hattrick youth academy

Scouts

In general terms, it is advisable to have three scouts, and I prefer to have them in three different regions. If you want to train only certain skills, you may ask the scout to look only for the kind of players you need, but it doesn't seem to have a big influence in the players who he shows you. However, given that the manual says that when looking for an specific kind of player, it is more likely to find good players, it is always advisable to request a specific type of player. It also increases the risk of not finding anyone, but don't worry. The important thing is to find good players, but not many players.

Each time he shows you a player, pay attention to the following:

• Their age is the most important parameter. If he's 17, reject him. If he is 16, you should only accept him in exceptional cases. If the is 15, you should accept him. It is also advisable to accept the player who is brought to you by the last scout, so as to have an equilibrated youth team.

• Specialities: if he is quick or unpredictable, he might be a great forward or winger. If he's technical and has a good passing skill, he can be a great defensive forward. Being powerful is great for midfielders and defenders, and Head is a great speciality for any kind of players.

• Skills: you will always see a current skill level, as well as another skill's potential -it might be the same-. You need to remember that the skills shown are any of the three skills which have a greater potential -but remember that set pieces doesn't seem to be shown-. As a result, if the scout says that a certain player has a potential of weak, he won't probably be a great player. But if he says that a player has a potential of solid scoring and his actual level in passing is poor, you will know that, besides scoring, passing is one of the skills with a greater potential. He really looks like an impressive forward.

• Average level: a passable average level doesn't mean that the average level of all the player's skills is passable; it will be lower. The meaning of this is unknown; it may be the average skill level between the current skills and the potential of the three best skills. Although its meaning is still unknown, it may be regarded as a general indication of the player's level, but you shouldn't think about it as a really important thing.

Lineup

Don't care about match results. Not at all. The only thing that matters is developing the best young players you can. In fact, with the new reports, lineups with only nine players can be considered the best.

Important players, relevant players and golfers

The first thing you must think about is the priority level of each player. You need to sort your players according to their skills and potential in "important", "relevant" and "golfers". You can't have more than three important players, since if you want to train Scoring and Playmaking, you will only have 3 training spots -and just 2 if you prefer Crossing-. Relevant players are those who might be valuable when sold in the market, and the golfers are simply those whose only function is to fill the empty places in your lineup. If you have more than a single important player, you ought to choose who is the most important one. Training - both primary and secondary - should be optimal for the most important player.

Training

Before each match, you should follow these steps:


* Choose the main training for this match. It must be the most suitable training for the most important player. If there are several trainings which are equally important to him, you should choose the best one for your second and third important players. Just do not care about the other players. It is absolutely important to look after the most promising players. Through passes, wing attacks, shooting and defensive positions can't be good primary trainings, because there are better trainings for the same skills.



* Place the "important" and "relevant" players in your lineup. Let's suppose that you will be training playmaking in your next match. So you should place your three most important players as midfielders. The next two best players will play as wingers.



* Place the "golfers". This part has become more important with the new reports. We want the coach to talk about the "important" players and new potentially important players that you haven't classified yet. We don't want to spend our time by reading about players who we already know to be "golfers" and who do not train. To improve the comments, you must place in your lineup players with trained skills revealed. This means that "golfers" should be fired as soon as possible, or stay until they are 19. You should not to keep "golfers" for a half season, "spending" comments of the coach, then change them for a new "golfers" who need to reveal his skills. The best golfer is a player who comes with 15 years and a few days, and plays all his matches until he turns 19. The worst is the one who gets to play four matches, "spends" about 4-6 comments from coach and then is fired.



* Pick a secondary training. It must be a useful skill for "important" players which can be trained in the position where they play. Do not care about the other players. The individual training is always a reasonable side coached (but should never be primary).



* Choose the "Play creatively" tactic to increase the probability of seeing specialities. Other factors do not matter in the selection of tactics, so it doesn't make any sense to play with other tactic. (Playing MOTS / Normal / PIC is irrelevant.)


Note: All that has been mentioned before about avoiding putting in your lineup players with limited skills in your training positions is no longer valid. Now they are perfect for filling the gaps in your lineup!

Note (II): in order to have fewer comments about "golfers", best formations are those that only have 8 players and the goalkeeper, and nobody on the bench. However, if you don't have enough time to look after your young academy, is not advisable to continue this line. It is really important to always set in your lineup 9 valid players! So there mustn't be any player who has been recently promoted to the main squad, suspended nor injured, and nobody who has become 19! Those who do want to play with 9 should keep approximately 11 players to always have a couple extras in case there is a suspended or injured player.

Individual training

This kind of training makes all players train, but it isn't as effective as the others. That's why it's not a good choice for primary training, unless you have just started your youth academy. An argument which backs this kind of training is that, if you have many "relevant" players, all of them will train, and the "important" players will also train something useful. You can choose what each player will train when you place the players on your lineup. For example, a midfielder may train playmaking, often defending or passing, and sometimes winger, but never scoring or goalkeeping. Another reason to choose individual training is that you may get many more messages about a player having reached their skill limit. However, many times a player will have to train a skill which he can't develop any further, and an important player may have reached his limit without notice. In other words, this training may be better or worse than the others as a secondary training, depending on the risk that an important player may have reached his limit in the main training.

