We Finally Found the Best Way to Scout

[@thegule]

This is a really helpful video. I’m only part way through but the info is already extremely valuable. Add an additional level of complexity with hidden attributes and this method of scouting is so effective. Great video!

[@Roscododger]

5:48 This would've been very helpful in firing the scout that found Luke Edwards.

[@puig031]

I love that there were 5 stars and that the player was in a Brazil jersey. Great details!

[@oj397]

wearing the number 5 at that

[@farrellyb]

Great video this was really frustrating in FM22. I also find that effectiveness reduces over time, after about 6 months the reports dry up

[@TubbyBrewster1]

Would be a nice little series to have a video per region where you distribute a ranking / grading of countries to focus on within that kind of region. Guessing many of us will still use that logic of regions even if we don’t actively select a region.

[@thargoff]

Great video, and great work by Tomleggosaurus, love the animations! And "Clebinho Jr." :)

[@tomleggosaurus1]

Thank you very much!

[@fivesquared7822]

Luke Edwards and Clebinho reference in the animation, I like it

[@samsteff6396]

Just an excellent video, produced well and the little Easter eggs (Damn you Luke Edwards) are great. Top marks all around.

[@1986renagade]

I’ve never done region scouting, nation is all I really do and it’s always been good. But the speaking the language bit I hadn’t really considered, but makes sense. I mainly struggle financially or tactically. Great content as usual!

[@Jake-hy6wv]

Probably the most informative FM video I’ve seen in a while. Top top work

[@baumstammbruno]

While i really like the change in that it just feels much more natural to have a scout in two maybe three or four countries and actually gives you some decisions to make rather than essentially scouting the whole world with 20 scouts. It's also such an SI thing to keep the options in that just straight up don't work anymore in a way that appears broken.

[@adityaharikrishnan1718]

OMG THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN TESTING AND IT HAD BEEN WORKING! me and Zealand on same wavelength

[@cubachris3812]

Interesting adjustment of the strategy, thanks a lot for your simulations. I made good experiences to youth national team as well, but also when scouting top clubs when the league is loaded went well.

[@cadszoid]

The U-20 World Cup/World Cup or International Competition scouting is my go to scouting lately, on my current save (albeit FM20) I bought 2 insanely good Chinese players for my team and now they're like 40m+ players.

[@stephenbell9531]

Award this guy for services to Football Manager. Top work my man.

[@LenorHPV18]

I freaking love that intro.

[@flawlessfootballmanager9392]

This is amazing stuff! Just adjusted my scouting to 3-4 countries per scout as well: reports flying in! Really cool!

[@Hyde_Hill]

Glad to know I have been doing individual nation scouting for ages now. Think I told you how to do that on stream a good while back or here in the comments section. Would indeed be interested to know for sure if ongoing or until finished works better. My gut says until finished this FM

[@MountainDrew2000]

Brilliant intro animation 🔥

[@jamesl-s1839]

Great video again, the only thing I would add is I wouldn't leave them on until finished or ongoing, I've found after a year of scouting you get 1 maybe 2 reports back after wards but when I restart the whole scouting every year I get around 10 new reports all with good potential. I did a test save for 3 seasons and after season one got 2 potential wonderkids from Portugal when left on until finished and ongoing. Did the same with restarting the assignment every year and after year one still got 8 to 10 a year, one ended up winning the balon 'dor at age 22

[@MVPBallingD.Rose96]

So set the duration for a year?

[@jamesl-s1839]

@@MVPBallingD.Rose96 that's what I do and find I get a lot more reports

[@MVPBallingD.Rose96]

@@jamesl-s1839 gotcha! Thanks 🙏🏿

[@bobmcbobg1696]

Yup. Scouting national teams and their U20 or whatever is a great thing to do. I started a save with Salford City in league 2 and found a RB in the welsh under 20’s who is at championship level. Signed for free. Beast.

[@davidrichards613]

To be honest this makes so much more sense... imagine asking one guy to scout several countries across a continent at once. It stands to reason the wider the area the slower and less prolific the return on talent.

[@tobiasberchtold5441]

It's frustrating that SI doesn't appear to be testing these things

[@metro3313]

Maybe it was intentional?

