How to develop Young Players in Football Manager 2026

[Daniel1904]

When playing Football Manager 2026 or any other version of FM series nothing is more rewarding than watching our wonderkids developing over time. For this to succeed is necessary to take into account multiple factors that can affect the development of a young player in FM 2026.

Even a young player rated as a wonderkid may not develop as expected due to a poor management of their career, and any manager can impact the development of a young player if that manager doesn't know how to guide the young wonderkid in the right direction.

How do I know how much my young players can develop in FM 2026?

You can know their potential through reports made by your assistant coach, so just make sure you have a good assistant coach that can provide you accurate reports. To get reports from players that don't belong to your actual club you should use your scouts, or you can check the FM26 wonderkids list that we have at our website.

If they have potential to become good players then you just need to take good care of them. For this, there are various factors that you should pay attention in order to help them develop as much as possible. See below, all the factors that can impact the progress of these young players.

• Their personality. Just like in real life, football players have different types of personalites, and some are better than others. There are bad personalities that can compromise the development of a young player. Those bad personalities could change into better personalities because they are young players and as such they are also developing their type of personality. In order for their bad personality to become a more favorable personality, they need to have experienced tutors who have good personalities and this is where the next point comes in.
• They need tutors. Tutors are experienced players on your main squad that have enough experience to help the young gems in acquiring better personalities. Tutors have the ability to pass their main traits into the young, and they help the young player develop in general, that is: their attributes and personalities. You should assign to the young player a experienced player with the same type of personality of the young player, or if that is not possible, a good personality in general. The tutor should also have a high rating of Determination as this attribute helps to achieve succeed during any task.
• They should play regularly. One of the most important factors if not the most important overall. The game time you give to those young players will impact their development. The type of competition in which they are playing will probably also affect their development, as playing in the lower leagues in England is different than playing in the Premier League, or in more competitive competitions.
• They need good coaches. Wether they are playing in your sub-18 team, or the main team, you need to give them the best possible coaches. Also make sure that your coaches are not overloaded with specific training tasks, otherwise they will give less attention to the players in those same specific tasks.
• They need the best possible facilities. Facilites affect the development of young players, because of this you should make sure to have the best possible youth facilites, as well general training facilites for the main squad. You can ask your board to improve your youth or main training facilites, and they can accept it or reject it. Lack of money is a common reason for rejecting the improvement, for example.

The development tab is available when you click on any of your players profile.

Avoid loaning out your best youngsters

You should mantain your best youngsters in your club because if you offer them via loan to other clubs you won't control how much game time they will get, or you can't assign a tutor to help them improve. There are even more factors that you can't control if you opt for a loan, like in which position or role they will play, the morale of their teammates, the general or individual training that they will get in that club, or the quality of their coaches and the type of attention those coaches will provide to these players, as well as the type of facilities that these clubs have.

As you can see, you lose control over your player's day-to-day life. If you still prefer to loan out your best young players, then you should make sure you offer them to clubs with good training facilities. Other than that, there is nothing else you can control...

You should only loan out those players who don't have a place in your first team, and yet you know they have the potential to become good players. Loaning them out to teams that play in good leagues is always better than having them play in the youth team or reserve team.

The age limit for development

Most of the development occurs until 24 years old, after that most players stagnate and are more likely to develop their mental attributes. However, even from the age of 24 it is possible to improve some attributes, but everything on a much smaller scale. Individual training of a specific attribute allows you to give a little help to improve some small important detail that the player needs to improve.

Focus on game time as the main rule to develop young players

As we have already mentioned, playing time is the main factor for the development of young players in Football Manager 2026, so you should focus above all on this factor to ensure that they develop, the type of competition is also very important, the more competitive the competition in which they are competing, the more they will develop.

Playing time is particularly important from the age of 18, as it is from this age that they begin to be ready to start playing regularly against more experienced players.

Gradual development adjusted to their attribute level

As a coach, you need to ensure results for the present. However, you must also prepare for the future. Therefore, it is important that you have good results in the present and at the same time develop young players. For this to happen, you need to give playing time according to the level of attributes that the young players have.

The development of young players should be done gradually. First, you should start using the youngest players under 18 in less competitive competitions, like the domestic cups for example, and as soon as they develop, start to include them in more competitive matches, like the main internal league.
Include them in the game, even if it is only the last 30 minutes of each game.

These are our tips on how to develop young players in Football Manager 2026. As we can see, there are several factors that help young players to develop over time. However, it is necessary to go into detail and act according to each of these factors so that young players develop as much as possible. It is also important to note that the youth of these players is long, they can go from 14 or 15 years old to 24, which is about ten years of gradual development. Even more important is to take care of the main team's current results, so make sure that you have good and experienced players in the main team, that can guarantee results and at the same time help the young people through mentoring.