Matches

here are only two things about the match itself which we care about. The only thing which matters about match reports is if a player has done any special event which depends on an speciality, so as to know that the player has this speciality. Player stars, however, are important. Stamina and form don't change in young players, but their performances may change a bit, mainly if there's much difference between their current skill level and their potential. Nevertheless, this variation isn't really big, so stars are great for knowing a player's level in each skill. You should try ALL potentially important players in ALL those positions (unless the skills you want to try have already been revealed):

• Central defender, so as to know their defending level.
• Defensive midfielder, so as to know their playmaking level (if you already know their defending skill).
• Offensive midfielder, so as to know their passing level (compare it with their performances as defender and defending midfielder).
• Offensive winger, so as to know their winger level (after knowing their passing, defending and playmaking levels).
• Forward, so as to know their scoring level (after knowing their passing and winger levels).

If the player looks great, we must try to combine the training with the position where he's tested. Sometimes an alternative can be a single command to change the position in the 85th minute of a friendly. This is how we loose a minimal part of training, but you'll see the performance in this position is as if he had played the whole match in this position.

Trainer reports

You always get a trainer report the day after the match, and there is important information in it:

• He will always tell you about a player's current skill level of the skill which is being trained as primary, and another one about the secondary training.
• He may also tell you that a player has levelled up in a certain skill, but only if this skills has been revealed.
• If there are players who have reached their potential limit, he will always tell you about any of them. However, he will only talk about one of your players, so if he reports you that a player has reached his limit, he may be the only one, but it is also possible that others have reached their limit as well. When this comment appears, both the current skill level and the potential are revealed, and the coach won't talk about this player's skill again.
• He may indicate you how much a player will take to reach his potential. If it's about an specific skill, the trainer will tell you about it; if he doesn't, it is about the time he will need to reach the limit of all his skills. These also include hints like "some more weeks" (one level), "a season" (two levels) or "he will take so long that we won't see him reaching his potential in the youth academy" (three levels). It is unknown whether the same scale is used when he tells you about a player's "total" level (not about an specific skill). If this report is about an skill, both the current level and the player's potential in it are revealed.
• He may say that you should train a certain skill. Do not pay attention to this! It seems to refer to the skill in which a player would take longer to reach his potential, so he may easily tell you that your goalkeeper should train scoring. The only reliable information you can get from this is that a player has much potential to improve a certain skill - but it doesn't mean that it would be a good idea to change his training!
• He may tell you that a player has played well today. This report isn't really useful, but take a look to the number of stars. If they are more than his average, he will have lots of potential to improve the adequate skill for that position. A player only getting an average number of stars doesn't necessarily mean that he is near reaching his potential.
• He may reveal you an speciality. Hattricks.de website has a list of all comments in English and what they mean.

When Should I promote players to the main squad?

There isn't an easy answer for this question, as there are many factors involved. Firstly, you need to know whether you want to sell him for as much money as you can or if you want to train him in your senior team. If you want to sell him, it is usually better to promote him as soon as he has turned 17 and if he has few skill sub-levels (so as to avoid having wasted weeks of training). But we will focus on the case in which you want him for your team or the national team. In this case, the age isn't that important. The following factors are more relevant:

• The relation between his current skill level and the potential of his most developed skills is the most important thing. If you know that he's close to reaching his potential or he has already fulfilled it, you should promote him.
• Your senior team training. If you are training something which won't be useful for the player but you are thinking about changing your training soon, it would be advisable to wait until your training is something that the player needs.
• The other players in your youth academy. If you have other player(s) with other training needs, it would be better to promote him now. In any case, I must point at the fact that the lack of youth academies limit Nicaragua's national teams.

Regarding the day when you promote him, you should remember to pull him before your senior team's friendly match if you want to train him in his first week, or Saturday if you plan to sell directly, so the buyer could place him in the friendly-match lineup. Please pay attention to your league schedule and the date and time of the next friendly, so as to train as much as possible.

Advanced

I have already written about placing only nine players if you are really interested in getting good young players. There is also another way to get an advantage - by training 13% more than normal. You can achieve that this way:

• Always play in 4-team leagues (if you can be on-line, log into Hattrick as soon as the last match begins).
• Look for a new league which begins on the same day. If you are lucky, you might find some with only an available spot; these are the best choices.
• Make sure that your league will be full of teams before the first week of the league (it is unknown how much time is needed, but a few hours is usually enough). If you think it's not going to be full before that, you should leave that league and look for another one which begins a bit later. Be careful though - once, I couldn't log onto Hattrick when the last team entered the league, simply a bit late - and the matches were created a week later. The last time, it worked perfectly - the new league began less than two hours before the last match of the previous league had finished.
• If you don't find a suitable league, you can always start a 4-team league (international and open for all teams) which begins in two days. The exact time does not matter, so if you create it on Saturday night, you may begin on Monday morning. In this case, you would only lose a day when compared to the way described in the previous paragraph. Your league's name should begin with A (or a number) so that it appears among the first search results.

source:http://iht.smdesign.es/en/node/257