how to create a scouting assignment on fm22

Football Manager 2022 Scouting Guide: Setting Up the Perfect Scouting Network on FM22

Regardless of the level of the club that you’re managing, scouting is a key component of setting up your club on Football Manager. It’s your best bet to get as many options for player signings as possible from all over the world.

On that note, Football Manager 2022 has a few shiny updates from the previous iteration, and one of the major updates is new scouting regions.

At the end of this guide, you will be able to set up assignments for scouting regions that bring the best young players and bargain talents piling through your door.

Let’s take a look at the best scouting setup in this FM 22 scouting guide.

Backroom Staff: Scouting Department

After choosing the club you’re going to manage, the first thing you want to do is to take a look at your backroom staff and begin improving them. For the purpose of this article, we’re focusing on the scouting and transfers team.

Depending on the size and profile of the club, there will be certain restrictions on the number of recruitments you can make to your backroom staff. Chances are, you don’t have one of the best youth systems already.

In my save (Paris Saint-Germain — don’t hate, it was just the beta), there was a limit of 4 staff members for the role of Recruitment Analyst, 14 staff members for the role of Scout, and 1 staff member for the role of Chief Scout.

Chief Scout

Pay particular attention to your Chief Scout and Scouts here. If you don’t have a chief scout, hire one before doing anything else.

You need to have a look at the profile of the chief scout and determine if they’re good enough because you will have to delegate some important tasks to them. Of course, this decision will largely be affected by the level of the club you’re at, so be gentle!

Your chief scout obviously needs to be a very good judge of talent and potential, but you should also try to find one that has solid attributes for man-management” and motivation.

This is because the Chief Scout will be leading the team of scouts and contributing to setting assignments. They should also have the final say about recommendations for possible signings.

Increasing Number of Scouts Allowed

If the limit set by the board for the number of scouts has not been reached, then you should look to sign more scouts immediately.

The goal is to have at least 20 quality scouts at the club so that you can have one scout assigned to every region (more on this later), so you should constantly be working towards that.

First of all, you need to check the profiles of the scouts that are already at the club and weed out the ones that look subpar for the level that the club is at.

There are four major attributes that you need to look out for in a good scout:

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

The most important attributes of the four are “judging player ability” and “judging player potential”. If a scout looks below standard based on these, you need to look for a replacement to make sure that the recommendations you get from scouting assignments are of good quality.

In some cases, it will be hard to get scouts that excel in both of these areas. What you need to do then is to make sure that the scout is excellent in at least one of the two, and ensure that the assignments set up for that scout maximize that strength.

For instance, if a scout has a rating of 20 for judging player potential, but a rating of 14 for judging player ability, it would be beneficial to restrict the scout’s assignments to looking for young players.

On the flip side, if a scout is excellent at judging player ability but average at judging potential, then you can have that scout focus on finding players for the present.

Making Board Requests

Considering the restrictions on the number of staff members allowed on your scouting team, you need to make a habit of checking in to make a board request every couple of months for the maximum number to be increased. This is the only way that you’ll be able to get 20+ scouts, so it is a long-term plan.

To make a board request, go to the “Club Vision” tab on the sidebar and search for the rectangular dialog box on the right-hand side of the page.

When making a board request, note that there is one other way to gain some extra scouting knowledge. This is by making a request for an affiliate club. If the board agrees to the request, then your scouting knowledge of your affiliate’s country will increase substantially.

Scouting Budget and Costs

You should note that every scouting assignment takes a piece out of your scouting budget for the season. This suggests that there’s a finite nature to the extent of your scouting, so you need to keep an eye on that scouting budget each time you set up a new assignment.

If you’re managing one of the rich clubs, then you may not notice the difference that this can make.

However, if you’re at a club where funds are seriously limited, then you may find yourself having to adjust your transfer budget to give more room for scouting assignments.

Setting Up Scouting Regions

There are 25 FM 22 scouting regions. When you assign a scout to a region, they will work through all the countries that fall within that region for the duration of the assignment.

Region scouting is a better way to assign scouts instead of setting them up to go to different nations – possibly in different regions – within a short period of time. It will save you costs for your scouting budget, and it will be more beneficial for the overall growth of the club’s global scouting knowledge.

The top five regions for picking up talent through scouting in FM22 are:

Central Europe

South america (south).

• UK and Ireland
• North America
• Southern Europe

Central Europe is no longer the powerhouse for wonderkids that it used to be in previous versions of FM in terms of young talent. This is mostly due to the breakdown of the region into Western, Eastern, and Southern Europe.

However, it remains a key region with important countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium still in there.

These countries have excellent youth systems that consistently produce a wide selection of good players, so some of the best regens in the game will continue to come from there.

South American wonderkids are a big hit among FM fans, and for good reason.

There’s a certain satisfaction that comes with scouting young players from the streets of Brazil and bringing them to your club where they develop to become superstars.

On FM22, the Southern part of the South American region has the best talents because it includes heavyweight soccer countries such as Brazil and Argentina.

Sure, you can still pick up a few players good enough for your first team from here, but the wonderkids and regens are undoubtedly the main attraction.

This is also a fantastic region for finding potential world-class talent for affordable prices.

UK & Ireland

England is the main attraction in this scouting region.

Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Wales are not particularly breeding grounds for world-class talent – although it really depends on the quality of player that you need. Occasionally these lesser-favored countries can throw out a new Gareth Bale.

The only issue with this region is that wonderkids come at a premium price. You’ll likely have to overpay to sign a top prospect from a British club, though sometimes you can get some real value too.

Western Europe

With the breakdown of Central Europe on FM22, countries such as Spain, Portugal, and France have been separated from the region to join Western Europe.

This makes a big difference as some of the best wonderkids on the game come from these three countries.

As expected, the three have a youth rating above 100 which is an indicator of the talent within their youth systems. Keep an eye on the region all year round – wonderkids from these areas tend to get snapped up really quickly!

Eastern Europe

The breakdown of Central Europe in FM22 has also made a positive difference for the youth potential found in Eastern Europe.

In previous versions of FM, this region had a good number of countries within it, but not a lot in terms of highly-rated youth systems.

On FM22, countries such as Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Serbia all have very good youth systems, so you’re bound to pick up a fair few highly-rated young players if you send your scouts to the area.

These are the top five FM22 scouting regions for finding the best talent the most often. However, choosing a region is just the start and some of the other regions will also occasionally throw up wonderkids for affordable prices.

