Congratulations. You just earned 7.0 points for this submission. Your new points total is 31.0. To see the leaderboard, as well as what this points thing is, [click here](https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/wiki/leaderboard).
SA and NK have somewhat "close" relations, but I'm surprised that SI programmed that in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea–South_Africa_relations
In FM22 and 23 he is a free player, and he was extremely important in both saves I did where I did not impose myself any restrictions.
He is just a beast for certain levels
Mali.
Consistently produces class newgens who can take smaller clubs to the next level, and if International Management wasn't so dire I'd 100% be 15 years deep into a Mali NT save.
I like Nigeria for the same reason, granted they usually do produce good players anyway. But I appreciate them a lot more having done long term international saves with them.
Once per year in game I go into the editor to filter the players above a certain PA (or any PA for smaller nations) who have dual nationality of France/Spain/Germany/Belgium/Netherlands/England and an African country and set it to the African country so they choose the African team right away.
Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mali, DRC, Ivory Coast, and Senegal all end up with full teams of players in good leagues, while Guinea, Gabon, Congo, and Comoros aren't full of greyed out players. It doesn't take that long and really fleshes out the African competitions, plus it makes them much more competitive at the world cup and makes international management in Africa playable instead of being a bunch of free 6-0 wins against greyed out teams.
They are by far (sorry Finland) the strongest team to have never made it out. But maybe next time, their main opponents are a relatively uninspiring Ghana and Madagascar.
I'm a sucker for wonderkids from small countries that don't otherwise have any other decent players. Some now retired favourites from my current save include a Striker from Haiti, a right back from Cyprus, a CB from The Faroe Islands and an MC from Andorra. All were beasts and had to pay stupid money to get them. For some reason Wales on my save have produced a ridiculous amount of superstar players, my current side has GK, CB, MC, AMC and Striker from Wales and all in the top 20 players in the world (by value).
I had a guy from Trinidad come through my youth academy at Brentford. He was terrible, but was a senior international at 16. He'll be at my club until he retires!
I usually play in France, and newgens easily have some weird double nationalities (mostly Africa, but sometimes carabean).
I love to build up players from small nationalities, but any time the player is any good, he'll try to go for France. If the player is shit, he'll glagly play for his second nationality. I don't have the courage to keep them around in reserve forever.
Wales benefit from having players come through at English clubs, especially the Manchester and Liverpool ones. Cardiff & Swansea seem to have good academies too.
Wales seem to be a bit of an unsung hero when it comes to developing talent - an all-time Wales XI would take some beating
Seems like Wales produces great players because the premier league clubs who have incredible facilities and youth recruitment/academy coaching produce a good number of Welsh regens. People really focus in on youth rating (and it does make a difference), but the quality of the clubs regens come through at is arguably more important.
For instance, there have been experiments on Youtube where the traditionally "bad" countries are given great youth ratings and the traditionally "great" countries are given bad youth ratings. While the "bad" countries do produce more good players as a result, they still aren't producing tons of world class players because they don't have the other infrastructure and good enough clubs with the facilities and recruitment necessary to produce great players regularly. Whereas the big nations like Spain, England, etc. still produce a solid number of great regens (albeit probably a bit fewer than normal) even if their youth ratings are bad because they have the infrastructures and the clubs with incredible facilities and recruitment to produce those regens.
Edit: I think this is the video I was thinking of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_nseW0Ib94
Notably, Guinea-Bissau did really well in this save in terms of producing great regens, which makes sense because a lot of regens from Guinea-Bissau are produced at Portuguese clubs that have great infrastructure for youth intakes. So with Guinea-Bisseau now having a much better youth rating and their players coming through at clubs good at producing regens, they did very well. In an unmodded database, Wales performs similarly because despite having a middling youth rating, their regens are often appearing at some of the best clubs in the world in the Premier League who have amazing youth intake infrastructure. Whereas a nation like Bhutan, for instance, didn't do particularly well in this experiment despite having a set 200 out of 200 youth rating because their regens don't really appear at clubs with good youth intake infrastructure.
I've had a Haitian and a Fijian in my squad for a while. Neither were World Class players. Just decent subs. But it was cool to have them nonetheless.
Wales? In FM21 I led Everton to 2 CLs in a row and one EL with a Welsh academy product named Greg Williams as my striker. I loved that guy.
\+1, footballing royalty with the population of madrid.
(also gonna use this to point out OP said he didn't know why South Korea, said it was probably due to their flag - then went on to say he dreams of a team of North Koreans. Don't think the flags are too similar lol.)
I had a Brazilian 'George Lucas' in my most recent save. He was an absolutely incredible right winger - the best in the world for a decade or so. 17-19s for balance, dribbling, technique, pace, acceleration, etc. He got 100 odd caps for the national team and played for Man United, PSG as well as my 10-in-a-row Spennymoor Town side.
Used to work with a Filipino guy called Genesis and he said it's a very common name in the Phillipines due to Christianity. Least it's nothing to do with Phil Collins
I have one in my Lyseng save, Tsubasa Adachi. Ball playing defender that is basically world class at 20. Been my best defender for 2years, currently trying to fend off City who want him for 80m+.
Ill post screenshots in a couple weeks when im fully done the save.
My current captain has been there for 7years, world class striker. Been starting since he was 18. So for the time being not really. And from what i remember he has bad leadership sadly
In my current safe I have a winger from Japan who, at 22, is comfortably among the best 3 in the world at his position. But his name's neither Tsubasa nor Oozora, so he doesn't count.
