I used to do wacky saves where I'd just force smaller countries to have quality newgens. I found out that upping the teams' youth recruitment & reputation values made considerably more difference than the country's youth rating.

Give the Welsh league 1 billion but bring back teams playing in England like Cardiff Swansea Newport Wrexham and Merthyr Town Attempt 8

Potential Ability is just as interesting than Current Ability and could be used as another Metric to watch, for example someone from India may be generated with a PA of 200 but due to being stuck in India and never making a move to a club with good training/Youth facilities the CA may be stuck around the 100mark. - the ones with CA over 170 all are at the big clubs with the facilities to let them grow.

Me and my brother usually play one save with the "real" database every year on FM, and then we start messing with it for more variety. One of the things we always do is playing around with the youth ratings and using fake names, so we get to play in a world where talent is more widely distributed. Based on that, I can share some insights that might be helpful for future experiments around this area (also a disclaimer that we haven't done anything on FM 23 yet, so there is always a chance these mechanics have changed a bit): - Youth ratings have always been kinda comparative, rather than quantitative. This means that putting all countries at 200 is similar to putting them all at 100 or just 1 (this is statistically not true, but let's go with it for the sake of simplicity). When we start a save, the game will take a snapshot of how the potentials are distributed amongst the existing players and will try to keep that status quo as players retire and newgens come through. So even if we make all countries 200, the number of high potential players tend to increase, but only marginally, from what we have always experienced. In general, the game will keep the quality of the world around the starting levels of the save; - Academies and youth facilities seem to also play a huge part in where the best players come through. So if we want to achieve the best results at distributing the talent across the world, we also need to max those for every single club; - In the first topic I mentioned how the game attempts to preserve the status quo for potentials. This is the same for geographical distribution of players. So if you start a save with 10k players in England, the game will try to keep the number around 10k as years pass by. On the other side, if your starting database has only 1 player from American Samoa, in 10 years you might have 3 or 4, maybe even get luck and reach 10, but you will never have a lot of players there, no matter how high the youth ratings are. Which means that even if England and American Samoa have the same ratings, the fact that one has thousands more players than the other will be a huge advantage for receiving the best newgens during the youth intake distribution the game does. In order to have a save where there is a lot more balance and unpredictability in national team football, we have to start with a database where all countries have a similar number of players, as much as possible. So it is true when you mention that loading a league can be an advantage, but mainly because this automatically increases the number of players loaded for such country; - I know there is one more reason why loading a league can be an advantage, but that one is slightly more difficult to explain, as it is related to the mechanics on how FM distribute newgens every year. Go into any save and choose a fairly important country, one which always has good players, but also one you haven't loaded any leagues for. A country like Serbia, for example. Now go to the country page, transfers and then youth intake, and scroll through the years. You will notice that there is a pattern. Every year, the most important clubs in the country will get 1 or 2 newgens. And then there will also be a couple of random clubs which will get loads of players at once, like 7 to 10. FM keeps a stable flow of newgens coming through the most important teams, but also fills out clubs that haven't got an intake in years, in order to keep the number of players from that country at the same level as in the beginning of the save, making up for the players that have retired. When you look into that batch of players that get added to a single club, most of them will be consistently bad. They are like cannon fodder that just gets added so the game can keep the numbers balanced. However, when you have leagues loaded, then all the clubs that are part of that league get regular youth intakes, not just the most important ones. This doesn't only mean more new players in general, but also that every team has a higher chance of "drawing" good players (especially if you increase their youth facilities), instead of being stuck with such "mandatory cannon fodder".

right as i was trying to find a video of yours i havent watched, you posted this, brill

Would be interesting to test the "leagues loaded" stuff a bit more and re-run it with the same parameters, but only have the South African league loaded in. See how that effects results.