Setting Up A New Scout Assignment

Creating a scout assignment includes many options and filters that help you to set up more specific directions. You should probably spend a bit of time toggling through all the options and familiarizing yourself with them before starting the assignment.

The filters/additional conditions that you want to pay the most attention to include:

• Age (maximum 20 for wonderkids)
• Scouted current ability (recommended minimum: very good)
• Scouted potential ability (recommended minimum: very good)

For instance, if you wanted to send a scout on a 3-month assignment in North America to look for U21 players with a minimum of “very good” potential, the scout assignment would look something like the graphic below:

There are a few other popular approaches to scouting on FM22:

Scouting Players

Scouting nations, scouting leagues/competitions.

Here, you assign the scout to search for a specific mold of player. This could be adjusted based on player position, tactical suitability, team role, or specific attributes chosen by you.

You can also select the option to look for a player similar to another, or a player potentially available on loan instead of a full transfer.

You may also assign your scout to a particular nation. For better results, you should also apply filters to specify the type of player you want the scout to find in that nation.

Note that it is not advisable to assign a scout to too many nations within a short period of time. Their knowledge of each one will be negatively affected.

It is more beneficial to allow the scout enough time to work through a particular nation and develop their scouting knowledge of that area to a very good level before switching assignments.

This method can be particularly beneficial when you’re at a club where squad registration rules are restrictive.

It can help to ensure that the options presented to you by your scouts fit within those restrictions and you don’t have to sell anyone before successfully registering a new player.

If you scout smaller leagues/competitions, it will also help you keep track of the progress of in-form players that can be snapped up for a bargain fee.

Final Words

Once you’ve set up these assignments, your scouts can immediately get to work scouring the furthest reaches of the globe for the best players to improve your squad – both for the present and for the future.

You are more likely to find some of the best wonderkids on the game , and you’re also more likely to pay less for more value.

Be sure to leave a couple of scouts at the club for other secondary assignments such as player or match reports.

If you’re looking to start off with a team that gives you a lot of room to maneuver funds for transfers and scouting assignments, have a look at this list of the biggest transfer budgets in FM22 to get started.

More Football Manager 2022

• How to Allocate More RAM to Football Manager 2022
• How to Increase Transfer Budget in Football Manager 2022
• The Best Teams to Manage on Football Manager 2022

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Football Manager 2022 Scouting Guide: Scout and sign the next generation of stars

Turn your team into world beaters by following these tips

Published: Jan 03, 2022, 9:43 Updated: Jan 03, 2022, 9:43

Football Manager 2022 is here, which means it's time to start preparing your scouts for another season of wonderkid hunting.

Table of Contents

Fm22 scouting, scouting specific players, scouting assignments, types of scouting.

From regions to staff, we've got you covered as to how to make the most of scouting in Football Manager 2022 , and how to ensure that you're recruiting the best players for your team.

Scouting is a huge part of Football Manager, and we've broken down some of the key sections to ensure that you are recruiting the best talent into your team.

The best way to optimize your scouting in Football Manager 2022 is by utilizing your staff and their scouting assignments.

One of the easiest ways to optimize your scouting is to scout specific players until your staff attains full knowledge.

By going to a player's profile and scouting them specifically, you will ensure that you are provided with the most accurate and in-depth report possible.

Scouting a player until full knowledge will also allow you to compare a said player to the rest of your squad, giving you the chance to weigh up the value of the transfer.

If you're looking for a certain kind of player, but you don't have any in mind, utilizing your scouting staff and sending them on assignments is a good way to broaden your reach.

From expanding your scouting region to targeting specific players with a particular statistical make-up, scouting assignments are the key to finding those wonderkids and hidden gems.

Click here to read about the best wonderkids in FM22.

There are many different types of scouting in Football Manager 2022 and striking a balance will be key to your success.

You can request your scouts search for players with a certain star rating, a certain age range, and also specialize in a certain position.

Balancing your scouting approach will give you a broader outlook on the best players in the game.

Each assignment will also affect your scouting budget depending on location, duration, and specificities.

Naturally, if you're a bigger club with a bigger scouting budget, you will have a head start over the competition when it comes to finding the next big thing.

Wonderkids are the lifeblood of Football Manager and there is nothing better than discovering the next best thing.

Scouting wonderkids through specific scouting assignments will ensure that you are recruiting top players for the future.

Here are some helpful guides on the best wonderkids in Football Manager 2022:

• English Wonderkids
• Wonderkid Defenders
• Wonderkid Strikers

Click here to find out everything we know about Football Manager 2022.

Explore new topics and discover content that's right for you!

Football Manager 2022 scouting guide: How to find wonderkids in FM22

FM22 brings the series’ huge database back with updated players, clubs, and staff. With thousands of variables, here’s our Football Manager 2022 scouting guide to help you find the best players for your club.

Football Manager 2022 is here, meaning players are combing through the game’s huge database, already on the lookout for the best wonderkids and free signings . While we have guides for finding those, there’s nothing quite like doing the homework yourself to unearth a world-class talent.

FM22 offers a sizeable scouting update, meaning there are more tools than ever to find the greatest young players to spend your transfer budget on. That can be pretty overwhelming, but we’ve put together this guide to help identify the best players for your squad.

Here’s our guide to scouting in Football Manager 2022.

Types of scouting

New scouting changes in fm22, how to find wonderkids at youth intake day, when is youth intake day in football manager 2022, football manager 2022 scouting guide.

Players in Football Manager 2022 can be scouted in a number of ways, each with its own pros and cons.

Individual scouting  is for when you’ve already identified a player and are looking to get more information about them. When you scout them, your scouting staff will produce a report that’s updated as their knowledge of the player grows, with less well-known players needing longer to scout than the Lionel Messis and Cristiano Ronaldos of the world.

Scouting assignments  help narrow your search, allowing managers to filter what they’re looking for. As an example, you may be looking for a striker within a certain age range and in a certain region. The more specific your search, the more detailed your results will be. This means that while you may search one specific region, you may find yourself tweaking your criteria to find, say, a striker that’s a good header of the ball.

Scouting costs money and ties up scouts for a period, though, so you’ll want to ensure you have a solid lineup of scouting staff ready to jet off. Bigger clubs will have a larger scouting setup at the start of the game.

Football Manager titles add a series of “headline features” each year, and Football Manager 2022 has a new focus on scouting and the transfer market.

