop-up menu should come up.

This pop-up menu allows you to assign a scout and analyst to compile reports on players that fit a very specific set of categories determined by you.

The filters allow you to specify the position, role, current ability, potential ability, transfer type, age, priority, etc. that you want, and you have the option to assign any scout and analyst or choose specific staff.

Scouting Recommendations

As the reports for your recruitment focus come in, you can view them all in one place on that same sub-section page, or under “Scouting Recommendations” on the Scouting Overview page.

There’s an “RF Matches” tab for the players that shows how many recruitment focus metrics each player matches with. The higher the number, the better the chances that the player is a fit for your team.

When a player’s full report is ready, they’ll also have an overall scout recommendation score, graded from A to F.

Managing Shortlists

Shortlists are a great way to group scouted players into as many categories as you want. That way, it is very easy to find these players when you’re ready to bid.

Obviously, scouting recommendations already group players according to the recruitment focuses that are set, but you won’t automatically get information about these players in your inbox unless they’re on a shortlist.

Also, since scouting recommendations will just keep increasing until you stop the assignment, the lists might become too long to go through after a while.

If you’d like to know when a player that you’re interested in throws a tantrum, requests a transfer, signs a new contract, or does anything that could have an impact on your interest, adding them to a shortlist is the best way.

You can manage these lists in the “Shortlists” tab of the Scouting section. If you’re starting a new game in FM23, it might be worth creating shortlists for free agents, wonderkids, and cheap signings for a start.

Scouting Assignments

When you’re ready to set up a scouting assignment, there are a bunch of options available to you. You can send your scout/s to watch and report on a particular player, team, league, nation, or region.

The duration and costs associated with each one of these assignment types vary according to several factors, so you should pay attention to the costs attached when you’re setting up any new assignment.

Scouting Players

If you’ve started the game with player attribute masking on, you’re going to be doing a lot of scouting.

If you’ve turned the setting off, then you can see the attributes of all the players in-game just by visiting their profile. However, you will still need to scout them to get detailed reports on their ability, potential, and how they could fit into your team.

If you’d like to scout a player, visit their profile and select the “Scout Player” option. Depending on the workload of the scout that you’ve assigned, you should get feedback within a few days.

Scouting Teams

Scouting teams can be really useful when your team is coming up against them soon. You can get a full report of the team’s lineup, formation, style of play, form, strengths, and weaknesses.

This information is crucial for preparing your team to play against them. You can set up tactical instructions that protect you from the opposition’s strengths, and you can also try to exploit their weaknesses.

Scouting Leagues & Nations

If you don’t have a specific player in mind, you can send your scouts to some of the leagues that are well-known for generating quality talent.

Apart from the obvious top leagues, your scouts can dig up some hidden gems and bargain signings from leagues in smaller European nations and South American nations such as Brazil and Argentina.

You could also scout entire nations instead of specific leagues within them. Each nation typically includes multiple leagues, which gives your scouts a wider pool of talent to choose recommendations from.

Scouting Regions

There are six main scouting regions in FM23, and each one of these regions is further broken down into sub-regions. South America, for instance, is divided into South America (South) and South America (North).

The other main regions include Africa, Oceania, Asia, Europe, and North America.

Familiarizing yourself with these regions and the ones most likely to produce the best wonderkids in FM23 will go a long way in making sure that you’re one of the first to know when a high-potential regen pops up somewhere.

Most wonderkids usually come from Europe and South America, but you’ll have even more success if you narrow your scouting down to the sub-regions that contain the most productive nations.

In no particular order, some of the best sub-regions to scout in FM23 are:

• Central Europe
• Eastern Europe
• Western Europe
• UK & Ireland
• South America (South)

Scouting Coverage

As your scouts scour the leagues, nations, and regions that you’ve assigned them to, the club’s overall knowledge of players worldwide will continue to grow.

If you’d like to see how much general information your scouts have about players all over the world, go into the “Scouting Coverage” section. There, you’ll find an illustration of the globe, color-coded according to how much data you have on each region.

Green indicates complete, extensive, or outstanding knowledge about an area while light green indicates a good/very good amount of knowledge. Anything less than that suggests that you still have some work to do in that area.

