How Will A Young Player Develop?

written by Markov

Question: How do I know how a 15 year old Little League player will develop? What should I train first? Will he have an opportunity to help my club in the future?

My approach to 15 year olds is to first try and figure out what kind of player he will be. Sometimes that is a bit hard. There is a fair amount of random in which potentials increase, and there is a fair amount of random in how effective a player is during training.

When drafted, some might be a borderline flankback/wingback, centre back/full back, striker/OM and so on. In those cases, I usually start training the skills I know he will have a use for in both of his future positions. CO and PA are typically (in this example) such skills. After that, I re-evaluate every player each and every time they increase in a skill from daily training. I never write anything down, and I don't really think about if I think he will be good enough for my senior team until he reaches his (age 19-21) last eligible season for the youth team. Well, I do kick the worst Little League drafts immediately. Low current skills with low potential skills should be kicked and low current skills with high potential skills can (if you choose) be attempted to be sold and then kicked if no team bought him.

If the draft is clearly of a certain type of position, I just start training the relevant skills. To me, it doesn't really matter which of the primary skills I train first, he won't be usable in quite a while anyway, but I tend to try and train primary skills quite evenly if possible. Aim for weak and then dec and so on.

If I want to assess how good he will become, I usually take his currents and add 160 points. (I'm a bit pessimistic and count 70 points current increase as youth, and 15 points each player year after that. I want players to be good enough for subs at least at 27, thus 160 points.) I seldom use any of the youth analyzer tools, I just guess roughly based on experience. I don't think I am very accurate, but at 15 years old, it doesn't really matter.

When the player turns 21, I make a more detailed plan for his future. Potentials will not increase after his 21st birthday, so it's much easier to see where he will be in a few years. If he looks good enough to some day be a player on my senior team, then I try and train him in such a way that he can be a useful substitute on special occasions. This usually means his training is quite unbalanced. Then I will balance him later on, often near the age of 24-25. If he does not look good enough to some day play for my team, I try to guess how I can as quickly train him up to a level (and level up and end training skills at 50, 60, 70 because they show up better on the transfer list) where I will get the most money when selling.