While the latter now means more realistic transfer fees and greater staff and agent input, the scouting changes can best be summed up with the improved scouting report.

Rather than assigning a value out of 100, scouts will now offer a grade instead. These grades are determined by Scouts and Analysts, meaning you get two reports in one and allowing for pros and cons on a single page that pertains to on-the-pitch stats as well as transfer value compared to the current market.

The best feeling in Football Manager 2022 is finding that one gem that lights up your league in a few years’ time, and wonderkids have been a core part of the franchise since its inception.

The best time to look for these wonderkids is on youth intake day , an in-game event where newgens (procedurally generated players) are randomly assigned to club academies across the world. These 14 to 16-year-olds can be invited to trial at a team, and then potentially tied down to a contract.

If your club has a high youth recruitment rating, you’ll have a better chance of high potential newgens.

Here are the youth intake dates for each nation in the game.

For more on Football Manager 2022, be sure to check our other guide content at Dexerto.

Is Football Manager 2022 on Game Pass? | Biggest transfer budgets | Where is Football Manager 2022 Touch for iPad? | Best free signings | Tactics guide | Best young players

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Scouting is fundamental to building and maintaining a strong squad, from the senior squad down to the youth squad. It can help you to beat your rivals to the best available players, particularly emerging hot prospects that do not yet have a high reputation. Having an extensive scouting network and using it effectively is therefore of great importance.

Your Scouting Network

Staff scouting knowledge.

Each individual staff member, including yourself, has a scouting knowledge level for one or more nations. A staff member has a 100% knowledge level for his own home nation (except physios, who have only 10%) and can also build up knowledge levels for other nations by:

• Scouting a nation as part of a scouting assignment – This applies to scouts only. A scout’s knowledge level for a nation improves as he spends time scouting that nation. However, his knowledge levels for previously scouted nations also gradually decrease.
• Working in a nation.
• Having favoured personnel from a particular nation – A staff member has a higher knowledge level for the home nation of one of his favoured personnel .

A staff member’s scouting knowledge levels are shown on his staff profile and his favoured personnel are shown on the Information section of his Overview tab.

Club Scouting Knowledge

Your club’s scouting knowledge is comprised of the knowledge levels of all of the sources in your scouting network . The sources in your scouting network include you and all of your staff , along with all of your club’s affiliate clubs and senior affiliates.

The knowledge level your club has for an individual nation is equal to the knowledge level for that nation of the best source; the best source being the source with the highest knowledge level for the nation.

The knowledge level you club has in a geographical region is based on the combined knowledge levels it has for the nations in that region.

The Knowledge tab of the Scouting screen shows your club’s knowledge level for each region and nation. The best source for each nation is shown next to the knowledge level for that nation.

The Effects of Scouting Knowledge

Your club’s scouting knowledge determines how many players you can view and filter on the All Known Players tab of the Scouting screen, and also how many staff you can view and filter on the Staff Search screen. The higher your club’s knowledge level for a nation, the more lower reputation players and staff from that nation you can view. Your club’s scouting knowledge also affects knowledge levels for individual players, as explained below.

An individual scout’s knowledge level for a particular nation affects how many players he is able to find when scouting that nation and how much time it takes him to complete his assignment. The higher his knowledge level, the more players he will find and the more quickly he will complete his assignment. A scout with a 100% knowledge level for a nation will finish an assignment to that nation after a very short period of time as he does not need to stay there to continue to build his knowledge level for the nation.

Building an Effective Scouting Network

It is highly advisable to try to build and maintain a scouting network with knowledge in a wide variety of nations , subject to the scouting range imposed by your club’s board.

In particular, it is recommended that you give greater priority to those nations that are more important for your club. More important nations include:

• Nations that are in the region of your club – Ideally, you want to beat the competition from rival clubs for players in your region. Also, there are likely to be less restrictive regulations on signing such players, such as work permit rules, while such players are more likely to settle well at your club and want to stay there in the long term.
• Nations in your club’s continent with high reputation divisions – Clubs in these nations are more likely to produce players with good ability and potential through their youth systems, develop players better and attract higher quality established players. In Europe, such nations include England, Germany, Italy and Spain.

To view divisions in order of reputation click the world icon, select the tab for you continent, click Profile and then select the Leagues section of the Competitions tab.

• Nations that regularly produce a large number of young players with good ability and potential – Having high knowledge levels for these nations in particular can help you to sign talented players before they establish themselves. Examples of nations with good youth production are provided below.

In order to build and maintain the knowledge of your scouting network you can:

• Sign scouts , and preferably other backroom staff, with good knowledge levels for those more important nations that your club does not already have good knowledge levels for.
• Send scouts on assignments in those nations (particularly more important nations) for which your club has low or no knowledge levels , if possible – However, you should be careful how you assign your scouts. Building up knowledge in a wide variety of nations, including less important nations, can be useful, but you should ensure that the knowledge of each scout remains manageable and that scouts refresh lost knowledge where necessary, especially knowledge lost in more important nations.

The Scouting Assignments guide provides more advice on how to set up scouting assignments.

• Request a new affiliate club or senior affiliate from your club’s board – An ideal affiliate would be one based in a nation that regularly produces a large number of good players.

In addition to building and maintaining the knowledge of your network, you should sign scouts of the highest quality that you can. You should try to sign scouts with good ratings in those attributes discussed in the Scouts guide. In particular, Judging Player Ability and Judging Player Potential are the most important attributes.

Player Knowledge Levels

If you have attribute masking enabled in your game then your club also has a player knowledge level for each individual player who is not at your club. This affects how much information about a player you can view. The player knowledge level for a player can be seen on the Scout Report section of his Reports tab.

You can disable attribute masking when starting a new game by ticking the Disable Player Attribute Masking checkbox. Otherwise, attribute masking is enabled. With attribute masking enabled, attribute ratings for players outside your club are represented as attribute ranges in cases where the actual rating is not known.

Your club’s player knowledge level for a player affects the following:

• Attribute ranges – The higher the player knowledge level, the smaller the attribute ranges that are used to represent the player’s attributes. With a sufficiently high player knowledge level all attribute ratings are known.
• Ability star ratings – The higher the player knowledge level, the less black stars are included in the player’s ability star ratings given in a scout report * for the player. Black stars represent uncertainty regarding ability and are explained in the Player Ability guide. Potential ability may remain uncertain for young players even where the player knowledge level is 100% or the player is at your club. Ability star ratings for scouted players are discussed in the Scout Reports guide.
• Pros and cons – The higher the player knowledge level, the more pros and cons are given in a scout report* for the player. You can check which pros and cons have not yet been assessed for a player by hovering over the areas yet to assess button at the top of the report. Pros and cons for scouted players are discussed in the Scout Reports guide.
• Roles – The higher the player knowledge level, the more roles the player is given ability star ratings for in a scout report* for the player.

