Master feeder clubs in Football Manager! Solve work permit issues, develop youth, and expand scouting reach with smart affiliate strategies.
How to use feeder clubs in Football Manager to solve work permit issues, develop youth, and grow your global scouting network.
I still remember the save that opened my eyes to the power of feeder clubs. I was managing a mid-table English side when I unearthed a brilliant Brazilian wonderkid. There was just one problem – work permit denied. All that potential was about to slip through my fingers. Frustrated and desperate, I dug around for solutions and stumbled upon a suggestion from my assistant chairman: “Perhaps we should find an affiliate club to help with work permit issues?” That moment was a game-changer. I sent my new South American starlet on loan to a friendly club overseas, and a few seasons later he returned as a home-grown player, ready to light up the Premier League.
This personal victory sparked my obsession with feeder clubs and affiliates in Football Manager (FM). In this post, I’ll share that experience and many more, guiding you through how to strategically use feeder teams to your advantage. Whether it’s navigating tricky work permit rules, giving your youngsters competitive playing time, or expanding your scouting footprint worldwide, feeder clubs can be the secret weapon in your FM career. Let’s dive into the how and why of building your own global football network through smart affiliate strategies.
What Are Feeder Clubs & Why Do They Matter?
Why do feeder clubs matter so much in FM? Because they let you stretch your club’s reach beyond its own four walls. Through affiliates you can stash away prospects who can’t get game time with you, send a non-EU signing to earn eligibility to play in your league, expand your scouting network to new regions, and even grow your fanbase abroad. In FM terms, a well-chosen feeder club can provide concrete perks such as: the first option to sign players from the affiliate, a pipeline for youth recruits from another country, shared scouting knowledge, increased merchandising in a new market, and scheduled friendlies that boost revenue. In essence, it’s about leveraging relationships – your club benefits on and off the pitch while helping the smaller club develop and thrive.
If you’re managing a giant club, affiliates can help you maintain a global empire of talent. If you’re at a smaller club, becoming an affiliate to a big team might bring in loanees that carry you to promotion. No matter your level, using feeder clubs smartly is a hallmark of a savvy FM manager. Now, let’s explore specific ways these affiliations can solve common challenges and enhance your save.
Solving Work Permit Issues
For example, in my anecdote above, I loaned that Brazilian youngster to an affiliate in Belgium. Why Belgium? Because historically, players can become naturalized there after just a few seasons of playing. In fact, many English clubs have exploited this in real life – Chelsea’s Brazilian defender Alex famously spent time on loan at PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands specifically to gain a Dutch passport so he could finally play in England. Similarly, Manchester United routinely sent players to Royal Antwerp in Belgium for a year or two; Chinese striker Dong Fangzhuo lived in Antwerp on loan while United awaited a work permit for him to play in the Premier League.
In Football Manager, the same strategy can be your golden ticket. Partner with a club in a league known for lenient work permit rules or quick citizenship. Many FM veterans target affiliates in countries like Belgium, Serbia or Portugal for this purpose. Belgium and Serbia often grant nationality after 3 years of residency (short compared to 5+ years elsewhere), making them ideal “work permit factories”. Portugal, on the other hand, still requires 5 years for citizenship but has no strict limits on non-EU players in squads, meaning your talent can play and develop there without registration headaches. By the time your loanee meets the criteria – be it obtaining an EU passport or enough international caps – you can bring them back as a home-grown player with no restrictions.
This approach turns an annoying hurdle into a long-term investment. Instead of giving up on a non-EU prodigy, you’re effectively parking them at a friendly club where they can adapt to European football and gain the paperwork they need. Yes, it requires patience – you might wait a couple of seasons – but the payoff is huge. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing “Work Permit Granted” for a player who would have been denied outright at signing. Feeder clubs make that possible. Your scouting reach for wonderkids is no longer limited by bureaucracy; if a teenager from South America or Africa doesn’t qualify immediately, you can still snap them up and stash them in your affiliate until they become eligible to destroy defences back home.
READ ALSO: Football Manager Squad Registration Rules
Developing Young Players on Loan
Real-world clubs use this strategy all the time. Manchester United’s partnership with Royal Antwerp (mentioned earlier) wasn’t only for work permits – it was a way to give their youngsters competitive games in a less pressurised environment. Over the years, United sent the likes of Jonny Evans, Darron Gibson, Danny Simpson, and Fraizer Campbell to Antwerp to “cut their teeth” in senior football. Those players returned sharper, stronger, and some went on to become Premier League mainstays. Similarly, Chelsea have long loaned out their starlets to Vitesse Arnhem in the Netherlands. In fact, Chelsea sent 29 players to Vitesse over a decade – including future England international Mason Mount – which cemented Vitesse’s reputation as a Chelsea feeder club in all but name.