[@Writeous0ne]

why? its logical that if you scouted somewhere, then stopped scouting it, your knowledge would decrease because the attributes, form, age, contracts, values, potentials etc of a player are not absolutes... they are ongoing and constantly changing.

[@Hyde_Hill]

@@Writeous0ne True however the pace at which it is happening has markedly increased as to before making scouting and building knowledge glacial as compared to the part. In the past it was arguably over quick however they went a bit too far in the other direction imho. I have one scout in just Belgium for 2 years and he speaks French and good stats. Still no full knowledge.

[@fred_fotch_baseball]

@@Hyde_Hill What about Dutch though?

[@camorraII1]

@@Hyde_Hill arguably 2 year is not that much. It would easily take 5 years irl to have full knowledge of a country like belgium

[@Dragonfallz]

There really should be a way of creating an assignment which scouts for teams that have been relegated, would be a quick way of seeing players that are being let go etc.

[@montehasspoken]

I just started watching this after seeing a couple of Save your saves (following Ben saying on stream you were great / the network game) and WOW this is great. I set my 16 scouts to nations and picked ones who speak the languages. It's been a month and I already have like 12 reports.

[@DavidzRR]

Meanwhile me on sky bet league 1 only being able to scout england 😂😭

[@montehasspoken]

@@DavidzRR yeah I can imagine, I usually start with Chesterfield or (NL south )Weston Super Mare (sadly Weston are out of the running due to relegation). This time round I've done a Lollujo style "non league to legend" with Hereford (moving to Kilmarnock and then West Ham)

[@DavidzRR]

@@montehasspoken funny that you picked Chesterfield because i've picked Chester. Right now i'm at 1st place of sky bet league 1 and cruising my way through leagues

[@montehasspoken]

@@DavidzRR family's from chesterfield so been going there for years. Problem is it gets harder each FM cos they've gone from league 1 pushing for playoffs to National League inside 5 years

[@DavidzRR]

@@montehasspoken personally im from israel and its a pain in the a** to go far here cuz of strict foreigners rules

[@martincizmarik9680]

I am in year 2043 and honestly I wait till end of season and only scout players from NextGen top 50 list. Now I can at least give my scouts something to do. Thanks for your advice.

[@JohnnyMaverik]

I quite like the SecondYellowCard approach. You need good scouts or step one won't work but when you have developed your back room staff (or if just playing with a team who already have good scouting resources) you just que up a load of team reports, generally the best to use are national under 21/19 sides but you can do clubs and senior national sides as well. Those reports get info on all the players who play for that side, not a lot but enough that it'll separate players who might be 5 star players from the many who definitely aren't, generally he finds as many as 4/5 per team but often it's 1/2 or even none. He takes those potentially good players and then just keep queing them for one week scouting reports, dropping off those who fall below the 4 star potential or if 21 or over the 4 3 star current ability mark. I'm not sure it's the most efficient but other than queing up all the reports if like him you do it in one big batch (between streams) it doesn't take much effort and means you have an awareness of a lot of players.

[@Madbaboons1]

As for scouting specific players, I think you need to set the assignment yourself to be the actual scout in the country the player is in. I've found that if you let the Chief Scout do it then it ends up with a random scout getting the assignment. So your Germany scout could end up scouting a player in Brazil while your Brazil scout ends up scouting a player in Germany. I use the default wish list to keep track of players I want to scout and then assign the next player when one report is finished. So a scout isn't bouncing between clubs and you get the reports you really want sooner. Finally I scout on a weekly basis, that way if anything comes up in a report that makes me not want the player I can end the process right away. It's a lot of micro management, but I think all of these make scouting more efficient by saving in travel time and the amount of time scouting duds.

[@piersonjamesa]

100% agree, my one tip is i have all my scouts renamed to say which country i have them in and then use that to quickly assign them to a player off the weekly meeting from the drop down menu. I also have 2 floating scouts to pick up players i dont have a nation scout assigned to, or if i have alot of workload for them. I also have avoided brazil due to cost and have only focused on countries with active leagues and have found that very useful.

[@MyChoubaka]

I'm glad I found this out early in my save. Helped me a lot in building a strong squad fighting for UCL in Spain coming from LaLiga 2. But wasnt aware about the importance of the spoken language before the videos. Thanks a lot and keep the great work !