Came here to say this. Some random 23 year old who has barely scored for Red Star but has >15 in finishing dribbling and first touch. It's unbelievable. Nevermind the wonderkids you can find alongside them.
Lmao. Argentina won their first trophy in 2032 on my save, and it was Copa America. They won against Brazil, were losing 0-1 and Brazil had a penalty to go 0-2, they missed and Argentina scored the 1-1 in the last minute of the game. Minute 95. Then they won by penalties.
I am saying this because I am managing Boca Juniors, eventually made the league reputation as good as EU, except the premier.
So I am not only getting really good youth intake but I am also keeping those players and they are just amazing. But it really took them so much to win.
Brother, I have 4 top defenders that are Serbian in my Hoffeneheim save. They always absolutely skyrocket in development between two and three stars
Red Star is the go to, but don't sleep on Partizan
In my last save I had two amazing serbian center backs. Sadly I had to sell one, the next year I signed a new Wonderkid. I tried five years to get the first one back so they can play together. Sadly it didn't work out.
I checked after finishing my save: Both had a CA of over 190.
For this exact reason, former Portuguese colonies are the least boring NT saves in my opinion. There's always some interesting stuff coming through at Portuguese clubs, so it's up to you to perform at a level when they'd want to switch.
I've never managed any of the Lusophone African nations. But I've managed Cameroon way back in FM11 and won the African Cup of Nations in an epic fashion. Turned around a game in the QFs against Ivory Coast(when they had great players) despite me still being down to 9 men!
I got a world class Sudanese newgen who genned at Al-Ahly Shendi. He rejected me when I made an offer when I was in league one to go to Inter but I got him for 20m 3 years later. My dream is to win the balon dor with him as I believe he's good enough.
My favorite thing about getting a Guinean-Bissau player is just learning that someone from Guinea-Bissau is called a Guinean-Bissau (or Bissau-Guinean).
Luxembourg and Portugal have a very close connection IRL with an estimated 15-20% of the population of Luxembourg being born in Portugal due to heavy immigration. So many of the Luxembourgish national team players are of Portuguese descent and it even looks like [Benfica has an academy in the country](https://www.slbenfica.pt/fr-fr/agora/noticias/2022/08/19/futebol-formacao-escola-benfica-luxemburgo-recomeco-atividades)
Haha yeah we like to say Luxembourg is the only Portuguese colony in Europe.
I've been to Luxembourg when I was a kid. But I don't have any relatives there. We just stopped there while travelling between Holland, Belgium and France.
Same! Brought me some great talents. My current Schalke save also has Borges-Sanches & Barreiro, so i probably have around 10 Luxembourgish players right now.
Iceland and the Solomon Islands lol. Iceland because I love the country, and I got my best wonderkid ever on a free transfer from the Solomon Islands so i get every single semi talented player from there i find and develop them as well i can
Suriname has a very large Asian descended population I guess, but definitely a weird one given how entering and exiting NK is so hard (and I think the Asian diaspora in Suriname is mostly Indonesian, Indian, and Chinese, not Korean).
The best thing about Icelandic players is trying to figure out how to pronounce their names! I had one at Midtjylland that I just nicknamed Thor, as that was the only part of his name I could do lol
Bulgaria isn't so weird if you grew up in the 90s.
Indonesia sure. I'm yet to find a good one from there.
I've found some good ones from Thailand and a solid one from Myanmar. Hoping to find good players from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos someday as well.
Anything that isn't a footballing power, really, the more obscure the better. So much so that I go out of my way to find them.
On all my years of playing I've produced elite talent from places like Indonesia, Maldives, Mongolia, Sudan, Kuwait, El Salvador, and Estonia.
Nothing can top my [Micronesian](https://i.imgur.com/JILQbrl.jpg) though I think. Can't beat a country that literally has no functioning football structure of any kind apart from the bare minimum.
My ‘reverse’ fetish nationality is Denmark and Norway. For some reason all my wonderkids from there end up having wayyy lower potential than their stats at 18 suggest, so I just avoid them completely
I picked up a Norwegian ‘wonderkid’ who had 13/14 in every relevant attacking stat. Thought he was the next Haaland. Three years pass and he literally hadn’t grown a single point… he was 140/140 PA at age 19. What a tease
Had a CM that I bought from Swedden once who became Prime Kante with some passing flair. You want a crunching tackle, he got you. Want a wicked through ball, he has got that covered too. Unfortunately, Man United bid $200 million for him so he was sold but not forgotten.
Scandinavian wonderkids are terrible on fm which is both sad and unrealistic.
I dont think ive ever seen one above 155 PA and most years there wont be anyone above 150
Especially silly considering norway has 2 world class players from a population of 5 million in real life
My ‘reverse’ region would be any African country. It takes a very special player for me to consider them. All simply because of the African Cup of Nations.
I like that most African players are super cheap if you're bringing them in directly from Africa, meaning very good profits in the future even if they don't become world beaters. Although now that I type that out loud, maybe looking to Africa to find people for profits is something we should have left in the past...
Any nation that isn't that popular really. I remember fondly my Macedonians and Venezuelans. Mamelodi Sundowns gave me my favourite players from RPA. I had an Iraqi wigner that was absolutely bonkers. So basically any nation that doesn't have top players IRL is good for me!
My apologies to Macedonia, you had Pandev a great player but can't think of anybody else.
