How to take charge of your youth teams in Football Manager 2021

Bringing through the next batch of world-class stars is a staple of the Football Manager series. Finding wonderkids and unlocking their potential will have your squad set up for success for many years, and you might want to take a more hands-on approach to develop your starlets in FM21.

Whenever you join a new club, though, you are only put in charge of your first-team squad. Other staff members will lead training, matches, and more for any youth teams that your club has. You will know if someone is the manager of a youth team by clicking on the Development Centre tab on the left-hand menu. If you can only view your youth teams and not actually make any decisions regarding them, someone else is in charge.

However, there is an option to take charge of these teams if you want a greater say over your youngsters’ training, matchday tactics, and more. To do so, head to the Staff section of the menu. Open it and look for the Responsibilities tab on the top menu. Scroll down via the drop-down menu and select an option such as Training.

From here, you can choose to take charge of any youth team training. To take control, click on the Take Control button next to the staff member who is currently leading this area. Once you are happy with your decision, click the Confirm button at the bottom of the page. You can do this on the Matches tab on the top menu too.

There should be extra icons under the Development Centre icon now. Click on these to head to a particular youth side and start changing their training regimens, tactics, and other bits. If taking charge of your senior and youth sides is taking up too much of your time, you can head back to Responsibilities and ask your staff to lead these teams instead. Click on the Delegate button next to your name on the Training or Match tabs, and pick a staff member from the drop-down menu to the left of that button. Click Confirm to save your changes.