FM 2013 Guide — How to scout top players and wonderkids

Hello and welcome to my FM 2013 Guide, how to scout top players and wonderkids. To gain success in Football Manager 2013 you need top class players. Its great having super tactics and brilliant backroom staff, but you need someone to put the ball in the net. There are many FM13 hints and tips for scouting, but I will compress them all into one easy to read guide.

Backroom scouting staff

Before you even begin searching for players, you must have an excellent team of scouts. Johnny has written a guide on how to assemble the best scouting team, so I won’t go into detail. Just remember when you search for players, the ones that pop up on your list are as a result of your scouting range and knowledge. Poor or limited scouts equals very few players to search through.

Try signing as many scouts as possible with knowledge in varying countries, you need a vast network and can check your progress from the ‘scouting’ screen. This ‘Scouting Overview’ shows your scouts, their assignments and knowledge which is a very handy tool.

I recommend asking your ‘chief scout’ to set assignments and update you on their findings. He’ll make sure every area is covered, you can do this through the ‘staff responsibilities’. I would however set two scouts to constantly search Brazil and Argentina for under 18’s, believe me you don’t want to miss a thing over there. Anyone wondering how many scouts they should sign, there is no limit nor minimum, it depends on your board, club stature and how much effort you are willing to put in.

Now you should be getting a steady flow of reports to sifter through, you’ve completed step one so lets move on.

Filtered search

This is probably how you find most players, so don’t take the filter options for granted. Below are the different searches I tend to do using the ‘add condition’ tool.

• Transfer listed players — once every couple of months
• Contract expiring in 6 months — On the 1st of January every year
• Players under the age of 17 — every month
• Attribute specific search — probably once a fortnight

The transfer listed and contract expiry filters are very obvious and easy to do, but I’ll explain what to look for in the last two bullet points.

Players under the age of 17

If you already have a good scouting network the best of these players will already have a report, making life very easy as you bypass anyone with a star rating under 4. However, for the ones without a star rating I suggest hovering over the ‘i’ icon to the left of their name so you can see a snapshot of their attributes.

This search is mainly used to find regens and top young talent, so all you can do is use your own judgement, if a player interests you then request a scout report and take the inquiry from there.

When looking through such a list for regens I suggest paying attention to those with exceptionally high determination and work rate, they have the best chance of reaching their potential. Work rate and determination doesn’t equal high PA though so always get a scout report.

Attribute specific searches

Rather than look through one long list, why not search for the key attributes you want. Decide which position you are searching for, but do not add the position into the filter as a condition (some players may not show up if that position is their secondary one.)

Now pause for a second and just visualize what would stop you signing a player in that position. Does he have to be under a certain age? If so add the filter. Do you like players that are quick and if so how quick? The list goes on, basically add a condition for every vital attribute. Below is an example of a filter I may use to find my poachers with Newcastle.

— Age, is at most, 21

— Pace and Acceleration, are at least, 14

— Finishing, composure and dribbling, are at least, 13

— Off the ball movement, is at least, 12

You can apply this logic to almost any search, these filtered searches don’t always work, but they are good to use from time to time. What will find you amazing regens is manually searching, so lets move onto that.

Manual search for real life players

When doing filtered searches the only real way to order the list is by player value, so you are probably missing out on a lot of great players who are very cheap. You can’t realistically scroll through an entire list, so let me tell you where to search for top talent.

• Top under 21 and under 19 National sides
• Medium reputation senior national sides such as Romania and Poland
• Youth teams of top four sides in England, Spain and Italy, Germany, France and Holland

Manual search for FM 2013 regens

Most people love this part of the game, unearthing the perfect gem. To find the top FM13 regens before anyone else you need to know where to look and when, I’ll’ begin with the where by listing the most likely clubs to develop top regenerated players. The list below is vague and doesn’t cover everyone, because lets face it a top regen could appear anywhere, but I think this will provide a good starting point.

— Check every single top flight club in Argentina and Brazil.

— Check the best six teams in Spain, Italy, England,

— Check the top three clubs in France, Holland, Portugal and Germany.

— Then check sides like Dinamo (Croatia), Chivas (Mexico), Atlas (Mexico) and Universidad Catolica (Chile).

This list below provides FM 2013 regen dates for the most important countries. Search the nations above a day after their respective regeneration dates shown below.

That’s about it really, yes you do need to use common sense and make a lot of effort with your searches, but using this FM 2013 scouting guide should teach you everything I do to find the gems of FM13. If you want an easier answer, just visit the Scouting Network. Thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments.