The Art of Youth Development – Football Manager

Following the release of my previous in “The Art of” series, “The Art of Squad Building“, I had a number of people ask me questions regarding youth recruitment and development, so this post is going to expand further into the approaches which lay the foundations of youth recruitment and development that I look to utilise.

It will guide you through:

• Internal youth recruitment
• How I drill down on which scouts to appoint
• The establishment of scouting assignments
• What attributes I look when signing youth players
• When to and when not to loan players out
• The importance of choosing the ‘right’ loan for a young player
• Cutting ties with youngsters

I am not saying I always do everything right, indeed this post will highlight some errors that I have made in the development of ‘next up’ players, and I’ll also highlight when to cut ties with those that aren’t going to make it after it becomes clear that that will be the case.

What I will show you is how it is possible to have numerous players who are listed in the NxGn awards, who are young and developing, with the potential to be the stars of the future.

The youth team

The basis for any success in internal youth production lies in having the best youth facilities, coaching and extensive recruitment. I’m fortunate that as I’ve built up my reputation at Leverkusen, the board has trusted in the process I’ve been trying to establish, and have significantly invested in improving the level of youth recruitment and training facilities available to our development age groups.

Also of import is the Head of Youth Development. Until his retirement, Pep Boada ran the youth programme, recommending a series of players to be signed, a couple who were outstanding and plenty who were never going to make the grade in the Bundesliga. His model professional personality is perhaps the best that there is, given a potential for this to pass onto young recruits, and with his top tier judging player potential and ability, he’s arguably the best that there is in this role.

I’ve been lucky enough to have two players come through the academy system at Bayer 04 who have achieved first-team minutes – Christian Priso and the world-class Canpolat Darande. I’ll be talking more about these two players, one a star for the future and one who is already approaching the peak of his powers despite his young age, later in the piece.

Putting together the best team with the best resources available is an important aspect of youth development. It enables players to come into your youth team with the highest current ability and potential ability possible. Clearly, the more ability a player has, the more likely they’ll make into the first-team, assuming it’s a meritocracy.

This also has its financial benefits as well as drawbacks. Any youth setup has a cost attached to it. Over the previous five years at Leverkusen, £30.5m has been spent on the youth team. With this level of cash outflow, some needs to come back into to offset this expenditure – something that teams like Ajax have mastered. This is where the benefits can really be seen – selling on players that either have developed and are ready to move on, or more actively seeking to sell those that don’t have a place in the first-team squad.

The recruitment team

When putting together a recruitment team to identify players who can come into supplement the youth team in areas that our intake has proved weakest in, including the hiring of a Head of Youth Development, I don’t veer from the focus on judging player potential and judging player ability. I know that adaptability is important, but with a large recruitment team, it doesn’t need to be the be-all and end-all because I can have twenty-one scouts in specific locations that they already have a knowledge of, meaning that they have a large number of players that they are already aware of too. This gives them a significant head start when it comes to identifying talents. Note that in the below graphic (which is clickable, opening in a new tab, as with all the graphics in this piece), I’ve only focussed on the countries that the scouts have extensive knowledge of – most have further knowledge of other countries too:

Therefore, more weighting, at least in the hiring of the first handful of scouts, went on ensuring that they have the best available judging player potential and ability, whilst also covering a range of countries to maximise the geographic spread of knowledge. As you can see from the image below, this has been achieved through the twenty-one scouts, six recruitment analysts and various affiliate clubs.

When looking to fill the final open positions within the scouting team, I utilise this map in game to ensure that I’ve built up as much knowledge about markets as possible. I’ve been able to achieve this breadth of knowledge of all these countries without too heavily compromising upon the prerequisites of judging player potential and ability, never dropping below fifteen for either attribute. If I’m searching for a scout with knowledge of a specific country, then I’ll use the in-game tool in the Staff Search to narrow down on scouts that have an understanding of that country, rather than trawling through all of the interested scouts who fulfil the previously stated criteria.

This widespread knowledge of many of the key markets of football for youth development means that we’re well-established to identify young players early in their professional careers. Yet, that alone, is insufficient.

