best scouting assignments 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 am Updated: Jan 03, 2022, 9:43 am

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.

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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

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Two Playmakers

Guide to football manager tactics, roles, scouting and transfers, the best countries and regions to scout in football manager.

Having a limited number of scouts in football manager makes the process of setting up your scouting assignments more crucial to get it right the first time. Do it well first time round, and you will definitely unearth a few gems before real powerhouses like PSG and Barcelona get a sniff on them.

I will delve into which regions provide the best chances of scoring great players at cheap prices, as well as ranking the countries to prioritize scouting the best ones, if you have a few scouts left over.

The Best Regions To Scout In Football Manager

The best countries to scout in football manager.

To give your team the best possible chance of covering every nook and cranny. I have avoided listing any nation that falls under the scouting regions above. I have also omitted countries whose players are normally too expensive, for instance England. This leaves us with the following as the best countries to scout in football manager;

The regens from the nations listed above will be affordable and easier to sign, since the countries listed do not have very huge reputations, which normally complicates matters.

Nations With The Best Youth Ratings In Football Manager

As touched upon earlier, FM22 introduces a dynamic youth rating system, which means that the ranking will change as you progress in your save game. Therefore, a country that at the start of a save you considered to be a poor place to scout might change over time and become a decent place to source your wonderkids.

Now that you are aware of the best regions and countries to scout from, check out this guide here that explains the optimum way of setting up your scouting assignments to avoid missing potential wonderkids.

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What To Look for – Best FM22 Scouts

Attributes, and worldwide knowledge, that’s what we are looking for here.

There are three main categories to filter by when searching for the best scouts: Judging Player Ability, Judging Potential Ability and Adaptability . The first two are vital, Ability for scouting players who are ready now, and potential for those Wonderkids.

Adaptability is key for ‘wiring the world’. Send a Brazilian with 19 JPP and 5 Adaptability to South Africa and it is going to take a long time for reliable and accurate reports to come back.

With a high adaptability, having the best FM22 scouts will mean no corner of the globe will go untouched.

If you want to find players in South America, namely Brazil and Argentina, search for Scouts of either nationality and the majority will have knowledge of both countries.

Of course, we have done all the hard work for you. Below is a list of our best FM 2022 Scouts including Nationality and rating.

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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

FOOTBALL MANAGER 2022 BEST SCOUTS

Some of the best scouts to appoint in fm22.

Home - Best Young Players - FM 2022 Best Scouts

We cover youth football and we love Football Manager. On this page, we’ve compiled some of the best scouts in FM22 that are relatively attainable at the start of the game – from ex-Arsenal talent-spotter Francis Cagigao to legendary South American scout Antonio Mur.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF SCOUTS IN FM22

There aren’t many things in Football Manager more important than finding the best scouts. Everyone wants to fill their squad up with the best wonderkids from all over the planet, whether they be Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Asia, or Oceania. Finding new players is perhaps even more crucial to your team’s progression than perfecting the best tactic or finding the best coaches, allowing you to improve the current ability of your squad, or prepare it for the future by bringing in young players to develop over time.

Before we tuck in to this list, please bear in mind staff stats can be highly variable across save, so we have not listed each scouts individual attributes below. But without further ado, here are the best options to fill out your scouting team with in FM22. 

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AUT, GER, SUI, POL

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Bad scouts don’t spend 20 years working for Bayern Munich. But after leaving the Bavarian giants in 2020, Grobe is now a free agent ready to get to work at your club. He won’t come cheap, but he is worth every penny if you can afford him.

FRANCIS CAGIGAO

Credited with finding Cesc Fàbregas, Francis Cagigao became a high profile name after an acrimonious departure from Arsenal in 2020, after a near 20 year association with the Gunners. Now working as a technical director with Chile’s national team, he can be lured back into the scouting world with a neat little pay rise. He has great knowledge across South America, which is always useful.

MAXIME SORIN (DAVID TREZEGUET)

FRA, ITA, ARG

Known in the game as Maxime Sorin, unless you’ve downloaded a file that fixes the name changes, David Trezeguet left Juventus in 2021 after a working with the club for six years during a golden era for the Bianconeri. Trezeguet’s wages are not cheap, but his stats are fantastic, and he comes with the added bonus of high-level knowledge of three very important countries: France, Italy and Argentina.

BOJAN KRKIC

ESP, SRB, BIH

No, it’s not *that* Bojan Krkić. It’s his dad. Not many people know this, but Bojan Krkić Snr. was a scout at Barcelona for 23 years in two separate spells between 1997 and 2020, as well as a 3 year stint with Manchester City from 2012-2015. He is another scout that comes with a hefty price tag, but he does come with knowledge of some very important countries.

JANNIK NIELSEN

NED, DEN, SWE, NOR

If you want to cover the key scouting region of Scandinavia (at least if you are starting at a club with less financial resources than the big Premier League clubs), then Jannik Nielsen is a must-sign scout. His 2.5 star reputation makes him fairly attainable for smaller clubs.

PAUL MONTGOMERY

CRYSTAL PALACE

Paul Montgomery has spent decades bouncing around English football, from Hartlepool to Newcastle, to Portsmouth, Derby, West Ham, Birmingham, and Aston Villa (plus a stint at Rangers in Scotland). Now with Palace, it is time to pay the €50,000 compensation fee and bring him to your club.

ROM, BUL, FRA

Radu Baicu is a chief scout candidate, with good people management skills. His main issue is that outside of France, the countries he has knowledge in are not high priortity, though they could be a good fit for you depending on the size of your scouting team.

DULIO MIRANDA

ATLÉTICO JÚNIOR

Dulio Miranda is one of the best value scouts available in the game. While his scouting range is limited to only Colombia, it could provide a good talent pathway to a club with no/few non-EU player restrictions. Most importantly, his wage is miniscule compared to some of the other scouts on this page, making him an affordable option even for second division clubs.

GÉRARD BONNEAU

FRA, SUI, BEL, CIV, SEN

He is the chief scout at Dijon, and you should consider Gérard Bonneau as the chief scout at your club, with his combination of good scouting and people management attributes, as well as the holy grail Model Citizen personality type. 18 years of work for Olympique Lyonnais show he has a pretty good track record for being able to identify high-level prospects.

ANTONIO MUR

ESTUDIANTES

ARG, COL, PAR, URU

The man, the myth, the legend. One of the best scouts in the game, hiding away in the second division in Argentina: Antonio Mur. If you don’t have this league loaded up, you won’t see Mur show up in your save. But if you do, Mur is a no-brainer. Simple as that. You will not be able to sign him straight away, as he has just joined Estdudiantes, but bide your time and get him in.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCOUT IN FOOTBALL MANAGER 2022?

Judging player ability, judging player potential, and adaptability are the three important attributes for scouts in Football Manager . The first two is the quality of their assessments, and adaptability dictates how flexible your scout is in his assignments.

To have an instant impact, you must consider what countries your scouts are familiar with in and try to find scouts that can expand your world knowledge.

WHAT ARE THE BEST COUNTRIES TO SCOUT IN FOOTBALL MANAGER 2022?

Brazil, Argentina, England, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Serbia, Croatia, Colombia, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Sweden are just a collection of some of the best nations to scout.

There will be good players to find (depending on your team’s level) in pretty much every country, though.

WHAT ARE THE BEST REGIONS TO SCOUT IN FOOTBALL MANAGER 2022?

Central Europe, Western Europe, South Europe, South America (South), and South America (North) are the five best regions to scout in FM22.

That said, there are plenty more. Scandinavia will produce a number of high-level talents at affordable prices, as will various different regions of Africa . Spread your scouts far and wide.

WHAT ARE THE BEST CLUBS TO SCOUT IN FOOTBALL MANAGER 2022?

It’s worthwhile scouting the academies of the biggest clubs: Tottenham, Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City, Borussia Dortmund, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, Lyon, Real Madrid. Sometimes there are bargains to be had, and some good release clauses at the Spanish clubs.

There are a lot of good deals on offer scouting other clubs with great academies: Palmeiras, Boca Juniors, Dinamo Zagreb, Independiente del Valle, Le Havre, Slavia Prague, Benfica, and so on.

