Why I Hate B Teams

A Football Manager Rant

Why I Hate B Teams

I really, really hate using B teams. Let me tell you why.

B teams are the unfortunate reality of playing Football Manager in certain countries — most notably Germany and France. It’s fortunately not a problem that comes up in every country in the world. However, it does make managing in those two countries pretty complex.

The frustration comes from how the teams are managed, and the often arbitrary restrictions that Football Manager places on those teams. I came across this the other day during an aborted attempt to start a New York City FC save with the latest version of DarthFurion’s World Super League.

You see — for programming reasons that I don’t fully understand, this latest WSL uses B teams instead of under-23 teams. The problem, however, is that you sometimes run into bizarre issues like this:

I usually like to look at all players together before I determine who will go to the under 18 squad and who will go to the under 23 (or reserve) squad. However, in this case the game determined that I could not send any of the players I had temporarily placed on the main squad to the B team (NYCFC II), even though the transfer window was open.

The reference to the “American transfer windows” is ridiculous, by the way. World Super League takes place entirely in England. My guess is that this bug likely refers to something specific to MLS management, perhaps something that is hard-coded in the game.

However, this touches on a deeper issue — one that I consider much more significant. The issue is that these B squads are essentially considered wholly separate from their parents squads in Football Manager.

I went with Ingolstadt in the end. As usual, I had the computer be in charge of hiring and firing coaches and other staff members in hopes of focusing my time on things that were actually important. I also wanted to turn this into a Youth Academy project.

Lo and behold, the computer decided to hire an extra Head of Youth Development and scouts for the B team:

Even funnier is the fact that I can’t get rid of these staff members right away, since they were apparently recently signed by the AI chairman.

It’s a mess, even if you play only with the vanilla game. You wind up wondering if you need to hire more players to get your B team to be more competitive. You also wind up sticking players you don’t want to think about anymore in your B team, and letting them basically rot away until you can finally sell them off.

My preference is to create a pipeline from player generation to the first team. Players who are on the verge of the first team upon creation can go straight to the first team. The others play on the under-18s team until they turn 18, or until they show signs of first team talent.

Once they turn 18, those players wind up on the under-23 team, or on the B team, depending on how the rules work. In my experience, those players will never reach the first team, unless there’s some sort of crazy injury crisis — and even then the under-18 players who can cover the position probably have a better long-term upside.

In other words — I can’t figure out why in the world I’d even want a B team. If you ask me, it’s just a place to stick players who I want to sell — and I’m better off loaning every one of those players out than bothering to even think about them.