In the original game, you could open any footballer’s profile and view all their information.
A year ago, we created a prototype of a new scouting system, where footballer profiles were completely hidden unless your scouts were strong enough. You couldn’t buy a footballer whose profile was concealed. However, you could hire agents who, for a fee, would unlock the profiles of all footballers in a specific league for half a year.
After several months of testing, beta testers reported that while the new mechanics were understandable and somewhat interesting, they felt unrealistic.
So we developed a new scouting system — more complex, but also more realistic. It has now been in testing for over four months, and I’m ready to share the details.
Unreliable Information About Footballers
Information about footballers playing in your country is more or less accessible. You may not know the details, but you have a general idea of the footballer’s level. If they play for a club that often wins, they’re probably a good player. If they’re at a hopeless club, their attributes are likely not great. If they’ve shown they can score powerful long-range goals, we’ll know they have the "Cannon Shot" skill. But we won’t know the level of that skill, nor the footballer’s Giftedness.
So, we get a very rough idea of all footballers in the country. Clubs provide official information like name, age, and nationality. All other info — Giftedness, level, attributes, skill levels — is highly approximate.
That’s how it will work in FTGW. When viewing a footballer’s profile from another club, you’ll see a question mark next to their attributes. This means the information is unreliable — it’s based solely on general impressions from spectators. It might be close to the truth, but quite often, the real stats are either a bit better or worse than reported.
Footballer Value
Roughly speaking, the information comes from a database like Transfermarkt. You see estimated attributes and an approximate value based on the available data.
This means you might pick up a footballer for peanuts and find out they’re far better than expected. But it could also go the other way — the player might turn out to be worse. Sometimes they’ll exceed expectations in some areas and fall short in others. For example, you buy a forward listed with Giftedness 1, and it turns out they actually have Giftedness 2 — but their attributes focus on Control, whereas you were looking for high Accuracy.
Scouting
Why do coaches, club directors, or their assistants attend matches featuring players they plan to buy? Because, thanks to their expertise and understanding of football, they can better assess a player’s potential. After watching a few matches, an expert can give a much more accurate read of a potential signing’s strengths and weaknesses.
In FTGW, a new characteristic — "Scouting" — shows how much information you’ve gathered about a footballer. Once this reaches 100%, you’ll see their exact Giftedness, level, attributes, and skill levels.
Scouting is what you, as a manager, know about footballers. This information belongs to you, not the club. So even if you change clubs, all researched footballer profiles stay with you.
Scouting for a footballer increases in these situations:
- When the footballer is on any of your transfer lists;
- When the footballer is on your watchlist;
However, scouting only progresses if your scouts are at the appropriate level for the footballer in question. Every half-star improvement in scouting increases the level of scouted footballers by 5. So if one scout is at 2 stars and another at 1 star, they can scout footballers up to level 30.
In the screenshot, you can see that players at the bottom of the list are marked with "Weak scouts" — this means your scouts are not strong enough to research those players.
Scouting During Matches
When your team plays a match, you can see not only your players but also the opponent’s. In this case, you rely not on your scouts, but on your own football expertise. So regardless of your scouts’ level, after each match, scouting for the opposing team’s players increases by around 20% (depending on how much time they spent on the pitch).
The more often you face the same opponent, the better you know their footballers.
Watching a match also provides extra information.
For example, you make a pass past an opponent. Your player’s Passing is 40, and the opponent’s Defence is supposedly 25. You assume the odds are good. But during the action, your roll is 30 and theirs is 35. It turns out the Defence stat was inaccurate. Now you know more about this footballer. Their profile updates and a message appears in the match: "Information updated!"
The same applies to skills and Giftedness. If a footballer performs better in a real match than what was previously known, that data is updated and saved.
Three Levels of Player Knowledge
Footballers now have three scouting levels:
- Fully scouted — complete information is available (100% scouting);
- Partially scouted — information is unreliable (0–99% scouting);
- Unknown — you have no idea about their level, attributes, Giftedness, or skills. These players can’t be signed — the board won’t approve signing a “pig in a poke.”
At the start of the game, all footballers in your country and those playing in the top leagues abroad are partially scouted. Players from lower leagues abroad are unknown.
If a footballer from a lower league transfers to the Premier League, they become partially scouted. And once partially scouted, a player can never become unknown again.
International Agent Network
If you unlock the relevant coach ability and have the funds, you’ll be able to set up international agent networks.
If you have an agent network in a certain league of a specific country, all players in that league become partially scouted. This means you can buy them directly from clubs. You can also send scouts there to compile transfer lists.
In the screenshot, I have a developed agent network in England, allowing me to view all players from the Amateur to the Second League. I can also view players in France’s Amateur League.
I don’t think this feature will be extremely popular. But since each country will have its own unique features, some players might want to buy footballers of specific nationalities from lower leagues.
Footballer Search
As I mentioned earlier, a footballer search screen will be added to the game. You no longer have to open every club’s screen to find someone who fits your needs.
On the search screen, you’ll be able to set your desired criteria, specify the maximum cost in Money and Glory, and the system will display all suitable fully or partially scouted footballers. This will save a lot of time. Plus, searching this way is genuinely fun.
Final Words
I’m not sure how complex this system sounds in writing. But in the game, it quickly becomes second nature. It deepens immersion and adds more layers to the game world. That sense of incomplete knowledge gradually unfolding — it mirrors real life.
Signing footballers also becomes more emotional. If you rush, you might end up with someone worse than expected. So it may be better to invest in scouts and add the footballer to your watchlist, buying them once fully scouted after six months.
On the flip side, snapping up a cheap player who turns out to be a gem — that’s pure joy :)
Honestly, this is just part of the full system. I’ll talk about how scouting affects the national team and your club next month.
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