This guide will help you structure your teams efficiently.
Why is team structure important?
Organizing your Senior, Reserve and Youth teams makes them easier to handle, it makes transfers easier and it also optimizes training.
Essentially you only want your club’s best players in the Senior Team, those that didn’t make that cut in the Reserve Team and the UXs in your Youth Team.
Dynamics and training efficiency are important for the longevity and prosper of your club, making sure each player is put where they deserve to be is therefor best practice.
The first thing I recommend you to do when you join a new club is to take all players from your Reserve Team and Youth Team and put them into the Senior Team. The last manager might have made some mistakes and depending on your tactic you may find that some of these players are a better fit than what is currently available in the Senior Team alone.
Continue reading to know how to handle each of the teams and what purpose they serve and how to plan the future accordingly.
Senior Team
Your most important team, but you knew that already.
This is where your club’s best players belong, those that you want engaging in your competitions.
The best practice on how to setup your Senior Team is to plan the future in where the number of players in this team is at least 44. (At least 22 or 33 registered for competitions if you can’t register 33 or 44)
Since football allows 11 players on the pitch from each team, you want to multiply that by 4, thus 44.
This ensures you have your first squad, a bench player for every position, a backup for any injuries and future youth players you want to train with the big boys, this gives them an easier time developing to the standards that you need them to be at as well as get into the social groups of the team.
This is an example where my backup player got a lengthy injury, thankfully I have 2 others to replace him with until he recovers.
The last 11 youth players however can be loaned out, but they must have the “Can Be Recalled” clause attached to them, if you ever need them to come back for whatever reason.
Using this structure ensures you will have depth in rotation should your players become fatigued, limiting risk of injury.
You should avoid having anyone on this team transfer listed. Why? Because these are the players you have recognized as important and are not players you want to sell. If you want to sell a player you should instead kick them down to the Reserve Team and purchase someone or bring someone else up to replace them.
If they get angry for being put in your Reserve Team it doesn’t matter since you want them gone anyway, it might also help with them willingly leave. Just make sure you’re certain that you want to sell the player.
This will keep your dynamics steady and won’t waste any training load on unwanted players. You want your Senior Team coaches to focus on the relevant talent for your club.
This is how I make my spreadsheet in LibreOffice Calc to plan the Senior Team.
Unfortunately, a file upload link would expire after 30 days, so instead I share how it looks like so you can make your own.
Reserve Team
This is where you put all your players not fit for the Senior Team or the Youth Team.
It is the most simple team you have, it basically only serves as storage. But you could make some money with it as well if you can get some fixtures that pays well or if the Reserve Team is in a league that hand out rewards for placement or other.
You could also populate this team with good players if you’re at that level and then loan those players out for profit.
If you don’t plan to loan players in here out for profit you should sell them instead.
Think of the Reserve Team as your transfer list.
It could also be a useful place to put any wonderkids you still want to develop but that won’t ever be part of your tactic and that are too old to be viable for your Youth Team just to increase the value you get later by selling them. For example a 19 year old DL while you have a U18 Youth Team and a tactic that doesn’t use a DL.
If that is something you want to do however, make sure you have staff that are up to that task.
Youth Team
The Youth Team, almost as important as the Senior Team.
This is the team that should represent the future of your club.
Here you put all wonderkids that were fifth place on your priority list for your Senior Team and below. Preferably 4-5 star potentials only, everyone else is better put in the Reserve Team and sold.
Just make sure their age is in the range, for example a U18 team should only contain players that are eligible for competition for this team.
If you have youth players in here that doesn’t have future Senior Team quality, put them in the Reserve Team and sell them off for profit if you don’t want to develop them. Just don’t have them stay here and steal important training your actual wonderkids needs.
The staff on this team should be of equal quality to your Senior Team and every member should have a good “Working With Youngsters” attribute. If you’re a premium league team it should be at least 15.
In lower leagues where you don’t really develop players due to your facilities being bad, this could serve as your Reserve Team if you don’t have one. Using it as a transfer list. But at that level, all players you have are probably useful one way or another, at least for depth if nothing else. A bad backup is worth infinitely more than no backup.
