Jok >> Среда Март 22 - 18:23

Hi at all, 

is it normal that in 6 years we have never found a goalkeeper with the youth team?

Numpty >> Среда Март 22 - 18:34, Уредено Среда Март 22 - 18:56

This question comes up a lot. I think we need an FAQ for things like this.  

I'm sure that you've had loads of youth keepers getting promoted from the academy, it's just that you've not noticed because their player profile said something else. 

Why do you rarely see any youth keepers at promotion?

What denotes a young keeper is that they start with some goalkeeper position experience.

The 'problem' is down to the way the star rating system works. All players have a star rating calculated for all 4 positions - and the position with the highest star rating is what you see on the players' profile. 

With U16 youth players they all start with very low skills so each position has a similar star rating. One player might be, for example,  Keeper 0.60, Defender 0.65, Midfield 0.65, Forward 0.70. In which case he would be called a Forward. 

The position experience contributes to the star rating, so in most cases the position on the player profile will match the higher position xp.  If a youth starts with lots of forward xp then he'll probably be called a forward. 

Since Keepers seem to have a lower star rating than other positions then youths starting with some keeper position xp will usually have a higher star rating for a different position, so that's what their profile will tell you. 

That's the reason why you rarely see any youth starting as a 'keeper'.

What to do

But none of that matters because any youth can be trained to play in any of the 4 positions. As soon as you start giving them some Blocking then their keeper rating will soon exceed that for the other positions and his profile will then say 'Keeper'.  

So you can train any youngster for any position you wish. Just ignore what position it says on their player profile. It's not important.

Balthazor >> Среда Март 22 - 18:43

If there is no special attributes that demand certain position(teamplayer, selfish), you may train any player to keeper or any position. Initial positional xp for academy pulls is small enough to be changed after couple of matches and giving xp to needed position.

Jok >> Среда Март 22 - 19:13

Many thanks Numpty and Balthazor