Roster management is one of the most important skills to possess as a manager in Football Manager 26, but it can also be one of the most confusing. With different competitions having different rules, you don’t even need to change jobs to find yourself staring down multiple different registration rules and sets of regulations you need to follow.
Understanding how to work within these systems is critical to succeeding, as it allows you to maximize the talent available in your squads. Most league systems have a limited number of free spots to use as you wish, while a portion of your available roster slots are reserved for players who meet various designations or other exemptions, like not registering youth players.
Using your Home Grown at Club and Home Grown in Nation slots effectively is important when developing a continental club because it allows you to ensure every available registration slot is going to a player capable of meaningful contributions if called upon. That’s why one Reddit user decided to peek under the hood and confirm how it is implemented in the engine.
What Are Home Grown At Club (HGC) And Home Grown In Nation (HGN) Status?
Both HGC and HGN are statuses a player can earn based on where they play their football in their formative years. The idea behind both is incentivizing clubs to focus on developing their own internal talent. By reserving a set number of spots for each type of player the registration process encourages using internally developed players as creating a home grown player into a regular starter allows you to use one of the status-guarded positions for a starter thus freeing up an additional flexible spot for a player who needs it.
The difference between the two designations comes down to what your options are when loaning the player out. To qualify for either designation, a youth player must have trained for three uninterrupted years under the corresponding condition. This means that loaning a player out before the completion of three years of service would disqualify the player from both. Where HGN is a bit more lenient is with transfers within your national system, in which case the player is not eligible to be an HGC player but can earn an HGN designation still.
How Are HGC And HGN Status Measured In Football Manager 26?
Another important consideration is that these are positions for grown players, meaning they are designed to keep young players at their clubs and in their home nation to develop instead of being poached by larger academies. This means that a player must be below the age threshold to qualify. A player who you sign in his mid-20s cannot become an HGC or HGN, no matter how long they stay at the club, as they are too old to qualify.
Where this can get confusing is in determining where these age requirements come into play, as it is not measured by their age when you sign the player, but instead by their age at the end of the sporting calendar for the nation in which you play. For leagues playing with summers off, this means that the relevant information is the player’s age on June 30 in the season signed, not the calendar year signed, while a league with winters off measures player ages on December 31 of the year signed.
Homegrown status is only available for players brought in while younger than 19 years old under these rules. That means that for a player to be eligible for the status in three years, they must be at most 19 years old and 0 days on the start of the next seasonal calendar.
Once you understand how this works, it can be easy to tell whether a player you are considering signing, or a player already in your reserves squad, is going to qualify and help you fill your HGC and HGN slots. Pay attention to ages for inbound players, be careful with where you send those you hope to fill slots with in the future, and get your squad filled out with your own homegrown aces.