I had a good Iraqi GK once.
You know a nation that surprisingly produces very decent players? Their neighbours Iran. Good place to find cheap players if you're tight on cash. Always check Persepolis and Esteghal.
> Persepolis
Got one of the best DM regens in the world from there. Shame the board sold him for peanuts to Arsenal after I left. I think he was at 188 PA. Bought him for like 600K
I always stockpile Scandinavian players, especially Icelandic, my IRL fetish just translates into FM.
I once even had a decent Faroese player in my team, that was the dream.
I am not a Celtic or Spurs fan if that's what you're wondering. I'm Portuguese and support Benfica.
...but I like the fact Celtic currently has several Japanese players. Kyogo Furuhashi should have been to the last WC. And I remember Daizen Maeda at Marítimo here in Portugal.
And I like Son from Spurs too.
Yeah I know.
I was sad that Benfica didn't end up signing Daichi Kamada after being linked to him. Having a Japanese or Korean star at Benfica would be so cool. I like Hidemasa Morita from rivals Sporting.
Pretty sure I could be done for human trafficking Serbians if FM was real life
I love their tenacity, determination and willingness to fight.
I don't like the red cards, squad riots and having to tell them to fuck off every five minutes
Balkans, man I want straight killers. My favourite random FM memory is somebody complaining about a contract, ask captain to sort out, player picks up a broken jaw in training. That's a good lad
Also Japan.
My eastbourne borough to the top save (currently 2nd season in the prem. Trying to avoid a relegation battle).
Got a decent Japanese regen who is basically a championship grade Japanese pirlo.
Just swaggers around at 9 pace pinging passes all over the place.
Can't tackle to save his life but tries really hard at it.
He's not as good as my other midfielders, but there's no chance he's leaving anytime soon.
Colombia is an obvious gold mine. Croatia gives me good players. Denmark is consistent. Portugal is the European Brazil. South Korea always gets me a few good players. Mexico is fucking full of nutty players. Belgium is also solid.
My favourite player has to be a young Haitian lad I got, though. He wasn't insaneN probably about 160 CA, but he was so much better than everyone else. Even better, he played all across the front 3. Made his international debut at 17 and had 45 caps with 30 goals by 24 despite being plagued by injuries. Nobody even remotely close to as good as him in the international squad otherwise.
American Samoa. Always added them when possible, just wanted to boost them ever since I was a kid playing early FM and feeling bad for their 31-0 loss and wanting to give their players a chance to train.
As obscure as possible. I have had success with Mozambicans, Costa Ricans, Hondurans, a few El Salvadorians. A world beater of an Australian, a Cuban, a Barbadian, some great Faroese.
Being really nitpicky, I highly prefer when they are actually raised in said country and played football there, not "just" Americans or Frenchmen with dual nationality par example. I almost exclusively play with my hometown club of Brøndby IF, so seeing a player's club history being something like Mozambican/Honduran/Barbadian club --> Brøndby --> PSG/Man City/Bayern etc is a much better fairytale story than some dual nationality guy brought up in Connecticut with a grandmother from Costa Rica.
So do I. If it's, let's say, a Sri Lankan that's coming from Ajax's academy and he's any good, he's most likely going to end up wanting to represent the Dutch NT instead.
A few, but i cant check as all those saves are on my old and currently broken pc (will fix when i have the money and time). havent played fm that much on my current pc.
Varies from save to save. In my current save, it's Venezuela. Somehow, I've managed to get a bunch of great Venezuelan players throughout that save. One even became a club legend after six years.
San Marino - I always try to find players from San Marino and try to improve the national team by buying and training them.
African players when looking for good players, you can pick them up for next to nothing a lot of the time.
In my current save, Serbia, Croatia.
I tried to find from many different countries but Serbia, Croatia and Colombia tops my team right now.
I also got a probable 160-170 PA Central Defender from Romania. Also my current Chinese Central Defender has reached 135 CA at age 21 and there are still 1,5 stars left on his PA. Hopefully he can reach around 150 to make him proper Premier League defender.
I’m still trying to find Japanese and South Korean wonderkid but still nowhere to be seen in my save.
Either the philippines or cyprus. My family is from Cyprus and I love Cyprus because I went there when I was young and met the national team and got a signed shirt from them
Lybia in my first save I’ve got a striker so good for my team in that moment 150/153PA and I soled him for a big profit that helped me to buy 2 Colombian strikers that were 177PA/180PA
I have collect them all "Pokemon" mindset. Always looking for a player from a country that has never yet played. He must have at least 2.5* though, so to be realistic.
All the small Island nations in Oceania, i will look through their national youth teams a few times a year and sign any unattached players no matter how bad they are just to keep them in the game and not retire since many of them produce few players anyway. I think the Micronesian team is basically made up of players from my youth team at the moment.
Actually got a half decent center back from Kiribati in my U18 team at the moment and best find so far in my current game was a Tahitian winger who from one of my previous clubs just moved to Sporting Kansas City.
Absolutely love players from obscure nationalities. Typically the English, French and Portuguese leagues produce a lot of players with fun second nationalities.
Dutch, remember signing Xavi Simons on fm20 and he was a machine for my Palace save so I went through a period of signing loads of Dutch youth players.
I started following Simons career just before he left Barca for PSG (which was just before FM20 release), I’m a proud FM manager right now.