In FM, having a lower-division or smaller-league affiliate gives you a reliable destination to park your prospects. You can usually arrange an affiliation such that the feeder club welcomes loans from your team, making it easy to ship out youngsters who need game time. Once there, they’ll hopefully get regular minutes, develop their attributes, and possibly even experience pressure situations like relegation battles or cup finals that they’d never get in your youth squad. As their parent club, you can often recall them if needed, but generally you’ll want to let them play a full season uninterrupted.
A few tips on maximizing development loans:
- Match the level to the player – Send players to a level where they will be starters. A fringe Premier League teenager might thrive in the Championship or League One; your academy forward might do well in a top-flight team of a smaller nation. Don’t loan a player so high that they sit on the bench; the whole point is playing time.
- Check the affiliate’s facilities and coaching – If possible, choose affiliates with decent training facilities and coaching staff. Better environment = better player growth.
- Monitor their progress – Keep an eye on their performance. If your wonderkid is bizarrely not getting games at the affiliate, you might need to intervene (have a chat with their manager in-game, or recall and loan them elsewhere in the next window).
By the time these loaned players return, you’ll have a much clearer picture of who can make it at your club. In the best case, they slot straight into your first team (think of it like gaining a “new signing” that was growing under your watch). And even if they aren’t up to your level, their successful loan spells can boost their market value, so you can sell them for profit. It’s all about developing assets. A feeder club provides a controlled, dependable environment for that development to happen, beyond the limited scope of your own reserve matches.
Expanding Scouting Reach
In FM, certain affiliate agreements explicitly state that they will increase scouting knowledge of the country or region. For example, if you add an affiliate in South America or Africa, your scouting screen will gradually show more knowledge of players from that area. You might start getting scout reports or youth intakes featuring players from that nation thanks to the link. According to the game’s own tips, having foreign affiliates can boost merchandising and greatly improve your scouting knowledge abroad. In fact, one type of affiliation is specifically to recruit foreign youngsters – meaning you’ll have a higher chance of youth academy players generated from that affiliate’s country. How cool is that? Your next superstar regen might emerge half a world away, but with your club’s name on his contract from day one.
Even without the technical game mechanics, just think of it intuitively: if you’re affiliated with a club in, say, Brazil, you’re going to hear about promising Brazilians earlier than other managers might. The affiliate might tip you off about a wonderkid in their league, or you’ll have an easier path to sign talent from them (often affiliates give you first refusal on transfers – so if another team bids for their player, you get notified and can swoop in). Essentially, you’ve got eyes and ears on the ground in a faraway market.
Many top clubs in real life build these networks to widen their scouting dragnet. The City Football Group (anchored by Manchester City) is a prime example – they own or partner with clubs in the US, Australia, Japan, Spain, Uruguay, India and more. Part of that strategy is identifying and nurturing talent globally. While you might not be able to buy an entire club in FM, you can emulate this by setting up affiliates across different regions. Imagine managing a European club and having affiliates in South America, Asia, and Africa – you’d have a global stream of player reports and youth prospects coming your way.
Also, don’t forget the commercial side: expanding your club’s presence via affiliates can grow your fanbase and brand overseas. Some affiliations in FM are explicitly for marketing (e.g. a Premier League side partnering with an MLS or J-League club to sell shirts in the USA or Japan). That might not immediately win you trophies, but it does fatten the bank balance, which you can then reinvest in the squad. It’s all connected.
In short, feeder clubs can serve as your scouting outposts. They broaden the horizons for finding talent. Instead of relying on sending scouts on endless trips, why not have an actual stake in a club from the region? You’ll be cultivating goodwill and a pipeline that could yield hidden gems. In the long run, this global approach can give you a significant edge over rivals who keep all their eggs in one basket.
Real-World Examples & FM Success Stories
To really appreciate the impact of feeder clubs, let’s look at a few real-world partnerships and how they translate into FM success strategies:
- Manchester United & Royal Antwerp: This is a classic example of a big club + feeder club relationship. United’s link with Belgium’s Royal Antwerp (active from the late 90s into the 2000s) was mutually beneficial. Antwerp got a stream of United’s talented youngsters on loan, boosting their squad, while Man Utd used Antwerp to give those players experience and sort out work permits. Notable names like Jonny Evans, Darron Gibson, Fraizer Campbell, Danny Simpson and others all spent formative time at Antwerp. In FM terms, Sir Alex was treating Antwerp as an extension of United – a place to season his future first-teamers. Many of those loanees went on to have solid Premier League careers, validating the system. If you manage a club with continental aspirations, having a foreign affiliate like this can recreate that success: your players grow in a competitive but lower-pressure league, and you get them back ready for prime time.