Final Words

There are three main takeaways from this FM23 scouting guide – sign quality scouts, be intentional with scouting assignments, and always make sure that your staff is not overworked.

If you can follow these fairly simple rules, it won’t be long before there’s a consistent stream of quality talent coming through the door at your club.

• How to Increase Realism in Football Manager 2023
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• Football Manager 2023 Training Schedules Guide
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• The Best Teams to Manage in FM23
• Football Manager 2023 Challenge Save Ideas

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• Football Manager General Discussion

How do you scout competitions?

By oblivion618 , November 19, 2014 in Football Manager General Discussion

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Oblivion618.

This is going to sound stupid, but I cannot figure out how you scout senior competitions, specifically leagues. On previous FM's, you would start as new scouting assignment and then select competition, but when I do it on FM15 it only shows me U21/U18 leagues for those nations as well as tournaments such as the UCL and Europa. I have all the major leagues loaded and have full scouting knowledge in those nations.

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Click on the scouting tab on the left.

Once the screen changes click on assignments at the top

Top left there is a tab "Create New Assignment". Click on it

A list of tabs appears - click on "Report from a Competition"

At the top of the screen a drop down menu appears "select competition". Select the one you want and click on the tab "Inform Chief Scout of Requirements" bottom right.

Next screen brings up attribute options etc. Click on start assignment at the bottom right.

Yeah I know how to do all that.

What I'm saying is I get to this part:

And there is no option to scout any nations senior leagues (such as the Premier League or Bundesliga), only the option to select U21/U18 leagues. However, I can scout the Spanish league's (such as Liga BBVA and Liga Adelante), which I assume is cos I am a Spanish club (Sociedad). So I guess I'm asking is this normal or is it bugged?

My only suggestion is that you have all your scouts engaged already, limiting what and where you can scout.

It might be worth checking the assignments page and adjusting them as necessary to see if that makes any difference.

Also, under the staff tab, check to see if you have your Chief Scout setting the scouting assignments (under staff responsibilities) - this possibly might have something to do with it.

What is most likely though, is that you are limited to scouting Spain. Just below "Create New Assignment" it will say "The board have indicated they will allow scouting of players within this nation".

There is also the possibility that it might be a bug!

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

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Major league scouting report: pittsburgh pirates’ paul skenes.

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Pittsburgh Pirates first round draft pick, pitcher Paul Skenes meets with reporters after signing ... [+] with the team in Pittsburgh, Tuesday, July 18, 2023. The Pirates drafted Skenes first player overall in this year's Major League Baseball draft. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Right-handed starting pitcher, Paul Skenes, has been promoted by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Skenes, still just 21, will make his debut Saturday May 11, against the Chicago Cubs.

Skenes is graduating to Major League Baseball after spending parts of only two seasons in the Pirates minor league player development program.

Since signing with the Pirates as the 1st player taken overall in the 2023 MLB Draft, Skenes has made 12 minor league starts.

In his 34 innings pitched, Paul Skenes has fashioned a 1.85 ERA, and a 0.94 WHIP.

Skenes has struck out an average of 14.6 minor league hitters per 9 innings pitched. He has walked an average of 2.6 minor league hitters per nine.

Skenes has yielded only one home run.

To date, the accomplishments of the 6-6, 235 pound Skenes have been remarkable.

OMAHA, NE - JUNE 26: Paul Skenes #20 of the LSU Tigers celebrates after defeating the Florida Gators ... [+] to win the Division I Men's Baseball Championship held at Charles Schwab Field on June 26, 2023 in Omaha, Nebraska. (Photo by Tyler Schank/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

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Wwe smackdown results winners and grades on may 10 2024, the 8 best trampolines with insights from an industry expert, about paul skenes:.

Paul Skenes attended El Toro High School, in Orange County, California. He grew up in Lake Forest, California.

The first player chosen in the 2023 MLB Draft, the Pittsburgh Pirates gave Paul Skenes a whopping, $9.2 million signing bonus.

While pitching at Air Force, and at Louisiana State University, Skenes threw to a 24-6 record in his 34 collegiate starts. He made a total of 52 mound appearances at LSU, also working out of their bullpen, saving 11 games in his three years.