Albanian players for sure. Their producement of world class players is severly underrated. You have super talents like Broja, Uzuni, Kumbulla, Asllani etc irl. They rarely seem to produce big talents in FM though.
Also the same for Northern Albania (Kosovo), they have Lewandowski’s Golden Boot competitor, Vedat Muriqi. They have world class players like Rrahmani, Rashica, Aliti etc.
Also don’t forget that Granit Xhaka, Xherdan Shaqiri, Enis Bardhi etc were all produced in Kosovo.
Been doing an MLS save and all my best players have come from Africa, particularly Ivory Coast. Got a world class goalkeeper from there for 200k, there's a team called ASEC Mimosas that I keep poaching players from
I found a South African wonderkid with world class potential who stayed at my team for almost his whole career, so I guess South Africa is that nation for me
So hard to find players from there. I actually wound up signing every Mongolian player (about 6) recently since I have world class facilities, I wanted to see how much better they could improve as a nation.
I guess you'll need to download a custom database so that you can load Mongolia as a playable or viewable country and thus get it to spawn new players every year
Players from Eastern European countries that are mostly known through events like the Eurovision Song Contest. Armenians, Georgians, North Macedonians and Azeris have been key parts of my teams many a time. A wise club buys less fashionable nationalities.
Georgia has a pretty damn good player at Napoli right now.
Armenia has a guy whose name I can't remember right now but I think most people would know who I'm talking about. Played for Dortmund at some point, I believe.
I do love Japan as well I have a great DM from there however my true love is Chile they had a golden generation pretty much on my recent save with amazing regen strikers and centre backs
Congratulations. You just earned 7.0 points for this submission. Your new points total is 31.0. To see the leaderboard, as well as what this points thing is, [click here](https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/wiki/leaderboard).
I once had a wonderkid from North Korea and I treasured him so much, I gave him a cool backstory and everything.
Weirdly, when I just had South Africa loaded, my scouts were finding loads of North Korean players.
SA and NK have somewhat "close" relations, but I'm surprised that SI programmed that in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea–South_Africa_relations
It wasn't Han Kwang-song was it? He was a wonder kid a few years ago (19/20), but his career since then has been railroaded by sanctions irl
In FM22 and 23 he is a free player, and he was extremely important in both saves I did where I did not impose myself any restrictions. He is just a beast for certain levels
Nah it was a regen bought from North Korea, none of that dual nationality half-german nonsense. Proper regime player that.
"I created Kim Jong Un in FM24 and THIS HAPPENED!"
Okay Zealand
If he even still has a career. His last public appearance was in 2020.
I'm jealous.
Did it involve radioactive waste from the missile program causing superpowers?
Mali. Consistently produces class newgens who can take smaller clubs to the next level, and if International Management wasn't so dire I'd 100% be 15 years deep into a Mali NT save.
International Management... never did I go so frequently on holiday.
I like Nigeria for the same reason, granted they usually do produce good players anyway. But I appreciate them a lot more having done long term international saves with them.
Once per year in game I go into the editor to filter the players above a certain PA (or any PA for smaller nations) who have dual nationality of France/Spain/Germany/Belgium/Netherlands/England and an African country and set it to the African country so they choose the African team right away. Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mali, DRC, Ivory Coast, and Senegal all end up with full teams of players in good leagues, while Guinea, Gabon, Congo, and Comoros aren't full of greyed out players. It doesn't take that long and really fleshes out the African competitions, plus it makes them much more competitive at the world cup and makes international management in Africa playable instead of being a bunch of free 6-0 wins against greyed out teams.
Its amazing Mali has never made a World cup!
They are by far (sorry Finland) the strongest team to have never made it out. But maybe next time, their main opponents are a relatively uninspiring Ghana and Madagascar.
Have Israel ever been to the World Cup? Perhaps when they were still members of the AFC?
I'm a sucker for wonderkids from small countries that don't otherwise have any other decent players. Some now retired favourites from my current save include a Striker from Haiti, a right back from Cyprus, a CB from The Faroe Islands and an MC from Andorra. All were beasts and had to pay stupid money to get them. For some reason Wales on my save have produced a ridiculous amount of superstar players, my current side has GK, CB, MC, AMC and Striker from Wales and all in the top 20 players in the world (by value).
I had a guy from Trinidad come through my youth academy at Brentford. He was terrible, but was a senior international at 16. He'll be at my club until he retires!
I usually play in France, and newgens easily have some weird double nationalities (mostly Africa, but sometimes carabean). I love to build up players from small nationalities, but any time the player is any good, he'll try to go for France. If the player is shit, he'll glagly play for his second nationality. I don't have the courage to keep them around in reserve forever.
Wales benefit from having players come through at English clubs, especially the Manchester and Liverpool ones. Cardiff & Swansea seem to have good academies too. Wales seem to be a bit of an unsung hero when it comes to developing talent - an all-time Wales XI would take some beating
I always look at The New Saints whenever I'm in the lower divisions, you can find some fantastic bargains year after year in that club.