[@manuelbarros4898]

This was just amazingly helpful. Thanks!

[@gianstam6345]

One of the best video out there

[@wagwanbennydj6003]

I don't play fm at the moment I used to but I just love watching your videos bro!

[@politisdimitrios2307]

I am glad this is working on FM22. I used to try that on all previous FM but the result wasn't good with more than 2 nations!

[@terenz3890]

Can you help me man? I did it but the results are terrible. My scouts are struggling to find anything.

[@politisdimitrios2307]

@@terenz3890 yeah, it doesn't actually work. I send to one nation for each of my scouts.

[@alexmay863]

That cartoon intro was great man.

[@Kimera794]

Zealand's dedication is elite.

[@DietYogui]

I admit that genie scout made me ignore completely the scouting, but also less exciting. Thanks for the info

[@PyroPattie]

I never understood how individual scouting of a specific player and the scouting assignments of for example a nation interact. So if I decide to scout a player for a week, will the scout who scouts that player stop his assignment for that week and only scout that player? Or does he continue his assignment of scouting a nation aswell?

[@christopherteer4764]

This is what I want to find out more about as well. Sometimes you receive scout reports for a player say based in Argentina coming from a scout who I may have say assigned to Mexico because an Argentine team played in Mexico for whatever, yet if I ask them to scout player further for a week, which scout is the one who will scout this? Surely if I ask the scout based in Argentina to scout him further for 1 week, this should be quicker/less scout cost overall, but sometimes it just seems to wipe the original scout report from the Mexico based scout and starts the entire process over again..

[@rogervanaman6739]

It seems either they can be in 2 places at once (unlikely) or they are taking time away from where they are assigned to catch a game halfway around the world. Honestly they need to add an assignment to take care of the priority scout list, maybe even make that assignable to your GM/DoF to help out smaller teams. (I know you can manually assign them, but I think this is a cleaner solution)

[@Lovro00000]

@@christopherteer4764 Assigning scouts is completely random in FM22. It’s most likely a third scout has scouted that Argentinian player.

[@Hyde_Hill]

@@Lovro00000 You can assign specific scouts. However indeed if you hit the scout for 1 more week or full knowledge button then the game will assign a random one based on capacity. So that it get's spread out. As a singel scout can generaly handle max 5 tasks before putting future ones on hold.

[@piersonjamesa]

@@christopherteer4764 So my experience is that you have 2 floating scouts with no assignment, so if you dont have argentina scouted he/she just flys around the world scouting individual players not in your normal catchment area. One othe tip i have is to rename your scouts to the country they are assigned to, then you can quickly assign them to a player that pops up in the scouting meeting.

[@julizzi8314]

Feels good to know that I have been always scouting right 👍

[@siddus19]

Before video: "What could I possibly be doing wrong? How hard can it be?" Half-way through: "Oh my God! I'm doing it wrong!"

[@madtitan44]

Good Job on Intro Ayal 😂😂😂

[@bbqR0ADK1LL]

Can you try sending a scout to Brazil & Portugal? Does it matter that they're not next door to each other?

[@davidrichards613]

The game itself has tips about travelling scouts I'm sure? I'd guess a guy flying to Brazil and back from Portugal is going to slow progress.

[@Gwynbleidd1724]

Z really is the scouting guru on FM

[@J_Vermillion]

Wouldn't it make sense to make scout range a single country, when that country is relatively large and has relatively high youth rating? In this video, you have put a scout range on Brazil and Argentina together, but those countries, in my book, warrant a scout each, especially considering the language is different. But, Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay for example don't have large scouting pools, so it makes sense for a single person to cover them. Same could be said for Ex-Yugoslavia countries, though I don't know if the game treats Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian as vastly different languages when they really are not.

[@nunoandresilva93]

They don't, i once did a save with Rijeka and after some time i was fluent in serbian and bosnian

[@TheDieseI]

With how Zealand is specifically scouting (U23, Superb ScPot) I think you have to cast a wider net even in the bigger countries for that scout to be at max efficiency. But, if your parameters are wider than that, putting a scout just in one country might be worth it.