There are a number of exceptional scouts in Football Manager 2022, many of whom will already be employed by clubs across the world, Europe and South America specifically.

Make the most of the staff search tool, where you can specify your searches to suits your specific needs. Set the minimum judigning ability/potential attributes to 17 tio find some of the best scouts in the game.

Paris Brunner

FM24 Best Japanese Players

Hamidou Makalou

Stefanos Tzimas

Héctor Fort

Eric da Silva Moreira

FM24 Best Head of Youth Development

FM24 Best Directors of Football

FM24 Best Scouts

FM24 Best Coaches

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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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Scouting in Football Manager 2024 | The Definitive Guide

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

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

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

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

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

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

Table of Contents

Editors pick.

• 5 Effective FM24 Scouting Tips to Improve Your Squad
• How to Scout for Wonderkids & Newgens
• Scouting & Analyzing the Next Opposition
• Football Manager’s Scouting Regions
• How to Scout for Players on Football Manager

How to approach scouting in Football Manager 2024?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. The Objectives of Scouting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1.1 The Club Vision’s influence on your Scouting Program

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

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

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

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

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

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

Club Visions

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

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

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

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

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

Creating a foundation for all scouting activities

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

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

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

2. Assessing the Scouting & Recruitment Team

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

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

Staff > Overview > Recruitment Team

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

READ MORE | Ranking the Best Football Manager 2024 scouts

3. The Scouting Centre

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

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

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

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

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

Organizational Structure

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

Scouting Activities

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

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

3.1 A Closer Insight to the Recommendation Panel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do you want to see the reports?

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

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

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

Taking further actions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Show All vs Specific

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

Filtering the Recommendations

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

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

Minimum Recommendation Levels

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

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

For a full overview of Scouted players go to either;

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

3.2.1 Taking advantage of Advanced Filters

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. The Recruitment Team

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.1 Required Staff Attributes for Scouting

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

A) For Scouting:

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

B) For Analyzing Players/Teams:

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

C) For Recruiting players:

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

5. Scouting Coverage

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

The scouting coverage screen has basically three intentions:

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

5.1 World Knowledge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Basic Information

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

On-Pitch Performance

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

Personality & Dynamics

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

Contract Status

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

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

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

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

You have the potential to affect it as well!

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

1. Nationality and Second Nationality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.3 How Scouting Range & Database Size Relates?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.3.1 The Different levels of Recruitment Packages: Scouting Range

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

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

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

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

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

5. Scouting Responsibilities

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

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

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

The different scouting responsibilities are;

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

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

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

5.1 Providing Scouts Feedback

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

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

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

5.2 Assigning Scouts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5.3 Scouting Meetings & Handling its Responsibilities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Delegating the responsibility:

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

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

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

How frequent should Scouting Meetings be held?

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

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

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

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

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

Actionable Steps to take at Scouting Meetings

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Setting up Scouting Assignments & Recruitment Focuses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scout > Reports > Scout Reports and/or Scout Assignments

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

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

Types of Scouting Assignments

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

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

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

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

6.1 Creating A Recruitment Focus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6.2 The Different Recruitment Focus Priorities:

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

6.2.1 Top Priority Recruitment Focus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6.2.2 The Standard Focus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6.2.3 Ongoing Focuses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6.2.4 Scouting Duration

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

The scouting duration depends on the priority:

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

6.2.5 Progress & Results of The Recruitment Focus

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

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

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

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

[image in progress]

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

6.2.6 Using templates to scout for player types

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6.3 Team Assignments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scouting > Scouting Coverage > Match and Team Analysis

6.3.1 Report on Specific Teams

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

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

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

6.3.2 Ongoing reports on next opposition

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

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

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

6.3.3 Ongoing Analyst Reports

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

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

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

6.4 Attending Specific Matches

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

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

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

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

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

7. Scouting Priorities

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

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

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

The solution is to manage the scouting priorities!

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

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

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

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

8. Conclusions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time, thanks for reading!

• X (Twitter)

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

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