Youth players, academy and intakes

The academy is not an automatic conveyor belt. Nothing arrives on its own: you commission an intake from the academy page, pay for it, and it delivers after a short wait. That is the whole production model — there is no monthly drip of free teenagers, no facilities rating feeding a conveyor, and no scouting network quietly finding you children.

What an intake costs and delivers

• An intake is priced on your club's scale: in division 10 of a strong football nation it costs about 350 at academy level 1 and about 875 at level 10; at the old reference level (division 3) the same intakes cost about 60,000 and 150,000.
• A level-1 academy — no academy at all, the juniors train with the squad — hands you two prospects; a level-10 academy hands you six.
• You can only commission one intake every 7 days, so the academy rewards patience rather than bulk spending.
• Arrivals are 15 to 17 years old and start weak — current ability between 20 and 39 — which is exactly why they are cheap to carry.
• Their hidden ceiling is rolled at arrival: current ability plus 25, plus 2 for every academy level above the first, plus a random part that grows with the level, capped at 95.
• Prospects are paid like any player of their value — a few euros a week — and keep that wage when promoted.

Upgrading

The academy is one of the club's facilities and climbs ten levels, from none to a reference academy with an 80-room residence. Each level is built like any other work — paid up front and ready after a few game weeks — and improves every future intake. See the ground and facilities article for the whole ladder.

Promotion to the senior squad

Promotion is free and immediate whenever you want it. There is no ability threshold to clear and no development penalty for promoting early; a 15-year-old can sit on your bench from day one. The only limit is squad size: transfers stop at 28 senior players and promotions from the academy can take the squad to 30, so a large academy class will force decisions about who else leaves. Promoted players follow the normal development rules — weekly training, match minutes, mentoring — which is the point of promoting them at all, because academy players who stay in the academy do not train.

Selling vs developing

Every prospect carries a market value of ability × 15,000, so an academy full of low-ability teenagers is worth very little until they grow. That makes the academy a bet on time: either a prospect climbs toward your first team, or he becomes a small fee that part-funds the next intake. The expensive mistake is paying for level-5 intakes, then never giving the arrivals minutes or training — the ceiling stays unused.