[@CSMrBalls]

@@nunoandresilva93 thats because the Bosnian and Croatian language is basically spicy Serbian. A serb

[@Ciiipp]

the best way to search regens is to search them trough player search by setting the key attributes for each role at at least 11 and 17 years... and set up scouting reports on those findings. For example if you search a Regen Central Defender (DC): Tackling - Marking - Heading - Acceleration - Pace = 11 or more.... if a guy at that age has those attributes it's a high chance is good, but you can filter them out by scout report 1week with your 20 Potential Ability Scouts

[@davidrichards613]

Only works if you play Easy Mode with attribute masking off.

[@notlacin4961]

@@davidrichards613 but with attribute masking off it gives an estimate of the stat e.g. it'll say Marking - '9-14'

[@spenceremerson5044]

Is there any difference in assigning a scout to scout nations that are not in a shared region? For example assigning someone to scout Belgium, France, and Switzerland vs France, Spain, and Portgual?

[@Hyde_Hill]

Been doing that for a while. Have not noticed a difference. As scouting knowledge has more to do with Nationality/ experience scouting/playing/coaching somewhere.

[@_girltype]

3:00 - Z mixes south america (west) and south america (east) nations here so it should be okay, just be mindful of adaptability / language, and geographic distance ballooning scouting costs if you're making really wild selections

[@admthrawnuru]

I was wondering the same. It makes more sense to bundle by language rather than region if not. Brazil/Portugal for example.

[@julizzi8314]

In Europe I would recommend to send one scout to max. 2 countries. Better each country with own scout, if you have enough slots

[@iijackxd4031]

I dont get reports back quickly when I had. One scout scouting 4 nations I had one scouting Argentina Brazil Columbia and Peru and in 4 months I got 1 report back for 1 player I don’t understand

[@thenortherncampaign6474]

Ok, tried nation scouting, good lord it makes a huge difference to the amount of recommendations I've been getting, thank you so much for that. Quick question though, anyone got tips for getting reports and increased knowledge from nations you can't send scouts to specifically? Thinking the likes of Bosnia etc.

[@seif1496]

1:55 By "anymore" do you mean that region scouting was effective in previous FMs?

[@AnuraagWagh]

Thanks Zealand for solving this

[@MrPotato-]

The 5 stars for the Brazilian wonderkid knocked out🤣🤣

[@nonofurbusiness1168]

This doesnt work at all for me in fm24, for some reason my scouts are not finding any players in their respective nations, for example most of the u20 u21 squads of european and south american nations were barely scouted when i double checked. I wonder if im doing something wrong or not understanding how this works exactly.

[@tobiathon80]

Z, could you do a video on how player roles compliment each other. Particularly mid-field.

[@DavidzRR]

I think it's more about how the roles mostly compliment the system that you wanna run on your team. Obviously there are some roles that compliment eachother very well but i don't think you can go too wrong with the roles. My tip is just try to imagine what the player would do when you give him a certain role and if it fits what you're trying to achieve. If you need any help feel free to contact me i believe i'm pretty decent.

[@MrMeoow91]

Came back to this video and Scouting in FM22 is really broken. I setup exactly how Zealand did and even with 2 Scouts in both Spain and Portugal. My scouts missed all the Hot Prospect on all of the top flight clubs. I had to manually click and scout them myself.

[@strahinjakovacevic9992]

I swear Z, every time you say floresdorf(whatever) you look like complete dork. Love you man, keep it up!

[@tushartakku]

Now that you have a proper analysis team that did the premier league simulations, why not work on scouting testing with them? I feel like something like scouting tests would be a far better use of that team, as opposed to something like premier league simulations. This video seems so hand-waving with stuff like "rule of thumb" etc., and y'all know as well as I do that this is not the ultimate definitive answer you're looking for. It's merely a quick-fix to replace the usual "wiring the world" for now, that leaves you with more questions than answers (e.g. Ongoing vs Until Finished, how many countries is too many countries, how about Brazil and Portugal for their shared language, etc).

[@freshandy24]

Still a great video. However, what is your current approach on FM24? Is it still nation scouting? Are there any updated impressions from your side?