*The information on a scout report is static, as explained in the Scout Reports guide, and is based on what the player knowledge level for the player was immediately following the report.

• Position familiarity – The higher the player knowledge level, the more position familiarity information you can see for positions where the player’s familiarity is less than natural .
• Personality – A certain player knowledge level is required to see the player’s personality and media handling style descriptions.
• Player traits – A certain player knowledge level is required to see the player’s traits .
• Plans – A certain player knowledge level is required to see the player’s short-term plans and long-term plans on the Information section of his Overview tab.
• Happiness – A certain player knowledge level is required to see details of the player’s happiness on the Information section of his Overview tab.
• Games Played in Position – A certain player knowledge level is required to see details of the player’s stats in the Games Played in Position panel on the Information section of his Overview tab.
• Player contract information – A certain player knowledge level is required to see details of the bonuses and clauses in a player’s contract .

Your club’s starting player knowledge level for a player is affected by various factors, including:

• Your club’s scouting knowledge level for the nation of the player’s club – The higher your club’s knowledge level for the nation, the higher your club’s player knowledge level for the player.
• Whether the player plays in the same division as your club – Your club has higher player knowledge levels for such players.
• The player’s reputation – The higher the reputation of the player, the higher your club’s player knowledge level for the player.

A player’s reputation description can be viewed on the Information section of his Overview tab.

• Your own ratings in the Player Knowledge and Youngster Knowledge manager attributes – These are explained in the Manager guide.

You can increase your club’s player knowledge level for a player by:

• Scouting the player – The longer your scouts scout the player for and the more matches they watch him play in, the more your club’s player knowledge level for the player will increase. There is a limit to how much knowledge can be gained by requesting report cards only. Furthermore, the better the quality of the scouts you use the more quickly your club will increase its player knowledge level for the player through scouting him.
• Increasing your club’s knowledge level for the player’s nation – The different ways of doing this are explained above.
• Giving a scout an assignment to scout the player’s club’s nation, region or competition – This can increase your club’s knowledge level for the nation the player is based in and can also result in the player himself being scouted.
• Managing your team in matches where the player features for the opposition team.
• Choosing to attend a match in which the player features – You can choose to attend a team’s match by clicking the “ – ” in the Result column on the team’s Schedule screen. You cannot choose to attend a match if your own team is scheduled to play at the same time.

Nations With Good Youth Production

New young players are brought into the game world, or generated, on a regular basis. These players are known as newgens . The nations given below tend to produce more high quality newgens.

Excellent – Brazil

Very Good – Argentina, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain

Good – Egypt, England, Holland, Mexico, Nigeria, Turkey

Okay – Algeria, Belgium, Columbia, DR Congo, Ivory Coast, Portugal, USA

Newgens may also be referred to as regens . However, technically a regen is a player who has retired and been regenerated into a new player, as happened in older versions of the game.

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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...

3 simple steps to develop any young player on fm 2017 (guide).

I Analyzed The Data: Is FM17 the best FM yet?

5-step approach to contract negotiations in FM, or how to stop emulating a used car salesman

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Tactic and team guide for Football Manager (Easy 4-step approach)

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How to maximize your scouting network in football manager.

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

Narrowing things down, expanding your horizons.

Finding the Right Scouts

Assignments

Final Thoughts

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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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Building Your Scouting Network in Football Manager

Setting up your scouting network in Football Manager is a fundamental task for an ambitious club. By expanding the world knowledge outside the local regions of your club, you can spot more great players and future wonderkids as you increase your knowledge of players and competitions worldwide.

In your quest to find potential and suitable signings how you set up your scouting network can play a major role in the success of your scouting team’s abilities to identify the next stars, a future club legend or a great replacement for a player within your team.

In part 3 of our series, where we are delving into how to master the art of Football Manager Scouting , the time has come to take a closer look at how to utilize the Football Manager scouting network by setting up scouting assignments.

In the world of any Football Manager career, scouting is and should be at every manager’s core. The ability to create a reliable and efficient network of scouts is highly crucial to reaching the top of the game. You will need a good scouting program in order to succeed. One that builds upon the club’s vision and your football philosophy.

Setting up your scouting network should be done with the same importance as the focus you’ve used on building a ‘5-star coaching team’.

Today, I’ll share with you how you can set up a worldwide efficient scouting network that has comprehensive knowledge of all parts of the world and who updates you on the most promising talents before everyone else!

Hopefully, my approach to how I set up my scouting network in Football Manager will give you some great tips on how to expand your scouting knowledge in Football Manager, so you can track down the best players for your playing level!

This article is part of a wider series about scouting in Football Manager:

• #1 Scouting in Football Manager | The Definitive Guide
• #1.1 Scouting Regions & Nations Youth Ratings
• #1.2 Football Manager 2024 Youth Intake Dates | Scouting for Newgens
• #1.3 How to find the best scouts in Football Manager
• #2 How to scout for players in Football Manager
• #2.2 Using Statistics and Data Analytics to Scout for players
• #2.3 How to scout for the best wonderkids & hidden gems

Building the Scouting Network

Creating your club’s scouting network and turning your local scouting team into a worldwide scouting network that fills your scouting center with top-rated targets from all over the world can be both a fun and rewarding affair.

In order to create an extensive scouting network that is as effective as possible, it requires your immediate attention. Building the club’s scouting network is a duty of the highest importance. The sooner you start on it, the better!

Despite, building your scouting network is an eternal affair, it’s smart to sketch down a plan on how the structure of the club’s scouting network shall be, as quickly as possible.

Personally, I start on the task of structuring the scouting network already at day one. In the first days of management, I assess my scouting team; their capabilities and national knowledge.

The quality of the scouting network will largely depend on the nationality and quality of the scouts and the recruitment analysts’ abilities to judge a player’s abilities, potential and interpret data relevant to player’s performances and attributes. In addition, it will become as important to maintain the quality of the scouting network, by constantly hiring as many scouts the club allows, as taking advantage of the scouting team’s strengths in an as effective way as possible.