Be good to do this but so the team currently ranked 200 gets a 200 youth rating and team ranked 1st gets 1 currently etc and see how it changes over time

It's even more interesting doing this with modded leagues added to the game too (not added as playable, just added to the database). I'm currently in 2026 with a database of 80,000 players in fm21, but with 220 leagues added in the start screen, just not as playable or view-only. There are currently 477 newgens in the database with a potential rating of 170 or higher, with 27 having reached that potential already (remember this is only 2026, so even the earliest newgens would only be 23/24 by now, so that number will definitely increase).

Would of been good if you investigated New Zealand runner up performance.

The thing is: I play a lot of FM mobile. ( the fast stupid paced version of FM) I’ve been playing it since FM18 And what I’ve seen is: when you get the option of creating 100 players in your country, probably only one will develop to be good. But when you have a non playable country producing youngsters, like Brazil, 6/10 are wonderkids. The best player I had was a Gabonese 🇬🇦 who I sold for over 130M. And he was the only player from Gabon. I’ve seen Venezuela producing kids as other smaller countries from America. Asia and Africa. The Baltic area does produce good wonderkids too.

Loving the content Tom!

Hey Tom, What if you add classic prem teams into the current season and see how they would fair, like the invincibles or Man U treble team.

What happened to the Lincoln Loco 4? Why not start one with Rivadavia (Lincoln) in Argentina? Need to continue the Lincoln Locos!!

Any remember which year SI got this a bit mixed up - think it was FM2004 or 2005? Basically the three best players on my save were from Syria, Grenada and San Marino.

As a South African, I approve of this video.

Hi TomFm. Any chance you could do a quick vid on what mods you are using for skins, faces and whatnot please?

Haven’t watched yet, but surely my country Nigeria, with over 200 million people, should produce wonder kids left and right with max youth rating… right? Edit: eh kind of, 26th in the end isn’t too bad for us considering we’re below 30th irl 😂😂

8:01 Ceara is already an surprise, as so as Cinciano and Botafogo

4:54 that the Keepers name is Tshabalala makes me so happy - only legends know this name

intresting to test this again with 2 other big population countries like china indonesia with their leagues loaded and do some smaller one like south korea and coloumbia maybe the population density of the bigger population countries affects the production of good players because the country has a large pool of bad to worse players that get shiffted through the game, and that maybe why someone like south africa did better with a population a 1/4 of Usa becuase the game might find it easier to give those countries the good players

How can you improve a countries youth rating naturally throughout your save? does doing a build a nation save also improve the youth rating?

I think the reason for France and Spain generally producing the most higher rated players is down to something you didn't account for in the edited database. The clubs they come from themselves. For instance, PSG would have had a far better club youth rating and better facilities than any Indian club side and therefore should have a better chance of producing the wonderkids. It would have been interesting to see which clubs the unusual wonderkids for different countries actually joined the game from. I would bet a fair few came through bigger teams. I would suggest a smaller scale re-test where you take San Marino and Andorra, up their National Youth Ratings to maximum but also all the club Youth Ratings too and see what impact that has on both the clubs performances, ability to produce wonderkids and the national sides.

Could you swap all teams in the english football system with the best non europeans/south american teams in the world based on their rankings? It would make for an interesting experience, I think :)

The 007 music genre on the background is making me laugh my ass off!

I think maybe keeping track of Potential Ability of 170× per country too would have been a good idea. Maybe for the next video.

I think Potential Ability would have been the more appropriate stat to check, rather than Current Ability, because the clubs in the USA, India and SA would have much worse training facilities, which would hinder folks reaching their full potential. So because the clubs in those leagues weren't able to maximise the potential of those newgens, they were less likely to reach the 175 bar.

may i ask how do u simlaute the go on holiday fast until u simulated it fr 100yrs?

Feel like Point #1 is a bit misleading. The number of players with 170+ PA is almost always going to be higher a few years into the save compared to the original database because that's just how the game works. I bet if you load up a normal, unedited save and simulate it 20 years into the future you'll find that the number of 170+ PA regens is higher in the future than it is in the original database.

Did you check wonderkids with nationality OR second nationality = South Africa? They might move to a European country at 16 and switch nationality before representing their original nation

I just love the indian key player 99 years in the future. Looking at his position he could be the libero i always have been looking for.

10:51 south africa hosted an additional 3 world cups, spain winning all. coincidence

I guess I have to wait till 2074 to see the All Whites make a World Cup final

What final were Belgium in? Must have missed that one!

South Africa making it all the way up to 18 is a fever dream, shame this can’t happen in real life

I remember I used a database that did exactly this in like FM18/19. I would really love it if you could release this as a downloadable file or if someone could point me in the direction of something similar

I suspect Derby, being in such terrible financial state, got bought by some Arabian prince and basically turned into another PSG, cause FM won't let clubs to colapse.

Can you make the perfect team and see how many titles, Champions Leagues etc, they can win in a hundred years

How'd the lowest ranked teams like San Marino get on in the rankings?

give each nation one perfect wonderkid and see which helps the most

You should put a perfect 13 year old Winger into Barca's B team or youth team, and see if it can have a better career then messi!

Bring Celtic and rangers to the English league, but start them in league 2 and see how they do after 20years

Not sure about the south africa being helped by the league being loaded, I've simmed a few unedited saves to ~90 years in the future and everytime south Africa made the top 10

you should have show potential ability and current ability of each player

"Belgium are very good in real life and have been to finals". Our best result ever was our 3rd place in 2018. We have never been to a World Cup final unfortunately.

I always play with all countries 200. Makes the game more fun

With this, I predict the US will come third in the WC but never, ever, ever get into the final. Well, only half right. Which is typical.

How about I tell you that there is a possibility that weaker nations like Eritrea can become world champions?

Austria won the World Cup in 2042 that's insane

I think there are many assumptions made in these videos to try and support the hypothesis, but it's more likely the game normalizes things. The game's code does a good job at making a game, so if everyone has a 200 then there has to be a coding line to prevent the average player rating from rising too easily. Going from 25 to 40 with all these changes definitely should've created a much higher number, but since it did not we would have to presume the game has code to prevent this.

next do 1 for every country

you should make one with the youth ratings reversed. for example if a country has a 170 youth rating then it should become 30

no dynamic youth rating wont work with non country's not in the game its only for base country's and it takes at 50 years for some country's to go up 3 rating or less , sports interactive really need to fix it

finally 🇿🇦 In a experiment....

🔥🔥🔥

1:00 Russian wonderkids 🤣

Pelase do some experiment to liga 1 Indonesia

Denmark losing 3 world cup finals, big F

Thank for kepting india league

Please give subtittle Indonesia, because many Indonesia people playing game Football Manager..

Is the country population matters in creating newgens?

Put World Cup winning team Argentina in the Premiership to see if they are better?

Can make tv deal to Italian league maybe they will back the strongest league as nineteen’s Like if you agree the suggestion

I do love these videos but I really don’t like the new sounds in the background. Drowns out you speaking

Belgium has never been in a World Cup final

This theory is so dumb to me… You can’t list all the natural numbers, same way you can’t list all (0,1). Infinity is infinity, there is no larger infinity

Flip the youth ranking around. Give the worst team(s) in the Fifa Ranking a 200 and the best Teams a 1

Should I wait until 2050 to see my favorite team winning the champions league 😢 5:55

Give National League Team Asian Wonderkids

Please make Lebanon be in the video 🤲

I love these experiments but these older vids I just can't get through them, that background music is atrocious

redo this experiment and give them perfec facilities

Release thé database

Flip the Scottish leagues please.

I must say , that the subtitles baked into videfo are really off-putting. This works only if there is a dynamic montage of slide consisting of text (and maybe some simplified graphics). Please consider removing them :)

Honestly think this is a bit boring. To me, testing the mechanics of the game like this is less interesting to watch than your videos creating fun scenarios and seeing how they play out, which are often great.

First