[@giacomogarbin4629]

Hey Zealand, for a new career idea i suggest you the Pro Vercelli. it's a club in the third tier of Italy right now, but in the past, the team won 7 championship. you could bring them back to glory for our city

[@brentparkinson4966]

I have been scouting in nations such as Austria and Poland, but in those assignments I am not getting any results back from those nations, instead I’m getting reports back from players in leagues such as the Spanish league, the French league and the German league…. Why would this be?

[@jsedi89]

Got the Scout's honour achievement thanks to this video!

[@dylandench8684]

Great vid and really helpful. Just started this and been doing it for a bit. I’ve got some scouts in Israel , France and Spain who are attending matches but some scouts in Holland , Belgium , Croatia and Serbia who aren’t even attending matches - any suggestions why this is the case?

[@NickSandM]

NIce FM forced poeple to scout the way ive been doing it since fm10, [side note get scouts with multiple country knowledge have them find the people then send your best to re scout once 100%, worked for me for 12yrs]

[@matthewsparrow904]

Maybe in the next game instead of hiring a scout and them working individually they could give scouts a team to work so they can keep track of multiple nations at the same time without losing knowledge, like better scouts will have more people under there management an therefore more ability to scout large regions (dunno if that’s how it works IRL but just an idea) Either that or give them a new attribute called ‘networking’ where the higher that stat the better they can scout multiple nations.

[@hman8338]

IRL, teams don't have 20 scouts, they have hundreds who also work as youth team coaches and such around the world. Then they point out the more promising players to the team which employs them as a scout.

[@joannewong3213]

Hi Zealand, what's the most number of seasons you've played in a save without going on holiday for lengthy amounts of time?

[@fmwilliam7248]

I do wonder how this would work for competition scouting. Would you get the same or more reports?

[@philipmorgan819]

I wonder if region scouting would be more effective if you sent multiple scouts to the same region?

[@ah_effe]

Do you need to have countries in the same continent? Wouldn't a portugese speaking scout be more efficient in Brazil, Portugal, Cap Verde than within spanish speaking countries?

[@diogonunes2020]

Man oh man, that air is smooooooooooookin' Zealand

[@tamer6453]

Should I change the transfer budget? For example in your save, it appears as automatic which equals to 700k. However, I want to get scout reports of much more expensive wonderkids like 10M-20M.

[@GreenFuryFM]

Great video! 👍 But what about scouting an International competition? Is it worth it or is much better sending scouts to specific nation?

[@javorgeorgiev6130]

I wonder if playing away matches can help get my players scouted for when i want to sell. I know loaning them away works and them starring in the national squad. Can I arrange a friendly at home with a club i want to scout players from, but dont have the budget to go abroad?

[@vasilijefilipovic1761]

Does this work for fm20 and fm21 or is it just for fm22. Should I stick to region scouting?

[@KhaledAlMutairi10]

That AS Roma kit 💛❤

[@pantelas2010]

What about recruitment analysts? Do they just work while being unassigned? Because I see in my game they are always unassigned and I can't seem to be find an option to assign them anywhere

[@admthrawnuru]

Seems like it's modelling the scout's physical location, but rather than spending x time in each country he's dividing some preset limit by the number of countries. Regardless, thanks for the info.

[@jonathanberggren9805]

Which FM year was region scouting better than nation scouting? I am still playing FM20.

[@shebyfc]

Only applies to fm22 or also FM21

[@admthrawnuru]

Does the nation need to be playable or viewable for this to work?

[@majesticfool]

I tried doing this and my scouts aren't getting any reports back. All im looking for is new prospects with no other variables. Is it due to region/country knowledge lacking? Do i need to enable these foreign leagues in settings?

[@piersonjamesa]

If the league is not in the game i get minimal, to no reports back, so i only scout live leagues in my games and i get reports back fairly often.

[@bnek8547]

Hopefully scouting In FM23 advances further. Data has changed the game regarding scouting. In FM terms sending a scout off to Serbia for example and hoping he strikes lucky and finds a gem seems outdated. I could sign-up to Wyscout myself and produce a list of potential targets without ever watching a game of football in the country.

[@badman1275]

Needed this

[@ThePlayaJohn]

Would this work with end of contract scouting? I'm in the 3rd tier of Norway and can't afford to spend money yet

[@terenz3890]

I did everything how you did it and my scout did not find anyone. It's been 2 months, he knows the countries pretty well, but he did not find anyone. Can anyone help?

