Football Manager 2022 scouting guide: How to find wonderkids in FM22

April 2023 · 5 minute read

FM22 brings the series’ huge database back with updated players, clubs, and staff. With thousands of variables, here’s our Football Manager 2022 scouting guide to help you find the best players for your club.

Football Manager 2022 is here, meaning players are combing through the game’s huge database, already on the lookout for the best wonderkids and free signings. While we have guides for finding those, there’s nothing quite like doing the homework yourself to unearth a world-class talent.

FM22 offers a sizeable scouting update, meaning there are more tools than ever to find the greatest young players to spend your transfer budget on. That can be pretty overwhelming, but we’ve put together this guide to help identify the best players for your squad.

Here’s our guide to scouting in Football Manager 2022.

Contents

Football Manager 2022 scouting guide

Some scouts specialize in certain regions.

Types of scouting

Players in Football Manager 2022 can be scouted in a number of ways, each with its own pros and cons.

Individual scouting is for when you’ve already identified a player and are looking to get more information about them. When you scout them, your scouting staff will produce a report that’s updated as their knowledge of the player grows, with less well-known players needing longer to scout than the Lionel Messis and Cristiano Ronaldos of the world.

Scouting assignments help narrow your search, allowing managers to filter what they’re looking for. As an example, you may be looking for a striker within a certain age range and in a certain region. The more specific your search, the more detailed your results will be. This means that while you may search one specific region, you may find yourself tweaking your criteria to find, say, a striker that’s a good header of the ball.

Scouting costs money and ties up scouts for a period, though, so you’ll want to ensure you have a solid lineup of scouting staff ready to jet off. Bigger clubs will have a larger scouting setup at the start of the game.

New scouting changes in FM22

Scouting has been revamped in Football Manager 2022

Football Manager titles add a series of “headline features” each year, and Football Manager 2022 has a new focus on scouting and the transfer market.

While the latter now means more realistic transfer fees and greater staff and agent input, the scouting changes can best be summed up with the improved scouting report.

Rather than assigning a value out of 100, scouts will now offer a grade instead. These grades are determined by Scouts and Analysts, meaning you get two reports in one and allowing for pros and cons on a single page that pertains to on-the-pitch stats as well as transfer value compared to the current market.

How to find wonderkids at youth intake day

The best feeling in Football Manager 2022 is finding that one gem that lights up your league in a few years’ time, and wonderkids have been a core part of the franchise since its inception.

The best time to look for these wonderkids is on youth intake day, an in-game event where newgens (procedurally generated players) are randomly assigned to club academies across the world. These 14 to 16-year-olds can be invited to trial at a team, and then potentially tied down to a contract.

If your club has a high youth recruitment rating, you’ll have a better chance of high potential newgens.

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When is youth intake day in Football Manager 2022?

Here are the youth intake dates for each nation in the game.

NationYouth intake date
AustraliaOctober 4 – October 5
AustriaMarch 3 – March 31
ArgentinaOctober 18 – November 15
BelgiumMarch 19 – April 16
BrazilSeptember 22 – October 20
BulgariaMarch 7 – April 16
CanadaSeptember 21
ChileSeptember 30 – October 28
ChinaSeptember 14
ColombiaJanuary 16 – February 13
CroatiaMarch 9 – April 6
Czech RepublicMarch 19 – April 16
DenmarkMarch 19 – April 16
EnglandMarch 14 – April 11
FinlandApril 3
FranceMarch 9 – April 6
GermanyMarch 9 – April 6
GreeceMarch 9
HollandMarch 26 – April 23
HungaryMarch 9
IcelandAugust 14 – August 16
IrelandSeptember 22
ItalyMarch 19 – April 16
MexicoFebruary 27 – March 27
N. IrelandMarch 14
NorwayFebruary 5 – March 5
ParaguaySeptember 21
PeruSeptember 21 – October 19
PolandMarch 17 – April 14
PortugalMarch 19 – April 16
RomaniaMarch 19 – March 20
RussiaFebruary 23 – March 23
ScotlandMarch 14 – April 18
SerbiaMarch 5 – April 2
SlovakiaMarch 18 – April 15
South AfricaApril 3 – May 1
SpainMarch 29 – April 26
SwedenSeptember 14 – October 12
SwitzerlandMarch 9 – April 6
UkraineMarch 16
UruguayJanuary 17 – February 14
USAOctober 19
WalesMarch 14 – March 21

For more on Football Manager 2022, be sure to check our other guide content at Dexerto.

Is Football Manager 2022 on Game Pass? |Biggest transfer budgets | Where is Football Manager 2022 Touch for iPad? | Best free signings | Tactics guide | Best young players

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