By maximizing the size of the recruitment team and utilize all the scouts at your club, you’ll find more players quicker and easier. The better scouts you hire, the more accurate scout reports they will deliver – something that makes it easier for you to make better decisions when signing players.

The scouting network of Real Betis will vary from that Borussia Dortmund got. While economics plays a major part, individual capabilities, creativity in using the tools at disposal and the club’s reputation might mean their approach to scouting will differ. In fact, both clubs may have the same tools to their disposal but transfer policies, budget and playing style will require going a different path when scouting for players.

The Scouting & Recruitment Team

In the overview of the recruitment team, and with a custom view applied, it’s easy to get an overview of which positions I need to strengthen in the scouting team and which roles they can perform in my scouting network. The information I receive will help to understand the types of scouting missions they can conduct and in which nations/regions they will do their job most effectively.

To give you a brief summary of the essence of how to find the best scouts, you’d like to enhance your scouting team with scouts who got;

• as high  Judging Player Ability  (JPA) as possible, according to the club level
• as high  Judging Player Potential  (JPP) as possible, according to the club level
• great  Adaptability  (ADA)
• knowledge of nations  outside the club’s local knowledge

In my instance, at SPAL, any improvements to the scouting team should have a higher JPA, JPP and ADA of better than 14 and a better reputation than 2 stars.

The current team of scouts is all based on staff that got full knowledge of Italy and above-average knowledge of Argentina. In order to improve the current scouting team, I have a specific structure I’d like to establish in my clubs, that aims to increase the scouting knowledge within the club.

The Organizational Structure of An Efficient Scouting Team

Setting up the organizational structure to an efficient scouting team is far from hokus pokus but I find it beneficial to sketch down a plan for the types of scouts I need to sign, in order to improve the current scouting team, as well as the club’s scouting knowledge.

Like any squad building, the organizational structure of the scouting network will need to relate to the club’s overall vision, your football philosophy and according to financial constraints. Truth be told, different clubs may have different scouting strategies according to their transfer policy or resources available.

You might like to use a similar structure to the scouting network as me, despite not prioritizing the same nations or regions. This means that how you set up your scouting network might be totally different from my approach.

As the image shows, the current scouting team already got the scouts I need to scout for players in Italy but according to my plan, I would need a total of 20 scouts to cover both Europe and South America.

Some will need to have the expertise to scout for players under the age of 21, others need to be specialists at roaming regions, and a few others need to analyze players’ current abilities. Having 1 to 3 scouts that have better JPA is great if you need to set up a short-term scouting focus to identify suitable targets for the first-team.

The job going forward is to expand the scouting team for the areas closest to the middle of the diagram, such as Scandinavia and Western Europe, in addition, to targeting specific nations that could help me bring in players that are affordable and can play at the level I’m at.

Then, the actual job of setting up your scouting network will be a long-term prospect, especially when managing a club beneath the top levels. Due to financial restrictions and reputation, it may take time to expand the club’s world knowledge to Manchester City’s, RB Salzburg or Barcelona’s level. But that’s part of the fun!

The Club’s Scouting Knowledge & Allowed Scouting Scope

When entering a new club it’s lots of information to digest. You need to learn as much about your players and your own club as external clubs, players and competitions around you. In fact, you’ll notice that specific information about players and staff outside your club is hidden.

In fact, the level of the clubs’ world scouting knowledge will determine the level of detail within the game.

Your knowledge level of players, staff and external clubs are limited by;

• the club’s scouting knowledge of a certain nation
• the nationality, reputation and past experience of the current club’s backroom staff
• the division or league the player is at. You will automatically have better knowledge of players within your same division. Similarly you’ll have better knowledge of players in the nation your club is at compared to a nation far away.
• the player’s reputation. It’s more natural to have greater knowledge of some of the most reputable players in the world.
• any affiliate clubs and partnership links to the club
• The Human Manager’s past experience and level of reputation

Which nations your current club has knowledge of can be discovered under  Scouting  –  Knowledge :

About the Knowledge Levels

The club’s scouting knowledge will be determined by members of your backroom staff’s nationality, knowledge of nations according to previous experience along with affiliated clubs and partnership links to other clubs.

By clicking the different regions, you’ll get further information about the percentage knowledge of the nations within that region displayed in a colored coding from dark grey – low levels of knowledge to green (high knowledge).

The knowledge level of a nation in the nation’s overview equals the best source’s knowledge level, whilst the regional knowledge equals to the combined knowledge the club has over nations within that region. This means that if you’d like to have full or extensive knowledge of a particular region (e.g. South Europe where SPAL is located), you need to improve your backroom staff with coaches, scouts or affiliates from Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Albania.

The priority will be to make sure your scouting knowledge is as wide-reach as possible. It’s here setting up a scouting network comes in!

Why you shall improve your club’s world knowledge?

There are many  benefits of improving the world scouting knowledge  – the most important aspects is highlighted below;

• when setting up your save will you perhaps select a database size of 65,000 players. If you’re managing a smaller club with limited scouting knowledge, only 20% of the players and staff might be visible to you. This means that many good players, or staff, are omitted in the search results. People that potentially could bring the club to another level, as they would basically improve the overall squad quality.
• current and potential ability star rating – the player’s abilities in comparison to your squad’s overall abilities
• the player’s specific attributes and other hidden attributes that affect his player performances, development and overall happiness.
• personality and media handling style
• natural positional abilities and games played i position
• role suitability
• player traits
• current form and overall statistics
• current happiness and plans
• dynamics; how the player might fit into the social groups at your club
• contract clauses, potential asking prices and other contract information that will give you hints about the overall transfer cost. TIP! Use the ‘ Ask Agent About Availability ‘ button to get a better picture of transfer value and demands. The button is found under Player Profile – Transfers
• Information within a player’s profile is not only important when scouting for players that can improve the current squad, now or for the future. With more information about upcoming opponent’s players you can  better set up opposition instructions  and analyze the opposition teams strength and weaknesses.
• NB! You can easily avoid getting into this situation by setting up next opposition scouting assignments
• With 100% knowledge of a nation you are more likely to get newgens from that specific country in the yearly youth intake. This statement also relies to, or depends on, the club’s level of youth recruitment and the skills, personality and preferences of the backroom staff responsible for youth recruitment – normally managed by the  Football Manager staff role head of youth development . You can read more about how youth intakes work in Football Manager and how to get better newgens in the annual youth intake in this article.