[@alftownsend6933]

Is there some way to set up a scouting assignment to look for players who's contracts are running down? (A year left say)

[@piersonjamesa]

i think its in the general add conditions tab to say contracts and less than a year in the assignment.

[@masterwesty]

Anyone else had a bug where a player is playing almost every game but on happiness it says being played as if surplus to requirements?

[@10secondreview]

Region Scouting was always incredibly unrealistic. If you think about it SI has like 1500 people who research players for the game, so that's roughly how many scouts you would need to have a full world knowledge - but most clubs have less than 20.

[@hanneswurstbrot6902]

What is meant with scouting knowledge exactly? I´m currently playing FM21 with unmasked abilities, but my scouting knowledge isn´t at 100 % at every country. I literally can go to any team and look at the attributes of any player. It can´t be the scouting reports, cause i don´t have scouted every player of my domestic league but i´m having 100% knowledge of it. So please mr. Z can you give me your thoughts on what scouting knowledge in FM is?

[@purplebloodot765]

does the amount of leagues you have active for your save affect this much? my computer can't really run a database more than 50k players

[@ahmetserhangedik3099]

my player knowledge so low even ı can't see the players stats that playing in my league. What should ı do?

[@jonnygriffiths7668]

Región scouting works perfectly, you just need to set the assignment until finished, then once they have sufficient knowledge (which is actually pretty easy to achieve through scouts with good adaptability) you can set to ongoing

[@DerJuelz]

So the assigned scout gains knowledge of the region in FM22 quicker with „until finished“ than if you choose „ongoing“ while setting up the assignment? So then it works like it was on FM21 no matter if „ongoing“ or „until finished“

[@jonnygriffiths7668]

@@DerJuelz yes I believe so may, has done in my saves this year

[@shawngillogly6873]

@@DerJuelz If they have knowledge of all nations in the region after the initial term, then yes. If not, it won't. The known issue is that when set to region scouting, a scout without some knowledge of all nations in a region, who is then set to region scouting in that area, will arbitrarily stop scouting and his knowledge will never increase. BustTheNet did a video on the same thing, and it's a raised and acknowledged bug on the SI Forums.

[@somewhatcleverfellow]

if it works when you pick individual countries, it should work when you pick the region. this is a bug and sports interactive should fix it

[@drew_peabawlz]

Wonder if some region scouting is still worth doing I.e. UK only a few countries anyway.

[@drew_peabawlz]

Kind of answered my theroy/question later in the video 👍

[@discodave2103]

If all my scouts are on assignments bar one, he is scouting next oppo, who scouts the players on my shortlist?

[@KhaosOP]

Is there a way to see which countries are included in each region on the game?

[@aarondean1673]

Would the best way to assign your 4 nations to a scout be to pick 4 nations that speak the same language and not necessarily neighbouring countries? E.g. France and 3 French speaking African nations

[@bensmith6844]

Can you scout countries that you don’t have their leagues turned on? Because I can’t turn on all these obscure countries on my saves because it’ll be too slow

[@69abm]

Mint Vid

[@ihsaanilhaam743]

is this type of scouting only good for fm22 or will it work in oder fms like fm20

[@marin3933]

I religiously watch every Zealand video and i just realized im not subscribed Wtf, thought i was 😅

[@sammulholland2274]

When creating the scouting assignments, does transfer budget affect it whatsoever? I know it's set to automatic, but I am not entirely sure what that means. For example, if I theoretically have £10,000 in my kitty, does that mean I will only be recommended players that fall within that range?

[@SuperMickyChow]

Sorry the reply is coming late, but I hope it helps anyway... When set to automatic, the scout will only issue reports on players whose value is within the current transfer budget. So, if you have 5 million in budget, you will not see a report for a player whose estimated value starts above 5 million.

[@MurciellagoPT]

What about scouting International youth competitions when they pop up in the assignment suggestions? Is it a viable way to find prospects from smaller or more obscure countries?

[@Sasquatch10]

He mentioned in the video it's probably the best way to find prospects in obscure countries now.

[@MurciellagoPT]

@@Sasquatch10 I understood from the video that the suggestion was to "manually" scout these competitions. Maybe I got it wrong :)