The Catch-22 Of Youth Development

As I have said before, I am quite devoted to developing my own youths, but I have stumbled across an almost impossible situation and rather annoying problem regarding the development of my youths. The developing of stats is becoming harder and harder, to a point where it is turning into a laughable Catch-22 situation.

Now for those who haven't read the novel by Joseph Heller, Catch-22 is a law defined in various ways throughout the novel Catch-22. First, the main protagonist Yossarian discovers that it is possible to be discharged from military service because of insanity. Always looking for a way out, he claims that he is insane, only to find out that by claiming that he is insane he has proved that he is obviously sane — since any sane person would claim that he or she is insane in order to avoid flying bombing missions.

Elsewhere, Catch-22 is defined as a law that is illegal to read. Ironically, the place where it is written that it is illegal is in Catch-22 itself. It is yet again defined as the law that the enemy is allowed to do anything that one can't keep him from doing. In short, then, Catch-22 is any paradoxical, circular reasoning that catches its victim in its illogic and serves those who have made the law.

Breaking this down into smaller portions and translating it to the youth development, you would get a situation like this.

1. Premise: If a youth player is to develop his stats in a decent tempo, he must get decent average ratings in the matches he plays.

2. Premise: If a youth player has decent stats, he will more easily achieve these higher average ratings,

3. Definition of implication: since a youth player who wants to develop further in a decent tempo does not already have decent enough stats, it follows that he will not play to his full potential for quite a while.

4. De Morgan: since this player cannot play to his full potential for quite a while, his performances are lacklustre and will result in decent but not spectacular average ratings.

5. Modus Tollens: since a players average rating is not very spectacular, his stats will not rise very much during the course of a season, causing his average ratings to stay the same, et cetera...

Surely you can appreciate the wonderful circular logic behind this... A player needs a high average rating to develop at a decent pace, yet he can only obtain or achieve this rating by developing into a better player first... By decent tempo, I mean that a player should be ready for first team in his early 20's. Anyway, this dilemma, gentlemen, is Catch-22.

Now of course there are ways around this. You can re-invent your tactics to actually suit a players strenghts more and compensate for their weaknesses a bit, but in general I believe the coaching skills are a bit underpowered.

You see, the coaching skills will boost the rate at which a player improves. This means they boost both attributes and Current Ability (CA). CA is just a reflection of a player's attributes, or vice versa, they aren't really seperate entities as the match engine for example doesn't know about CA at all, it only cares about attributes, which are in turn set according to CA.

Regardless of coaching skills, a player won't improve beyond his Potential Ability (PA), however he is more likely to reach his potential. A 2.5* potential player can only ever become a 2.5* player, no better, however a 3.5* potential player at another club may never reach that level. In that sense it is possible for a player with a lower potential to become better than a player with higher potential. This, of course, is true regardless of skills, but increased coaching skills allow you to get the most out of your players.

The problem is that the coaching skills really only kick in when the average rating is decent as well. So how can we make a youth really live up to his potential? A bit of luck that he faces weak opponents? Or just lots of tactical tinkering until we find a formation to play him in…