In general, no matter which league you play in or the level of clubs knowledge it’s vital to try to maximize it in order to broaden your world knowledge; the depth in every nation.

As you saw above, there are many benefits of always looking to increase your scouting knowledge.

Below we’ll quickly go through some methods to how you quickly can enhance your club’s scouting knowledge, then I’ll share with you the approaches I use in Football Manager to set up a worldwide scouting network.

How to Increase the Club’s Scouting Knowledge?

Already when setting up your new save, you can affect the club scouting knowledge and influence of the number of players available to search through. While I won’t spend too much time delving into how to set up your save in this instance, the number of playable nations and leagues, database size and other settings will determine your knowledge level.

In addition, there are six alternative methods, or quick tips to take advantage of, to quickly improve the club’s scouting knowledge!

You can increase your Football Manager scouting knowledge easily by;

1) Be sly and creative enough to choose a home nation and a secondary nation different from the nation of the managing club when creating your managerial profile. You could select that you’re born in Brazil but has a secondary nationality of Italian, despite you know you’ll be managing a club in Belgium.

1.1) Then you can select that you’re fluent in a language outside your nation of origin which will give you brief knowledge of that nation.

This means that you will already have an average knowledge of at least three different nations.

In my SPAL save, I’ve got thorough scouting knowledge of France, since I selected Auxurre as my birthplace and widespread knowledge of England, as I can speak English fluently.

2) broaden your club’s backroom staff team with the coaching staff and administrative staff from different parts of the world, such as hiring coaches, assistant manager or scouts with knowledge from different nations and regions.

The simplest method is to improve the scouting team by expanding the number of scouts and bringing in scouts with a different scouting knowledge than the current ones and sending them out on assignments to travel regions or multiple nations.

A scout with a greater level of knowledge within a nation will be more effective scouting that nation. The scout will be far quicker completing assignments in a nation, or delivering individual scout reports of players based in that nation if he has 100% knowledge of that nation.

3) by making a boardroom request to increase the number of affiliated clubs. Your club’s feeder and parent clubs will let you have better knowledge of the nation their based in. For some partnership types, it may even provide you with limited knowledge of the region they are based in.

You got specific partnership links where the clubs share the scouting knowledge between eachother – perfect for improving your scouting network! NB! Feeder and parent clubs will not only add depth to the level of nation knowledge but also be useful when the annual youth intake happens. It can increase the chance of getting newgens from feeder clubs’ nation. The link type must be a mutually beneficial relationship where the affiliated club can send academy players to the senior affiliated club to gain experience.

4) Selecting the appropriate recruitment package which will increase the knowledge level of players within specific division(s), nation, region or contintent. You can read more about the recruitment packages and how it affect the pool of players found in any player searches.

5) by playing competitive matches, or friendlies, against other teams. This will increase the knowledge of the players in the starting XI and let you learn more about the squad.

6) and finally, the main core of this article, by  setting up a scouting assignments  and building a professional scouting team of 5-star scouts, and send them out to all the different parts of the world;  increasing your scouting knowledge with an efficient scouting network .

In the sections below, I’ll explain how I approach setting up my scouting network in Football Manager, and how I set up assignments for my scouts to gain worldwide scouting knowledge to track down great players for your club, or the best talents and 5-star newgens as soon as they come through in your long-term save.

On the road to 100% world knowledge, if it’s possible… or advantage at all(!), you will need to sort through thousands of scout reports on potential new signings, monitor and setup scouting assignments that let’s you find the best transfer targets for your playing style and transfer budget.

Setting up Scouting Assignments

Before you start setting up scout assignments and take advantage of your highly  efficient scouting network , it is important to set yourself as responsible for setting up the assignments. You can do that in the staff responsibilities screen found under main tab Staff. Then let your chief scout be responsible for delivering the scout reports and update you on the recommended players found.

When setting up your club’s scouting mission, it should conform to the club’s transfer policy, but still, it should not limit your leeway when scouting for players. You need to take into account all scenarios within your save; injury crisis, players stagnating or not performing in your tactics, players leaving or requesting transfers, or players reaching the latter stages of their career, which means you need to look for short- or long-term signings outside your initial transfer plans or policy.

At SPAL, the board favors me to sign players based in Italy, and who is Italian. But I wish to restrict my business of signing players to certain transfer policies that will influence the way I set up my scouting assignments and the way I scout for players.

The transfer policies I want to incorporate at SPAL is;

• signing Italian under-23 players
• signing Under-23 players from Scandinavian nations, plus Poland.
• signing French, Swiss, Croatian and Serbian Under-23 players
• signing Under-21 players from Argentina and Brazil

Setting up the club’s scouting structure is something to have in mind from the time you create your new save. By carefully considering and selecting the playable nations, you’ll decide which nations and competitions to get statistics and data from, which the recruitment team can acquire player analysis from.

The Ideal Setup of Scouting Assignments in Football Manager

What is the ‘fog of war’.

In our guide to how to make Football Manager harder , we looked at the Football Manager Player attribute masking aka the fog of war in strategy games . The concept is simple. The game assumes according to the manager’s reputation, past experience and nationality that certain information about players and staff is hidden or made invisible until knowledge is gained. It can be player attributes and hidden attributes , their overall strengths and weaknesses, their positional abilities or information about contracts and availability.

With the Football Manager player attribute masking enabled you will need to acquire that information by acquiring scout reports of players outside your club’s scouting scope.

Even within the permitted scouting scope, some information about the players isn’t available at once. Player attributes may be displayed in ranges between 10-14, star ratings that reflect a player’s current ability or potential ability level are hidden. Then, other information about a player’s happiness, transfer cost, and interest may be hidden until one in your recruitment team watch the player in action by attending matches, get a scout report of him , or bring the players into the club on trials to quickly assess the player’s abilities.

When setting up scouting assignments, it’s worth considering the scouting cost. You need to balance the cost of sending out scouts to ‘all’ corners of the world, with the advantage of finding suitable prospects that fit the club’s football philosophy and finances.

Or, simply, if finances don’t allow it, let the ‘ fog of war’  disappear bit by bit by acquiring knowledge of players within a new region or nation, perhaps even outside your current scouting range.

The best way to set up your scouting assignments, at least from my perspective, is to prioritize scouting nations, regions and competitions close to you before increasing the knowledge of regions (or continents you have none or little knowledge of.