Scouting assignments

The recruitment focus within the player search is something that I look to, if possible, set and forget. Hire the right scouts with the right attributes for judging player potential and ability, and set them up on a focus, or foci, that ideally suits their knowledge base and the type of player I wish to sign.

The countries that are highlighted above in terms of knowledge, crucially isn’t the areas that we scout. These are chosen a little more critically, concentrating on geographic areas with a high youth rating, such that they are more likely to generate high quality youth intakes. Passion4FM have an excellent guide on this, which I will use from time to time to assess where I might be able to add that extra level of scouting should I be allowed to add extra scouts to my recruitment team.

Attention is also given to the playing positions I utilise in my existing tactic, location of country or countries to scout, and critically, the player age range, typically 15-21. Whilst I have scouts casting their net over Central Europe for first-team players who are aged up to 27-years-old, that responsibility only falls on a couple of scouts. My reasoning for taking this approach is that I would typically already have a good idea of likely targets for any first-team replacements from my own knowledge of the top four leagues, and if I did have any gaps, then these can relatively easily and effectively be covered by these small number of scouts – ordinarily, no more than two.

What I won’t look to do, given the age profiles of the players we are typically scouting, is define player roles. With the potential room for development, and also the potential for developmental and resale, I won’t rule a player out just because they play in a role that I don’t currently use within my tactic.

DNA – attribute focus

Something else that I also consider in relation to recruitment to my tactic is specific preferred attributes, which some would call DNA. These are natural fitness, determination, teamwork, work rate and ideally decision-making.

I have adopted a typical gegenpress tactic playing in Germany, and we play two games a week over a considerable number of weeks between the Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal and the Champions League. Therefore, our players have to be able to recover quickly between games, and be ready to train too. The high intensity tactic will regularly mean that players are exhausted during a game, and whilst the five substitute rule helps immensely with this, this is still insufficient when the games stack up, and the season wears on. Therefore, natural fitness is a must.

Determination, teamwork, work rate and decision-making all fall into the same critical area – you must be willing to work and train hard, at high intensity, and be prepared to give your all to help your team achieve its overall goal – victory. Fail to act as a cover shadow because a player is too lazy – unacceptable. A player cannot be allowed to skimp on their defensive duties when our tactic relies on being in the right place, at the right time, all the time. To achieve this, you must be ready to give your all. No questions asked.

This brings me onto something I mentioned in the first post of “The Art of…” series – players who have a personality that would upset the other players in the squad are routinely never signed. No fickle, low ambition, low determination, or mercenary player is welcomed at Bayer 04. Standards have to be met at all levels.

Taking the hard stance on our youth recruitment has seen us miss out on players, some genuine wonderkids. For instance, my scouts have long raved over Serbian goalkeeper, Danilo Zagović. Yet his fickle personality, as well as his remarkable desire to punch the ball at every given opportunity, are red flags when it comes to ever considering him as a potential acquisition target. My scouts love him – I don’t, even with the potential to adapt his personality through mentoring.

Training

If a youth team player with promise comes through and is signed to the U19 team, then I will look to take control of their individual training, putting into place their role and additional focus training. I won’t go as far as planning out the routines for the U19s, and this is definitely something that would add to their improvement, but I don’t have the time and don’t consider it entirely realistic for a first-team manager to also lay out the training programme for the U19s as well. However, by setting out their individualised training programme, I can better focus on the roles and specific attributes that I want players to work on, so that they’re harnessing the targetted areas I’ve identified as needing to be addressed.

For example, new signing, and likely future wonderkid, Filippo Vigna is in the U19 squad after signing from Napoli as a 16-year-old. The U19 manager wanted him to train as an advanced playmaker – a role that I don’t use in my tactic. Therefore, I’ve taken control of his training, switched his role to attacking midfielder on attack to concentrate on those attributes and then added an additional focus on his quickness. Physical attributes develop far better when the player is young, so I’m looking to eke out a little more pace and acceleration to add that burst of speed to help with both sides of the game – closing down in the press and arriving in space vacated by the movement of the complete forward ahead of him.

My youth team coaches at Bayer 04 are also amongst the best in their respective league system, giving every chance for our youngsters to benefit from the best coaching facilities and the best coaches available.

Pathway to the first-team

There are likely three main pathways into the first-team – 1. Be bought specifically for the first-team, i.e. to come straight in and be first-team ready from the get-go, 2. Come through the youth system at Bayer 04 (with the possibility of a loan to receive first-team action) and then progress onto the first-team, or 3. Be bought, head out on loan for first-team football, and then, if deemed good enough, be retained within the first-team squad.

With regard to the initial pathway, Elliot, Buchmann, Pino, Coppola, Noël Aséko Nkili, Mendéz, Juan Manuel Fornals and Jannik Weuthen all trod this path. Some have been sold (Nkili, Buchmann and Mendéz), but the remaining players all still form part of the main squad, and are all, bar Pino, the first choice for their respective positions.

Coming through the youth system and achieving first-team minutes at the club which developed you is a remarkable achievement given the need for results ‘here and now’. This is why the option of the loan out to another club can help give those players the time that they need to mature and improve. Yet it’s also telling that only two players have thus had first-team football at Bayer 04, Canpolat and Priso, and Priso has spent every season out on loan, with only a smattering of minutes in early on in a couple of seasons before going out on loan.

The final pathway, one far more common for players aged 20 or less, is the development through loan(s). A total of ten players have seen their initial playing time away from Bayer 04 having been bought from another club. This includes now first-choice ‘keeper, Høyenhall, second-choice left-back, Børset, club captain, Engibarov, the versatile Filip Bundgaard, club vice-captain, Gabriel Solomon and the world-class, Endrick.

The below graphics show an excellent break-down, position-by-position and year-by-year, of the pathways undertaken by players aged 20 or less between 2024-25 (the season I took over charge of Bayer 04) and the current season. Note that this is excluding youth academy players who have never been promoted into the first-team to avoid too much noise.

Defensive Unit Development Pathways

Central Midfield Unit Development Pathways

Forward Unit Development Pathways

What is really noticeable in many cases is the step-up in class from year-to-year that players sometimes make, which itself can be indicative of player development. If better teams want them on loan than the season prior, they surely must have sufficiently improved their current ability to warrant their interest. This is something to look out for. It’s also worthwhile, at times, considering accepting or even offering to loan players back to the team from which they were bought. Yet there are a very many areas to consider when coming to decide upon loaning a player.

Loaning young players

The initial consideration is, naturally, whether or not to loan the player in the first place – is there space for them in the first-team, and are they ready for this level of challenge? If the answer to either of those is no, then they are far better off going out on loan to develop. Players aged 18 or over stand to develop far more from playing first-team football than training, that it’s vitally important to their development to go out on loan.

If you’ve then made the decision to loan a player, you then need to factor in many different aspects as to where the player should go on loan. These include, but are not exclusive to:

• The likelihood of first-team football
• The league that the player will be playing in relative to their ability
• The preferred tactic of the manager
• The training facilities of the club the player will go out on loan to

Should a player only be considered a squad option, or even worse, back-up, then there is little point in accepting a loan with the specific intention to develop the player. If the player isn’t wanted, and the club offering the loan is prepared to help with wage payments, then fine, but that’s not the point here, the whole aim is that they play and play regularly.

Equally, the player needs to be playing in a league that merits their ability. Therefore, the club ideally needs to be playing in a league that fits with their current ability – in part to guarantee more minutes (i.e. if a player is out of their depth, they’re not hugely likely to be playing first-team football), but also to make sure that they can play well enough against opponents of a similar capability to have a high enough rating to improve.

Manager preferred tactics is something that I often overlook (and I need to stop doing this). Let’s take an example from the below graphic. This graphic shows the outgoing loans during the 2029-2030 season to a range of clubs in a range of different leagues. The columns to the right of the graphic indicate league quality by ranking, the respective club’s training facilities and the number of minutes that the players played over that respective season.