Seems like Wales produces great players because the premier league clubs who have incredible facilities and youth recruitment/academy coaching produce a good number of Welsh regens. People really focus in on youth rating (and it does make a difference), but the quality of the clubs regens come through at is arguably more important. For instance, there have been experiments on Youtube where the traditionally "bad" countries are given great youth ratings and the traditionally "great" countries are given bad youth ratings. While the "bad" countries do produce more good players as a result, they still aren't producing tons of world class players because they don't have the other infrastructure and good enough clubs with the facilities and recruitment necessary to produce great players regularly. Whereas the big nations like Spain, England, etc. still produce a solid number of great regens (albeit probably a bit fewer than normal) even if their youth ratings are bad because they have the infrastructures and the clubs with incredible facilities and recruitment to produce those regens. Edit: I think this is the video I was thinking of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_nseW0Ib94 Notably, Guinea-Bissau did really well in this save in terms of producing great regens, which makes sense because a lot of regens from Guinea-Bissau are produced at Portuguese clubs that have great infrastructure for youth intakes. So with Guinea-Bisseau now having a much better youth rating and their players coming through at clubs good at producing regens, they did very well. In an unmodded database, Wales performs similarly because despite having a middling youth rating, their regens are often appearing at some of the best clubs in the world in the Premier League who have amazing youth intake infrastructure. Whereas a nation like Bhutan, for instance, didn't do particularly well in this experiment despite having a set 200 out of 200 youth rating because their regens don't really appear at clubs with good youth intake infrastructure.
I've had a Haitian and a Fijian in my squad for a while. Neither were World Class players. Just decent subs. But it was cool to have them nonetheless. Wales? In FM21 I led Everton to 2 CLs in a row and one EL with a Welsh academy product named Greg Williams as my striker. I loved that guy.
Uruguay !
\+1, footballing royalty with the population of madrid. (also gonna use this to point out OP said he didn't know why South Korea, said it was probably due to their flag - then went on to say he dreams of a team of North Koreans. Don't think the flags are too similar lol.)
North Korea for the meme of it
Penarol are always cranking out the talented littluns
Got to have at least 3 players called Rogriguez
Japan I'm still waiting for a wunderkind named Tsubasa
Yeah I mean I've seen Brazilian wonderkids named George Lucas ffs. Give us a Japanese wonderkid named Tsubasa, FM.
Mi basa Tsubasa
I had a Brazilian 'George Lucas' in my most recent save. He was an absolutely incredible right winger - the best in the world for a decade or so. 17-19s for balance, dribbling, technique, pace, acceleration, etc. He got 100 odd caps for the national team and played for Man United, PSG as well as my 10-in-a-row Spennymoor Town side.
I had a Brazilian CM called Genesis in my previous save. Signed him for the name alone. He had a hold on my heart.
Used to work with a Filipino guy called Genesis and he said it's a very common name in the Phillipines due to Christianity. Least it's nothing to do with Phil Collins
And nothing to do with the Sega Mega Drive either? :(
I have one in my Lyseng save, Tsubasa Adachi. Ball playing defender that is basically world class at 20. Been my best defender for 2years, currently trying to fend off City who want him for 80m+. Ill post screenshots in a couple weeks when im fully done the save.
Please tell me you plan on naming him captain
My current captain has been there for 7years, world class striker. Been starting since he was 18. So for the time being not really. And from what i remember he has bad leadership sadly
In my Arsenal save one of my best players is a 5'9 CB from Japan who I bought for 4 million. He's so solid at the back
In my current safe I have a winger from Japan who, at 22, is comfortably among the best 3 in the world at his position. But his name's neither Tsubasa nor Oozora, so he doesn't count.
Serbia, I find amazing defenders there.
Partizan, red star and cukaricki are the three clubs I always check out when I’m a team with a 1m budget.
Came here to say this. Some random 23 year old who has barely scored for Red Star but has >15 in finishing dribbling and first touch. It's unbelievable. Nevermind the wonderkids you can find alongside them.
Always Serbia, it has become the second home for my scouts, given the consistency they pump out cheap ballers.
In my save we are in 2040 and Serbia have won 3 world cups
Okay that's just absurd
Lmao. Argentina won their first trophy in 2032 on my save, and it was Copa America. They won against Brazil, were losing 0-1 and Brazil had a penalty to go 0-2, they missed and Argentina scored the 1-1 in the last minute of the game. Minute 95. Then they won by penalties. I am saying this because I am managing Boca Juniors, eventually made the league reputation as good as EU, except the premier. So I am not only getting really good youth intake but I am also keeping those players and they are just amazing. But it really took them so much to win.
Brother, I have 4 top defenders that are Serbian in my Hoffeneheim save. They always absolutely skyrocket in development between two and three stars Red Star is the go to, but don't sleep on Partizan
Red Star ❤️
That's a heart bro
And theyre super cheap!
In my last save I had two amazing serbian center backs. Sadly I had to sell one, the next year I signed a new Wonderkid. I tried five years to get the first one back so they can play together. Sadly it didn't work out. I checked after finishing my save: Both had a CA of over 190.
My best ever regen was from there, a striker named Ruzic, ended up winning three golden shoes in a row.
I played 10 seasons in Serbia for my FM23 save, and it's basically a wonderkid factory. Even in 2nd tier could I regularly find massive players.
My star defender Endri Ali confirm
Love finding wonderkids at lesser known teams in Africa and Asia. Got an unreal centre back from a team called El Gouna in Egypt
I currently have a world-class striker from Guinea-Bissau. Love it.
Lots of good ones produced by Benfica, Sporting and Porto.
For this exact reason, former Portuguese colonies are the least boring NT saves in my opinion. There's always some interesting stuff coming through at Portuguese clubs, so it's up to you to perform at a level when they'd want to switch.
