Youth draft

At the end of every season the clubs draft the rights to the year’s 17-year-old juniors. You don’t pick live on draft day: you rank the prospects you want on your draft list, and your assistant makes your picks from it when your turn comes.

The youth draft

Each club is given a first-round and a second-round pick every season, in the draft of the league it plays in. Before your league’s draft day, put the prospects you want on your draft list, best first.

You find the draft under Draft in the Transfer Center (Transfers in the menu). It has two views, Prospects and Draft board, and a season picker that reaches back to the world’s first season. During the draft days it opens on the board, the rest of the season on Prospects.

The draft runs over the last days of the season, top league first, each league on its own day; the board tells you when each league drafts. In a Single League world the draft runs in four parts, each round in two halves.

What you get is a player’s rights, not the player: see the rights to a drafted player.

Prospect rankings

The prospect rankings rate every 17-year-old for the coming draft. Use them to find the prospects worth a place on your list.

They come out three times a season — Initial, Midterm and Final, the last at the end of the regular season — and a notification tells you when each one is out, with a few prospects your assistant suggests for your club. A ranking weighs a junior’s present ability, his potential, his reputation and his makeup: size, leadership, temperament and the like. Each ranking carries some uncertainty, less with each release, so the Final is the closest read. On draft day your assistant goes by the latest ranking.

Under Prospects you see the class with its Final, Midterm and Initial rank, and the club and league he plays in. For this season each row also shows his overall, his nationality, an arrow for how he has moved since the last ranking, and whether he is on your list. Available hides the prospects already drafted or whose rights a club holds. An earlier season shows each prospect’s club and league as they were when he was ranked.

A high ranking and an early pick also add to a young player’s reputation; see player reputation.

Your draft list

The draft list is where you tell your assistant whom to take. Add the prospects you want, put them in order, and press Save list.

Open it from Draft list… in the Actions menu of the Transfer Center, or the Draft list button in the Draft section. Add a prospect with Add on his row under Prospects or in the panel beside the list, or with Add to draft list on the panel of any 17-year-old whose rights no club holds. Added players go to the bottom.

On the Draft list you can:

• move a player up or down with the arrows, or drag him on a computer;
• remove him;
• set his Earliest pick: Any pick, or one of the rounds you hold, shown as league and round.

Adding and removing take effect at once. Order, earliest pick and how your assistant picks are kept only when you press Save list.

Put more names on the list than you have picks: a player taken before your turn is skipped. If you would take a player only with a later pick, set his Earliest pick to that round; until then your assistant passes over him.

A free account’s list has a limit, shown beside the count; Premium lifts it. The list belongs to your club, and the players on it are cleared once the season’s draft is over.

How your assistant picks

At each of your picks your assistant looks at the top player on your list who is still there and whose earliest pick has come. How he weighs that player against the rankings is your choice:

• Your list, unless a clearly better prospect is left — he takes your top player unless the best-ranked prospect still available ranks clearly higher. With nobody left on your list, he takes the best-ranked prospect.
• Your list, unless a clearly better prospect fills a need — the same, but the better prospect must fit one of your transfer needs. With nobody left on your list, he takes the best-ranked prospect who fits a need.
• Always your list — he takes your top player, however he is ranked. With nobody left on your list, he takes the best-ranked prospect.

“Clearly higher” is a gap in the ranking, not a scout’s view of the player. If you want exactly the players on your list, choose Always your list; if you would rather not pass on a prospect ranked far above your top name, choose the first. If you have set your needs under Set transfer needs…, the second brings in a better-ranked prospect only when he fills one.

Clubs run by the computer always take the best-ranked prospect left.

Your shortlist and the draft list

On draft day your assistant adds the 17-year-olds on your shortlist to the bottom of your draft list. The Draft list shows them already, marked Shortlist.

If a shortlisted prospect should not be drafted, take him off the draft list: that takes him off your shortlist too. If the shortlist can’t be changed, the draft list tells you he is still on it and must come off there.

Draft order

The order is set at the end of the regular season, from each league’s regular-season standings. The clubs that finished lowest draw lots for the first picks, then the next group for the picks after, and so on, so a club never picks ahead of a group that finished below it. Each round is drawn on its own.

Until then the board shows each pick as the range it will fall in.

The Draft board shows one league at a time, round by round. Picks are numbered within the league. A pick that has changed hands shows the club making it and the club it came from, and your own picks are marked Your pick. Each league is marked with where it stands: the order not yet set, its draft day, picks being made, or complete. When your league’s draft is done the board updates itself, and You drafted lists your picks with the place each had on your list.

Draft picks

Your picks are listed on your team page, under Prospects, in the Draft Picks card. Each pick belongs to the club that was given it; whoever holds it drafts with it.

A pick you trade for keeps its place: it falls where the finish of the club it came from puts it. Picks can be traded like players as long as they are unused, and the rights to a drafted prospect once he has turned 18 at the turn of the season; see trades. A trade offer that includes a pick falls away once the pick is used.

Going up or down

When your club goes up or down, its picks change places with those of a club going the other way. The club going up drafts in its new league with the early pick of the club it replaces; the club going down drafts in its new league with a late one. You get a notification when it happens.

It is the clubs’ own picks that change places, whoever holds them now. If you hold another club’s pick and that club goes up or down, the pick you hold changes too.

After the switch, check your list. If a row’s earliest pick reads (pick traded), choose a round you hold or Use Any pick; a round of your old league can keep that player out of reach of every pick you now hold.

The rights to a drafted player

Drafting a player gives your club his rights for three more seasons; the season they run to shows under Until in the Prospects card on your team page. While you hold them, no other club in the world’s leagues can sign him.

No club can offer a contract to a player under 18, so you can offer him one once he has turned 18 at the turn of the season. His first contract is an entry-level deal on terms the league sets; see player contracts. Signing him puts him on your roster and ends the rights.

Until you sign him, he plays outside the world’s leagues. A club there may sign him, and your rights stay: you can still sign him, and you are told when that club makes him an offer or signs him. If you have not signed him when the rights run out, any club may approach him; you are told, and so is every manager with him on a shortlist. If he retires, the rights end.

Worth knowing

• On draft day your assistant adds your shortlisted 17-year-olds to the bottom of your draft list; taking one off the draft list takes him off your shortlist too.
• After your club goes up, a player whose earliest pick is a round of your old league is out of reach of every pick in your new league’s draft; the list marks it (pick traded).
• A pick you trade for falls where the finish of the club it came from puts it.
• A club outside the world’s leagues can sign your drafted prospect, and you keep his rights.
• The players on your draft list are cleared once the season’s draft is over; how your assistant picks carries over.