What sticks out straight away for me is the number of minutes Yohann Gaudry played over the season at rivals 1. FC Köln. Gaudry is considered a wonderkid, and as you can see from the pathways graphic for the forward line, has subsequently earned himself a loan at Borussia Dortmund. So why did he play so relatively few minutes at the lesser Köln? Was he injured? No. He’s a right winger (I aim to retrain him as an inside forward on the left, which is why he’s with the other left-wingers in the aforementioned earlier graphic – more on this later). Why should Gaudry being a winger be a problem? Because Köln’s manager, Steffen Baumgart, preferred not to play any wingers at all, opting for a 41212 diamond formation, and so only played him when he switched to a wide tactic, which wasn’t very often. Gaudry would have played even fewer minutes than this had Baumgart not been sacked in March and replaced by Steven Gerrard, who favours a 433DM formation.

Lastly, the training facilities of the club that they’re going out to is also significant – they need to be training at facilities that are commensurate with their ability to develop. As you can see, just because a club isn’t playing in a top-ranked league doesn’t mean that their training facilities aren’t up to scratch. Those clubs that have had European football from domestic qualification have often had the money and time to develop their training facilities, and Dinamo Kyiv are a great example of this.

Something that you do have to factor in with loans is that you lose the ability to mould their development in terms of specific attributes and player traits. This will be left to the AI, and definitely something that you need to remember to revisit should they return to your playing squad, as that will also need to be reset each time. You also lose the ability to mentor players using your older players, hence why I concentrate my recruitment on players who already have positive mentalities and a high determination attribute. It also means that you can’t train players in positions that you’d like to. The AI isn’t likely to want to play players in positions that they’re not comfortable in. With Gaudry, I’ve gone for him developing his attributes first over learning how to play in a particular position.

Another added touch that I like to use to try to boost player development, though I have no evidence to suggest that it makes any difference, is to routinely talk to players when they are out on loan – either to praise/criticise their development or their performance. Communication often goes a long way in leadership, and I would think that this would help too, to know that the manager who signed you is still monitoring your performance even if you aren’t playing a key part of his squad. It’s easy to monitor how players are performing in the Development Centre on the Loans tab, using the Selection Info drop down option.

Ultimately, should the loan go well then it can help a player to develop much like Canpolat Darande has below, with many of his attributes improving by at least two, if not three notches.

Cutting ties

After a time, the pathway will become clearer for a player. Whilst progression is rarely linear, it will become evident whether or not a youth player will ever make into the first-team squad at some point.

This will inevitably mean that some don’t make it, and will either have their contract lapse, or be sold. What’s important to realise here is that these are not mistakes. They are a fact of life, some are born to make it to the very top level, many are not. The below graphic indicates this well. It takes into account all players who have been bought at or below the age of 18, including those signed from the youth academy who have so far been sold by the club.

Nikolay Kovachev, Willy Ouattara and Josef Vojtíšek are great examples of players who were brought in due to their promise, and, for whatever reason, that promise has either been false or not realised. All three of them have left the club, and two to high profile teams, in the case or Kovachev going to AC Milan, and Vojtíšek signing for Bayern. Having monitored their progress in their current ability, it became apparent that despite their elevated initial abilities relative to their age, they were not going to make sufficient progress in order to achieve first-team football here.

What doesn’t make them mistakes are the fees accrued from their sales. Whilst the majority of the profit comes from Sebastían Méndez’s transfer to Bundesliga rivals Borussia Dortmund, the profits from Vojtíšek and Kovachev are useful towards funding either future transfers of potential ‘next man ups’, or funding the youth academy. Even if you strip out the sales of players that did not come through the youth academy who were brought in at the age of 18 or below, £12.96m was still made in pure profit from the sales of youth academy players over the chosen four-year period. This goes some way to covering the £30m cost of running the youth academy. Realistically, the process I set up with the help of my youth recruitment team will only now start to show fruition in terms of financial payback. The sales of players picked up for relatively low fees have now developed and are at a stage where they may want to move onto achieve regular first-team football elsewhere if there”s a better/more established player in front of them, or that they’ll be picked up by ‘bigger’ clubs who are prepared to offer higher wages than the wage structure allows here at Bayer 04.

Hopefully, this run through has given you ideas about how to develop players through your youth system, whether supplementing that through external recruitment, or through the loan system.

If it has, I’d be keen to know what you’ve learned, or even what you think I should write about next. I have some ideas, but I’m always happy to listen to my audience. Until next time, arrivederci.