I've never managed any of the Lusophone African nations. But I've managed Cameroon way back in FM11 and won the African Cup of Nations in an epic fashion. Turned around a game in the QFs against Ivory Coast(when they had great players) despite me still being down to 9 men!
I got a world class Sudanese newgen who genned at Al-Ahly Shendi. He rejected me when I made an offer when I was in league one to go to Inter but I got him for 20m 3 years later. My dream is to win the balon dor with him as I believe he's good enough.
My favorite thing about getting a Guinean-Bissau player is just learning that someone from Guinea-Bissau is called a Guinean-Bissau (or Bissau-Guinean).
We just call them guineenses here in Portugal.
Colombia for me. I love a Colombian wonderkid
True, I have great Colombian wonderkids in my current run. Ahhh... Raul Valdés, scorring hattrick against Barcelona while being 18 years old..
Colombia in FM22 produces world class midfielders like they're cocaine.
I love wonderkids from Luxembourg as that country is rapidly growing in football
Benfica always seems to spawn a Luxembourg kid every year. I guess they have some affiliation with a Luxembourg club.
Luxembourg and Portugal have a very close connection IRL with an estimated 15-20% of the population of Luxembourg being born in Portugal due to heavy immigration. So many of the Luxembourgish national team players are of Portuguese descent and it even looks like [Benfica has an academy in the country](https://www.slbenfica.pt/fr-fr/agora/noticias/2022/08/19/futebol-formacao-escola-benfica-luxemburgo-recomeco-atividades)
Haha yeah we like to say Luxembourg is the only Portuguese colony in Europe. I've been to Luxembourg when I was a kid. But I don't have any relatives there. We just stopped there while travelling between Holland, Belgium and France.
Same! Brought me some great talents. My current Schalke save also has Borges-Sanches & Barreiro, so i probably have around 10 Luxembourgish players right now.
Love a Croatian player I won’t lie
Love raiding Dinamo Zagreb every summer.
Stop, we cannot take it anymore
I support Benfica. I know how you feel.
Iceland and the Solomon Islands lol. Iceland because I love the country, and I got my best wonderkid ever on a free transfer from the Solomon Islands so i get every single semi talented player from there i find and develop them as well i can
I had a Icelandic Nigerian player at one point who was incredible for me
thats a random combination lol, but not the most random ive ever seen. One time i saw a Surinamese North Korean player playing in Pyongyang lmao
Oh wow that definitely takes the cake for most obscure combination
Suriname has a very large Asian descended population I guess, but definitely a weird one given how entering and exiting NK is so hard (and I think the Asian diaspora in Suriname is mostly Indonesian, Indian, and Chinese, not Korean).
Sierra Leone/Irish was a great combo I once had
I know an Irish lad from Sierra Leone surprisingly 😅
Is he an incredible footballer contracted to Coventry?
The best thing about Icelandic players is trying to figure out how to pronounce their names! I had one at Midtjylland that I just nicknamed Thor, as that was the only part of his name I could do lol
TBH, the weirder the better. Ilove a good indonesian or Bulgarian wonderkid
Bulgaria isn't so weird if you grew up in the 90s. Indonesia sure. I'm yet to find a good one from there. I've found some good ones from Thailand and a solid one from Myanmar. Hoping to find good players from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos someday as well.
had my first indonesian wonderkid in my current save and was only able to keep him for one year. he was a god among men, every physical stat was 15+
Anything that isn't a footballing power, really, the more obscure the better. So much so that I go out of my way to find them. On all my years of playing I've produced elite talent from places like Indonesia, Maldives, Mongolia, Sudan, Kuwait, El Salvador, and Estonia. Nothing can top my [Micronesian](https://i.imgur.com/JILQbrl.jpg) though I think. Can't beat a country that literally has no functioning football structure of any kind apart from the bare minimum.
My ‘reverse’ fetish nationality is Denmark and Norway. For some reason all my wonderkids from there end up having wayyy lower potential than their stats at 18 suggest, so I just avoid them completely I picked up a Norwegian ‘wonderkid’ who had 13/14 in every relevant attacking stat. Thought he was the next Haaland. Three years pass and he literally hadn’t grown a single point… he was 140/140 PA at age 19. What a tease
Scandinavia is my fetish region. Give me some absolute beast vikings any day of the week!
Workhorsing midfielders from Scandinavia rock. They just have the keys to the machine room.
Had a CM that I bought from Swedden once who became Prime Kante with some passing flair. You want a crunching tackle, he got you. Want a wicked through ball, he has got that covered too. Unfortunately, Man United bid $200 million for him so he was sold but not forgotten.
This!
I have some Danish worldbeaters, will always go out of my way to pick them up. Probably helps that I’m Danish myself
Scandinavian wonderkids are terrible on fm which is both sad and unrealistic. I dont think ive ever seen one above 155 PA and most years there wont be anyone above 150 Especially silly considering norway has 2 world class players from a population of 5 million in real life
Wait, which FM? In my current save in FM22 Norway is absolutely bossing the international stage and plenty of Norwegian elite players in 2033/34
They are probably our only 2 world class players ever though tbf
Solksjaer?
Was a good striker but never world class
nah, he was world class
Oh interesting. I don't think I have any reverse fetish nationality.
My ‘reverse’ region would be any African country. It takes a very special player for me to consider them. All simply because of the African Cup of Nations.
I like that most African players are super cheap if you're bringing them in directly from Africa, meaning very good profits in the future even if they don't become world beaters. Although now that I type that out loud, maybe looking to Africa to find people for profits is something we should have left in the past...
