Subject: [idea] Seasonal new youth reform

I got this idea after I saw lots of potential decent youth players coming into the youth school today, not only in my team, but on lots of other teams as well.
Regardless of their age and starting level, with exception of fresh 16y old players with only a few weeks to go and already estimated adequate or good, each new youth player has zero value coming into your club, because they will always be too old an too weak to have enough potential to become a decent player.
I saw this 16y old average player coming into a youth school with 16 weeks to go, today and his optimal estimation would be around formidable, that is, IF he was underestimated and has max talent and then he will come out the youth school as a fresh 18y old.

So, my proposal is that youth players are already within your youth school from early ages, like f.e. 10y old.
They would never grow in skill until they turn 15. But new players can come into your youth school from the ages of 10 to 15. This way, with the age update, the entire ''class'' of 15y olds promote to your official youth school as 16y olds, having skills varying from tragic to weak as max.
Players from the age of 10 to 15 come within your school at random, ranging from 1 to 6 players, like it is right now.
On 13 weeks, there's a maximum turn out for 6 age groups of 78 players each season, but that requires you to get 6 players each week, and because of the random outcome this is practically impossible. But this way, normally an average of 30 to 40 players will enter your youth school on a seasonal basis. Divide this by 6 (age groups), so that means that on average you'll have around 5 new players for each age group.

Then let's set a maximum cap per group of 15 players, meaning they will not increase when the cap is reached.
Now, an extra setting could be that your youth coach needs assistants for each age group (extra money sink) and they, on their turn will give an estimation on the player's talent, not his skills. ranging his talent within 6 sub categories, so you could manage to see which players would be sacked over others, when your cap for the specific age group has been reached.
The sub categories could be:

-Very ppor
-Poor
-Weak
-Average
-Good
-Very good

Players need to be within a specific age categorie for a whole season to be estimated as such and the level of estimation should be dependent on the level of a youth assistant coach.
Imo, a youth assistant coach should have a range of 6 possible levels, because having more is actually too wide a range to have for this kind of coaches.

Again, the levels of coaches should range from very poor to very good, the same way the youth players could be estimated.
This way you actually know that the best level a player could be estimated is the level of youth coach you have.
This would count for each age group, except the age group of 15y olds.
This assistant should be the same as all the other coaches, ranging from tragic to unearthly, because this age group will start counting the skill value of the players.
Each player coming into the age group of 15 will always start from tragic, but the talent of the player will determine the progression of his skill. So if a player has been estimated as very good, you know that he'll be rising his youth skill up to weak as maximum when he will turn 16.

Now, the number of weeks a player will stay within the youth school should always be determined when the player comes into the age group of 15 and always with a minimum of 13 weeks, but with a maximum of 47 weeks (= the current 34 maximum + the 13 weeks of the age group of 15).

At least, this way you could see the potential of a player much faster and it will be more meaningful to manage your youth players.
(edited)

Interesting idea!
... I don't like it. ;-)

A new system that requires so many words to explain is overcomplicated imo in terms of
a) gameplay
b) coding (I guess)
c) balancing number and level of youth players created by this new system -> balancing the economy
d) lag time when opening youth school until first youth is ready
e) not fixing the issue with boring (and then irrelevant) youth matches

Thanks for your opinion.

I'll fill in some answers, though I don't have all the answers and this is indeed an idea, not a worked out feature...
I explained it as thoroughly as possible to make the means to it obvious for everyone.

a) The gameplay doesn't have to change at all. The youth school just get some sublevels before you reach the 16 year olds which would function as they do now.
b) coding doesn't have to be difficult, just the addition of the sublevels, which is a one time coding, as well as the levels of the youths and the assistant coaches. It's just an addon, nothing too fancy
c) balancing number and level of youth players...I thought about this and that is a valuable remark. I don't really know how to balance the overpowered youth players, but I'm sure there must be a reasonable solution for it. Each brilliant feature started from an idea that needed work to refine.
d) The new schooling system can seemlessly been intergrated into the existing school system, so all existing youth players remain as they are. It's only the new players that will start from earlier years. Also, starting from the U10 may perhaps be too early and f.e. we can start from the U12... And the chances of a new youth player coming into the school as a U12 should be slim. But I think this is not really an issue.
e) this issue is a complete other feature than my idea. You can say that the work of the new history feature didn't fixed the ME....obviously.