Skenes was a two-way player at both Air Force and LSU.

Skenes started his college career with 15 starting pitching assignments at Air Force.

Skenes also hit .410, with 11 homers in 2021 as a catcher (18 games) and first baseman (two games.)

In 2022, Skenes made 15 more starts for Air Force, finishing that year with a 10-3 record, a 2.73 ERA, and a 1.16 WHIP.

Skenes continued to both pitch and play left field, as well as catching in 12 games for Air Force in 2022. He hit .314 that year, with 13 homers, and 38 RBIs.

Skenes won the John Olerud Award in 2022, which is given by the College Baseball Federation to the best collegiate two-way player.

After Skenes transferred to LSU in 2023, he gave up being a position player, and concentrated only on pitching, helping his team win the College World Series championship.

While Skenes went first overall in the draft, his LSU teammate, outfielder Dylan Crews, went second overall. The Washington Nationals gave Crews a $9 million signing bonus.

BRADENTON, FLORIDA - MARCH 14: Paul Skenes #30 of the Pittsburgh Pirates throws a pitch in the top ... [+] of the first inning of a spring training game against the Baltimore Orioles at LECOM Park on March 14, 2024 in Bradenton, Florida. (Photo by Christopher Pasatieri/Getty Images)

Scouting Paul Skenes:

One has to start the scouting report on Paul Skenes by describing Skenes’ 100-102 miles per hour fastball.

Skenes gets tremendous movement on his fastball, which is a feature that holds, even when he takes a mile or two off the velocity of the pitch.

For this old scout, after watching plenty of video, it is the great movement Skenes gets on his pitches that sets Skenes apart from others.

Scouts have graded Skenes’ fastball from 70 to 80 on the MLB Scouting Grade Scale.

A Grade 70 equates to a consistent All Star pitcher, with more than two well above average pitches, superb control, and excellent command of a complete repertoire.

A Grade 80 pitcher is the best in the game. A legitimate Ace. A future Hall of Fame pitcher.

Skenes throws his entire arsenal with great ease, but getting such consistent velocity on his fastball is a tribute to his consistent, advanced pitching mechanics.

Skenes repeats his delivery. He throws his pitches with confidence. And he commands that fastball with little to no variation in either his arm slot, or extension.

Skenes has been seen by many scouts as having the best “pure” fastball, and “stuff” since Stephen Strasburg was signed by the Washington Nationals ,as the No. 1 player overall in the 2009 draft.

Skenes’ fastball is made even more effective by his slider.

Throwing his slider in the upper-80’s, the pitch buckles knees and keeps hitters off balance. He gets great, late break on his slider.

In essence, Skenes’ fastball/slider combination can be used at any point in the count, as the hitter can’t eliminate either pitch in his approach to the next pitch.

Skenes also features a changeup, which he can deploy to end an at bat, get a swing-and-miss in any pitch sequence, and alter the eye-level and balance of the hitter.

Three pitches. All well above major league average in quality, and shape. And each pitch can be used effectively to induce a strikeout.

A well-conditioned athlete, moving forward, it would appear that Paul Skenes may add even more strength in the Pirates conditioning program.

Physically, Skenes is big and strong, and has the ability to go deeply into games, without tiring.

ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA - SEPTEMBER 1: Paul Skenes #27 of the Altoona Curve delivers a pitch in the ... [+] second inning during the game against the Erie SeaWolves at UPMC Park on September 1, 2023 in Erie, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Justin Berl/Getty Images)

Conclusions and Scouting Grade:

Right-hander Paul Skenes, viewed by many as the best young pitcher to enter Major League Baseball since Stephen Strasburg of the Washington Nationals, will make his big league debut for the Pittsburgh Pirates May 10. He will face the Chicago Cubs.

The Pirates do not have to worry about losing a year of control regarding Skenes’ service time.

Skenes can join the Pirates big league rotation, get acclimated with his teammates and his MLB opposition, and learn as much as possible as a young, 21-year-old rookie.

For this scout, Paul Skenes profiles as a Grade- 70 starting pitcher.

To this scout, Paul Skenes will take his place among the best pitchers in the game. And it may happen within the next two seasons.

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