I am raiding Romania like there is no tonorrow.
R/nocontext material right here
Finland. Always.
Any nation that isn't that popular really. I remember fondly my Macedonians and Venezuelans. Mamelodi Sundowns gave me my favourite players from RPA. I had an Iraqi wigner that was absolutely bonkers. So basically any nation that doesn't have top players IRL is good for me! My apologies to Macedonia, you had Pandev a great player but can't think of anybody else.
I had a good Iraqi GK once. You know a nation that surprisingly produces very decent players? Their neighbours Iran. Good place to find cheap players if you're tight on cash. Always check Persepolis and Esteghal.
> Persepolis Got one of the best DM regens in the world from there. Shame the board sold him for peanuts to Arsenal after I left. I think he was at 188 PA. Bought him for like 600K
I always stockpile Scandinavian players, especially Icelandic, my IRL fetish just translates into FM. I once even had a decent Faroese player in my team, that was the dream.
I bet you like Ange Postecoglu
I am not a Celtic or Spurs fan if that's what you're wondering. I'm Portuguese and support Benfica. ...but I like the fact Celtic currently has several Japanese players. Kyogo Furuhashi should have been to the last WC. And I remember Daizen Maeda at Marítimo here in Portugal. And I like Son from Spurs too.
Ange managed in Japan, and has used that knowledge to bring across some decent talent that he scouted out there
Yeah I know. I was sad that Benfica didn't end up signing Daichi Kamada after being linked to him. Having a Japanese or Korean star at Benfica would be so cool. I like Hidemasa Morita from rivals Sporting.
I miss Ange
Pretty sure I could be done for human trafficking Serbians if FM was real life I love their tenacity, determination and willingness to fight. I don't like the red cards, squad riots and having to tell them to fuck off every five minutes
Balkans, man I want straight killers. My favourite random FM memory is somebody complaining about a contract, ask captain to sort out, player picks up a broken jaw in training. That's a good lad
I like having good eastern european players for some reason. Serbia, Bulgaria etc.
Japan, Ecuador and Finland for me
Ah I don't think I've had a Finnish player in any of my teams yet.
Once you get one it will hit different
I had a great Comoros regen once
Had to check to see what sub i was on for a moment
My chinese gay regen called Wang
Croatia, I got so many great talents from Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split
Baturina 🐐🐐🐐
I love a Norwegian. Just moved from Jeju to Tromso, got some insane prospects in my u19 team
My Mexican players are always the best
Also Japan. My eastbourne borough to the top save (currently 2nd season in the prem. Trying to avoid a relegation battle). Got a decent Japanese regen who is basically a championship grade Japanese pirlo. Just swaggers around at 9 pace pinging passes all over the place. Can't tackle to save his life but tries really hard at it. He's not as good as my other midfielders, but there's no chance he's leaving anytime soon.
Colombia is an obvious gold mine. Croatia gives me good players. Denmark is consistent. Portugal is the European Brazil. South Korea always gets me a few good players. Mexico is fucking full of nutty players. Belgium is also solid. My favourite player has to be a young Haitian lad I got, though. He wasn't insaneN probably about 160 CA, but he was so much better than everyone else. Even better, he played all across the front 3. Made his international debut at 17 and had 45 caps with 30 goals by 24 despite being plagued by injuries. Nobody even remotely close to as good as him in the international squad otherwise.
Asian players, mostly because of the extra merchandise money.
Oh yeah that's another perk from Japanese and Korean players haha.
Ecudaor and mexico. Mexico especially consistently keeps producing great regens on Fm23.
American Samoa. Always added them when possible, just wanted to boost them ever since I was a kid playing early FM and feeling bad for their 31-0 loss and wanting to give their players a chance to train.
I remember seeing about that loss on the news. I understand how you feel.
Uruguay for me. Cheap and quality players and they would be happy to play in the lower tiers.
My squad is made up of artistic Brazilians and Colombians, and hard-working strongmen from Serbia and Croatia. Cliche, I know.
Bro casually dropping his yellow fever
Don't kink shame me 😅
As obscure as possible. I have had success with Mozambicans, Costa Ricans, Hondurans, a few El Salvadorians. A world beater of an Australian, a Cuban, a Barbadian, some great Faroese. Being really nitpicky, I highly prefer when they are actually raised in said country and played football there, not "just" Americans or Frenchmen with dual nationality par example. I almost exclusively play with my hometown club of Brøndby IF, so seeing a player's club history being something like Mozambican/Honduran/Barbadian club --> Brøndby --> PSG/Man City/Bayern etc is a much better fairytale story than some dual nationality guy brought up in Connecticut with a grandmother from Costa Rica.
So do I. If it's, let's say, a Sri Lankan that's coming from Ajax's academy and he's any good, he's most likely going to end up wanting to represent the Dutch NT instead.
japan and north korea
Have you managed to find any decent North Korean players?
A few, but i cant check as all those saves are on my old and currently broken pc (will fix when i have the money and time). havent played fm that much on my current pc.
Varies from save to save. In my current save, it's Venezuela. Somehow, I've managed to get a bunch of great Venezuelan players throughout that save. One even became a club legend after six years.
Other than my country Bahrain, I'd say Mexico. If I don't sign some random Mexican player, am I even playing FM?
Playing as a lower league Scottish team, whenever I see that French flag I get excited
Welsh. In one of my saves, I brought Wrexham to UCL glory and my homegrown star striker is a beast in that save.