Recommended Scouting Priority

Your order of setting up assignments for the different scouting regions is important as well. In the moment of setting up the club’s scouting assignments, you will need to have several thoughts in the head. There are several things you will have to consider when choosing the order and priority;

1. Where is the managing club located in the world? Scouting your local region should be your first priority. The cheapest option to find new players and increase scouting knowledge at the same time is to scout countries in close proximity. For example, if you manage in England you should focus on UK & Ireland and if you manage in Mexico you should focus on North America as your first priority.

1.1 What is the overall cost of prioritizing certain areas over others? Will it be beneficial to scout a region far away that might produce lots of great players and future wonderkids, but rules don’t allow me to sign them? Similarly, is it beneficial to scout a region where it’s less chance of producing great players or finding players that can play at my level?

2. How many scouts are you allowed to have? This is easily done by checking the staff box in the boardroom section. Since you always have a limited amount of scouts – depending on your finances and club reputation – the order of region priority should be considered.

2.1 What are the scouts’ best strengths, and which task can they be more effective at?

3.   Where is it most proficient to scout?   Which clubs, regions or nations produce the best players? 3.1   Where can I find suitable players for my club  that will improve my squad and make me beat my rival’s over top signings?

Your priorities in terms of assignments will also influence which scouts you target, as you want scouts who complement each other’s scouting knowledge.

How you set up your scouting assignment and scout for players may vary throughout the year, according to what you need to prioritize.

Even though, I favor this setup of scouting assignments. The layout is one I’ve used for years with great results.

• Chief Scout : requires high reputation, JPA and JPP (>15) Task: provide the final report and secondary opinions of potential signings.
• One  Next Opposition Scout : requires the best JPA & Tactical Knowledge in your scouting team Assignment: Team – Ongoing reports on next opposition Often the job of the chief scout   – depends on his capabilities
• One to 3  First-Team scouts : requires better JPA than JPP Assignment: Competitions (e.g. Serie A and Serie B), or Squad Player These scouts will also be accessible to take on short-term scouting focuses decided upon at Recruitment meetings. A normal scouting focus requires 2 scouts available.
• At least 1  Youth Scout : requires better JPP + Adaptability Assignment: Roam the allowed Scouting scope for Under-19 talents + scout specific youth competitions (in region or locally)
• Minimum 3  Roaming Scouts : requires Adaptability, great knowledge of different nations in a region + JPA and/or JPP depending on your transfer policy
• Head of Regions scouts : requires good JPA and JPP (and knowledge of big nations in that region) e.g. scouts with knowledge of Brazil, Germany, Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, Italy or England – nations great at producing youth players and got a great standard on their leagues.
• Nations Scouts : requires 100% knowledge of specific nations within regions I want to find players in and good JPA, JPP and Adaptability, Assignment: Roam nations for players according to maximum age. These scouts’ task is to bring further knowledge to the region they are based in and often has a different nation knowledge to the Region Scouts (e.g 100% knowledge of Croatia, Belgium, Norway, Serbia, Turkey, Russia, Uruguay, Colombia or Argentina).

Scouting Methods

Approach 1: scouting regions.

How you set up your scouting network will be based on many factors. Your network should be as expansive as possible. In order to expand your knowledge, it’s worthy to learn more about regional scouting.

As you might’ve experienced from reading part 1 of our Football Manager Scouting guides How to find the best scouts , we introduced you to the term Roaming scouts and what they require. You will now experience how we take advantage of the regional or roaming scouts to both increase scouting knowledge and find the “hidden wonderkids” and bargains from all over the world in Football Manager!

Which Areas of The World / Nations Are Proficient to scout?

Which regions you are allowed to send your scouts to, can be found in the overview of scouting assignments. This is determined by the board, and you got no possibilities to affect it. The club’s allowed scouting range is divided between being able to:

• Scout the entire world – no restrictions
• Scout the continent you’re in
• Scout the region you’re in
• Scout the country you’re in
• Scout divisions in your nation
• Scout the division you’re in

Most often a lower league club or a minor club will only be allowed to scout their own division, for example, Serie C, if they got the financial power to have a scouting budget at all!

You can also get permission to scout foreign nations that the club got close links with.

Recommended Regions to Scout

Football Manager comes with 24 regions as seen in our overview of the  Football Manager scouting regions . I won’t recommend you to prioritize scouting all these regions. Instead, you should build knowledge of certain areas in the world that generates the best newgens and potentially the most wonderkids. Despite there might be a few occasions where future stars come through at smaller nations, it’s most cost-effective to prioritize nations and regions closest to you.

The article about scouting regions and nations youth ratings (linked to above) can be used to give you an idea of regions worthy to scout, as it literally provides you with the order of where to scout for players first.

As you’ll notice, there is a huge difference between the 24 regions. Some are bigger and more demanding, some are fairly small and involve fewer countries, like Northern Europe. This means that to gain full knowledge of all nations within a greater region like Central Europe or South America (south), it will require more resources as it will take a longer time.

This means that you need more scouts traveling within that region in order to gain knowledge more rapidly, which is why I favor head of region scouts along with roaming scouts.

The top 10 regions I prioritize scouting are:

• South America (South) – Argentina and Brazil
• Central Europe – Germany, Holland, Belgium
• Western Europe – France, Spain, Portugal
• South Europe – Italy, Croatia
• UK & Ireland – England
• South America (North) – Colombia  (cheap talents)
• Northern Europe – Denmark, Sweden, Norway  (cheap talents)
• Eastern Europe – Serbia, Romania  (cheap talents)

The order depends on the region you’re managing in and the league level.

Approach 2: Scout Specific Nations (With Highest Youth Rating)

Let’s face it, it’s difficult to let one scout get full knowledge of a region. At least, it will require a lot of time and maintenance by renewing assignments and making sure he covers all nations in the region equally.

Along with some scouts traveling regions, it’s smart to let some scouts scout specific nations that are great at producing newgens. An approach is to let scouts be in charge of one to maximum of three nations in close proximity. The number of nations they are in charge of and will scout in, will depend on the size of the nation. Some nations might require several scouts traveling around, such as Brazil.

