Wonderkid Academy Guide

The full detail is written on my Steam account. The use of Live Editor is helpful for many reasons but the biggest reason to use Live Editor is to see Current Ability and Potential Ability. It will save you a lot of time scouting hot prospects and you are not wasting your time on the junk that comes in your youth intake. While live editor is not required (if you insist on not cheating), the purpose is to control your affiliate and feeder clubs and get around the board if you need training upgraded.

View the Wonderkid Academy setup on Steam.

I heavily recommend running multiple head coach profiles. At least 2 profiles is required, one at the top flight club of your choice, and a second one at some minor league club (the MLS clubs and their respective feeder team, if you got the custom databases done, work really well along with any of the major clubs in Spain).

Why I recommend the live editor is to see the current and potential ability as a number, not as stars. Star ratings are very misleading and do not accurately reflect the player's skill. Live editor can be use to edit contract duration, which can be useful in some circumstances.

Step 1 - the youth intake

This varies by nation, but it is generally March for most of the UEFA nations (not all of them, there are some exceptions), September for most of the South American nations (because June-August is the winter months down there), and December for the United States. The youth intake is the most important part of the academy - you won't just be evaluating your intake but you will be scouting out everyone else. In some cases you must approach to sign the top talent from other clubs as soon as the intake happens because some of the clubs do not hesitate in locking up professional contracts for top talent ASAP.

Step 2 - Personality is very important

When the youth intake happens you must check the personality of each player. The top players in the world almost always fit in one of these types:

• Driven
• Ambitious
• Professional
• Resolute
• Realist
• Fairly Professional
• Fairly Ambitous
• Determined
• Fairly Determined

This means players that have Casual or Slack personalities are nothing but trouble and should be avoided. While there is nothing wrong with a Balanced personality, you want to stick with players with those certain traits whenever possible as it is very important for tutoring down the line.

Step 3 - using your lower division minor league clubs to develop them

The United States long been using the minor leagues to develop baseball players and the lower tiers of their professional soccer pyramid is being utilized in the same way with soccer talent. (MLS and USL). Spain has emphasized the lower tiers as developmental soccer, as the reserve teams of the major clubs must devote so many slots to U23 players. Even some of the independent clubs in the USL has been grooming "homegrown" talent down in the lower tiers of amateur football, with some of them forming their own "B" teams.

With this said, England is not a good spot to set up such an academy. It is doable in Brazil and Portugal with a second head coach profile. With the Major League Soccer or La Liga, you only need a single head coach profile and the editor data perfectly set up in your favor. (Make sure they have no head coach on their reserve team and you are the head coach on responsibilities.)

Step 4 - you determine when to loan and when to tutor

Since you cannot tutor players out on loan and the ones that do the tutoring must be at least 24, you must pick when and who to tutor. My preference is to tutor players that are on the fringes of being members of the senior team.