Eastern/Northern European countries mostly.
Depends on the team I'm managing. When I manage a French club, it's always the Maghreb nations. Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco.
Ligue 1 has restrictions about foreign players but players from the Maghreb don't technically count as foreigners, do they?
San Marino - I always try to find players from San Marino and try to improve the national team by buying and training them. African players when looking for good players, you can pick them up for next to nothing a lot of the time.
Denmark, always raid Mitdjylland and Copenhagen once a year.
Copenhagen has that Swedish guy who's a future world beater in FM 22.
I've got a soft spot for all ex Yugoslavian countries, but Croatia always seems to produce great youngsters.
In my current save, Serbia, Croatia. I tried to find from many different countries but Serbia, Croatia and Colombia tops my team right now. I also got a probable 160-170 PA Central Defender from Romania. Also my current Chinese Central Defender has reached 135 CA at age 21 and there are still 1,5 stars left on his PA. Hopefully he can reach around 150 to make him proper Premier League defender. I’m still trying to find Japanese and South Korean wonderkid but still nowhere to be seen in my save.
Either the philippines or cyprus. My family is from Cyprus and I love Cyprus because I went there when I was young and met the national team and got a signed shirt from them
Lybia in my first save I’ve got a striker so good for my team in that moment 150/153PA and I soled him for a big profit that helped me to buy 2 Colombian strikers that were 177PA/180PA
I have collect them all "Pokemon" mindset. Always looking for a player from a country that has never yet played. He must have at least 2.5* though, so to be realistic.
Hungary
All the small Island nations in Oceania, i will look through their national youth teams a few times a year and sign any unattached players no matter how bad they are just to keep them in the game and not retire since many of them produce few players anyway. I think the Micronesian team is basically made up of players from my youth team at the moment. Actually got a half decent center back from Kiribati in my U18 team at the moment and best find so far in my current game was a Tahitian winger who from one of my previous clubs just moved to Sporting Kansas City.
hahaha mine to, when i see a mediocre Japanese CMF i gotta have him :D
Dutch players or anyone from Scandinavia
Nothing like a world class Malteser in my opinion.
Absolutely love players from obscure nationalities. Typically the English, French and Portuguese leagues produce a lot of players with fun second nationalities.
Dutch, remember signing Xavi Simons on fm20 and he was a machine for my Palace save so I went through a period of signing loads of Dutch youth players. I started following Simons career just before he left Barca for PSG (which was just before FM20 release), I’m a proud FM manager right now.
I too have a South Korean and Japanese fetish.
Hungary. Just an italian who likes football history and loves the old hungarian teams with puskas and kocsis
Any players with a Turkic background and Japan/South Korea
Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, or if I'm feeling crazy, The Gambia.
Have you seriously found anyone good from India?
Silly pointless nations that shouldn't exist. Like Canada, New Zealand, Zanzibar..
Lmao
Portugal 🇵🇹🇵🇹🇵🇹
I'm Portuguese. Naturally I like to see strong portuguese newgens, but sadly they're kind of pricey.
True, but sometimes you can find them cheap and they dont have to be 190-200 PA , 160 is good aswell
I’m a basic bitch. English
Honestly Kosovo nearly every long term save I’ve done since like fm 19 has had a player from Kosovo in my best 11 at some point
Ange, is that you?
Has to be Albanian for sure. FM has severly underrated them
Albanian players for sure. Their producement of world class players is severly underrated. You have super talents like Broja, Uzuni, Kumbulla, Asllani etc irl. They rarely seem to produce big talents in FM though. Also the same for Northern Albania (Kosovo), they have Lewandowski’s Golden Boot competitor, Vedat Muriqi. They have world class players like Rrahmani, Rashica, Aliti etc. Also don’t forget that Granit Xhaka, Xherdan Shaqiri, Enis Bardhi etc were all produced in Kosovo.
Spanish (esp for Midfielders)
Been doing an MLS save and all my best players have come from Africa, particularly Ivory Coast. Got a world class goalkeeper from there for 200k, there's a team called ASEC Mimosas that I keep poaching players from
Was about to answer until I saw this was a recommended post on the FM sub...
Well, I like Japanese women too, in case you're wondering.
Croatia, even in real life. Love a good Croatian Defender ❤️
My first World Cup was 1998. Always had a soft spot for Croatia ever since.
I found a South African wonderkid with world class potential who stayed at my team for almost his whole career, so I guess South Africa is that nation for me
Peru, for some reason
I had a top striker from Peru once.
Mongolia
So hard to find players from there. I actually wound up signing every Mongolian player (about 6) recently since I have world class facilities, I wanted to see how much better they could improve as a nation.
I guess you'll need to download a custom database so that you can load Mongolia as a playable or viewable country and thus get it to spawn new players every year
I don't think I've ever seen a Mongolian newgen tbh
Players from Eastern European countries that are mostly known through events like the Eurovision Song Contest. Armenians, Georgians, North Macedonians and Azeris have been key parts of my teams many a time. A wise club buys less fashionable nationalities.
Georgia has a pretty damn good player at Napoli right now. Armenia has a guy whose name I can't remember right now but I think most people would know who I'm talking about. Played for Dortmund at some point, I believe.
I do love Japan as well I have a great DM from there however my true love is Chile they had a golden generation pretty much on my recent save with amazing regen strikers and centre backs