For instance, the setup of scouts traveling nations could be;

• 1-3 scouts: Brazil (Santos, São Paulo, Fluminense, Gremio, Palmeiras)
• 1 scout: Spain and Portugal (Barcelona, Benfica, Sporting, Porto, Real Madrid, Villarreal)
• 1 scout: Holland, Belgium (Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord, Club Brugge, Anderlecht, KRC Genk)
• 1 scout: France (Stade Rennais, Paris SG, Olympique Lyonnais, Sochaux)
• 1 scout: Germany and Poland (Bayern München, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Bor. Dortmund, Legia Warzawa)
• 1 scout: England (Man City, Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal, Southampton).
• 1 scout: Argentina (River Plate, Velez Sarsfield, Boca Juniors, Newell’s Old Boys)
• 1 scout: Italy and Croatia (Atalanta, AS Roma, Inter Milan, A.C. Milan, Empoli)
• 1 scout: Austria and Switzerland (RB Salzburg, Liefering, Admira Wacker, Basel, Zürich, Grasshoppers)

In order to let scouts travel as short distances as possible between each nation, you can use Google Maps when setting up the scouting assignments .

Approach 3: Scouting Squads & Youth Intakes from Well-known Youth Academy Clubs

Within the 14 nations listed above, you’ll find some of the best clubs with the most renowned youth academy. A strategy is to take advantage of our list of Youth Intake dates to poach Juniors before they sign a professional contract. You might like to have dedicated scouts with great Judging Player Potential to look for Under-18/19 players.

His task may be to scout specific clubs or look for players coming through at youth intakes. Here you’ll be more hands-on than by setting up a simple assignment. Besides scouting for Under-18 players and traveling a continent, you might request Team reports and scout reports of newgens. You can discover all players coming through in the game at;  World – Transfers – Youth Intake (browse by month to see the latest players coming through).

You can see a full list of the best youth academy clubs in Football Manager here.

Approach 4: Scout Competitions and Tournaments

The last approach I’d like to mention here is to scout specific competitions. This is useful to track down players who perform. You can let your scout identify great players playing at the national and international levels that tops the statistics chart. You can scout competitions at a relevant level as you’re managing at, or attend major continental continents.

For a deeper knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, you can assign a recruitment analyst to get a deeper knowledge about the pros and cons of his game.

Some recommended competitions to scout are;

International Competitions:

• World Cup (2022 and every four years)
• FIFA U-20 World Cup (2023)
• UEFA European Championship (2024)
• UEFA European Under-19 Championship
• CONMEBOL Copa Americana
• CONMEBOL Sudamericano Sub-20
• Total U-20 Africa Cup of Nations (Feb 2023)
• North American U20 Championship

International   Club Competitions:

• Viareggio Cup World Football Tournament (March 2022)

Club Tournaments:

• UEFA Champions League (Yearly)
• UEFA Youth League (Yearly)
• CONMEBOL Libertadores
• CONMEBOL Sudamericana
• CONMEBOL Libertadores sub-20
• Total CAF Champions League

You can set up screen flow to get information from the different tournaments without spending money from the scouting budget or tie up a scout to these kinds of assignments. You can read more about  how to set up screen flow in Football Manager  in our guide on how to scout for players.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

You can get further information about  how to set up scouting assignments  in this piece.

Maintaining the Scouting Network

A club’s scouting knowledge of a certain nation will be in constant change. You will need to maintain your scouting network by updating and altering the types of scouting assignments you got going.

Since a nation’s knowledge level will be affected by youth intakes, as new players arrive into the game, the knowledge level will drop. You will then need to re-visit these leagues to retain its current knowledge or increase it by taking on a new assignment.

It will require a hands-on approach where you monitor the current players found from assignments, edit and set up new ones as soon as they are finished.

A scout which is tasked to assign a nation outside of his primary knowledge area for a longer time will gradually see his knowledge level of that nation drop. For instance, if you ask a scout with 100% knowledge of France to roam Northern Africa for months and years, he will gain knowledge of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt whilst knowledge of France will decrease.

That means it’s important to let your scouts be in charge of scouting nations they have full knowledge of. Not only will they provide reports quicker, but since he got great knowledge of players in that nation more players will be recommended to you.

That’s it for now! I hope you have found some great tips that help you to  establish a worldwide scouting network in your Football Manager save . If you got some additional scouting tips, use the comment field below.

Stay  tuned for more Football Manager 2022 content coming to you soon!

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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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Two Playmakers

Guide to football manager tactics, roles, scouting and transfers, how to effectively scout for wonderkids in football manager.

Signing wonderkids and watching them develop into world beaters is one of the best experiences in football manager, especially when you are on a long-term save that would ideally last until your wonderkids hung up their boots then join up your backroom staff as scouts, coaches, assistant managers or any other role they are suited to.  

Therefore, relying only on a player’s media description of wonderkid and expecting him to be the next Mbappé or Haaland might set you up for disappointment. 

Therefore, in this guide, I will show you steps I normally take to sign high potential players when they are still young, which in turn gives me the best possible chance of having a few of them develop into genuine wonderkids who can dominate your football manager save games for more than 10 years.

Steps In Finding Genuine Wonderkids in Football Manager

Once you have set up your network according to this guide, you will periodically get reports on the players your scouts have come across. Not all of them will be wonderkids, but you have the highest chance of getting them through this method, unless you resort to gamey methods that I find to break my immersion.

For a more general guide on scouting for first team players, check this guide . Once you get players that look promising, sign them up then either put them in your academy to develop, or loan them out for first team football if they are ready .

Related Posts

Here are the best complete forwards in fm23, here are the best deep lying forwards in fm23, here are the best target men in fm23.

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How to setup scouting assignments?

I've always had difficulties setting up scouting assignments, and at this point I feel like I must be doing something wrong, bc theres no way I'm finding this few players. What I'm currently doing is;

- Sending the scout to 1-3 countries

- Entering a max age

- A scouted potential ability of Very Good

(- If I click on the report it also says "squad player" even though I have it set to any, no idea if that changes anything)

Thats it! and I feel like I'm finding literally nothing. sometimes the scouts find a player, but its most often something they "shouldnt" be searching for. For example, I'll send a scout to watch Cameroon and Congo. 1 find pops up, I check it out and... 9/10 it's times a player in England, or at very best someone in Portugal or something like that. The scouts knowledge of the country also doesnt seem to work. I've had times it actually goes up, but majority of the times it just stays at 0 (bar doesnt even pop up on scouts world knowledge). This happens both if they have good or decent/poor adaptability, so its not that. I have no idea what to do at this point. I'm still playing FM22 if that matters. Help!