- Chelsea & Vitesse Arnhem: During the Roman Abramovich era, Chelsea developed an unofficial feeder club relationship with Vitesse in the Dutch Eredivisie. Dozens of Chelsea players were sent on loan to Vitesse over the years – 29 players in one decade! This included everyone from midfielders like Mason Mount (who became Vitesse’s Player of the Year) to strikers like Armando Broja. Vitesse benefitted by getting quality young players; Chelsea benefitted by having those players tested in a top-flight European league and, in Mount’s case, returning as a first-team ready star. In FM, you can absolutely mimic this strategy: if you’re a big club, partner with a smaller top-division club in a league known for youth development (the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, etc.). Send a batch of your best prospects there each year. Over time, you’ll either harvest first-teamers from that group or sell them on for a tidy profit. Chelsea and Vitesse showed that a consistent pipeline can bear fruit for both clubs – Vitesse even made European competition with the help of those loanees, and Chelsea got a homegrown star.
- Arsenal & K.S.K. Beveren: Rewinding a bit, Arsenal in the early 2000s had an affiliation with Belgian club Beveren. This link saw several Ivorian players (from the famed ASEC Mimosas academy) join Beveren, some of whom Arsenal later signed. Arsenal’s Kolo Touré and Emmanuel Eboué were products of this talent pipeline – they got EU experience at Beveren and then made the jump to Arsenal. In FM, this example highlights how you can target a specific talent pool via an affiliate. Arsenal effectively tapped into West Africa by partnering with a Belgian team that was bringing in those players. So if you notice a particular country producing great newgens in your save, you might establish an affiliate there or in a gateway nation, to funnel those players to you more easily.
- The Red Bull Network & Others: Modern football has seen the rise of multi-club networks (Red Bull’s family of clubs – Salzburg, Leipzig, New York, etc. – and the City Football Group mentioned earlier). While these are corporate ownership models rather than classic affiliates, the concept for FM players is similar: having sister clubs across the world to develop players and share knowledge. Red Bull Salzburg and RB Leipzig famously swap youth and even coaches, giving Leipzig a competitive edge in signing Salzburg’s best (Naby Keïta, Erling Haaland’s consideration, etc.). In FM, if you manage one of these clubs, you’ll often find the other is listed as an affiliate automatically. If not, you can still manually create your own web of feeder teams to imitate this idea. The success of these networks in real life – with clubs consistently winning titles and producing talent – shows the power of thinking beyond one team. An FM success story might be taking a small club to Champions League glory by progressively linking up with bigger partners or establishing feeder clubs in high-potential regions each time you climb a division.
- Your Own Story: Many FM veterans have that one save where feeder clubs changed everything. Perhaps you managed a tiny club in the English lower leagues and convinced a Premier League giant to be your senior affiliate – suddenly you had a couple of Premier League-quality youngsters on loan who propelled you to promotion. Or maybe you were at a mid-tier club and requested a “commercial affiliate” in Asia; a few seasons later you noticed a bump in your merchandise revenue and a random Chinese wonderkid in your youth intake. One of my personal favourite memories was in FM19, managing a Championship side and getting a senior affiliate (a bigger club agreed to loan me players). They sent me a young regen striker who was far too good for the league – he promptly scored 30 goals and won me the Championship title. Without that link, I’d never have afforded or found such a player.
The takeaway from all these examples is clear: feeder clubs can be transformative. They’re not just a side-gig or fluff in the game – they can directly contribute to silverware and long-term dominance. Whether it’s through a specific star player that came via an affiliate, or the cumulative effect of global scouting and player development, the clubs that use these links wisely often have a leg up on those that don’t.
How to Find & Set Up the Right Feeder Club
By now you might be thinking, “Great, I’m sold on the idea – but how do I actually get a feeder club for my team?” Setting up the right affiliate in FM requires a bit of strategy and, sometimes, negotiation with your board. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you land that perfect feeder (or parent) club:
Requesting a new affiliate in Football Manager – use the Club Vision screen to make a Board Request under ‘Networking’ → ‘Affiliate Club’.
- Identify Your Needs: First, decide why you want an affiliate. Is it to solve work permit issues, to loan out youth players, to expand scouting, or maybe to get a financial boost from a big brother club? Clarifying this will guide what kind of affiliate you seek. For example, a “work permit feeder” is typically a club in the EU with lenient rules, whereas a “development feeder” might be a lower league club where your reserves can play regularly.
- Talk to the Board: You can’t just phone up another club yourself – you need your board’s approval. Head to your Board Requests (in newer FMs this is under the Club Vision or Boardroom section). There, look for an option related to affiliates. In FM20 and later, you’d go to Club Vision → Make Board Request → Networking → Request Affiliate Club. If this option is greyed out, it might be too soon since your last request, or your board might not think it’s necessary – you may need to build more trust or wait a few months.
- Choose Affiliate Type: When you request a new affiliate, the game usually asks what type of link you want. You’ll get choices like “Send players on loan to get first-team experience”, “Enable foreign signings to gain work permits”, “Increase our profile in [country/region]”, or “Financial benefit”. Pick the option that fits your need identified in Step 1. You’re basically telling the board the main purpose of the partnership so they can approach suitable clubs.
- Review the Board’s Suggestions: After you put in the request, your board will come back with a list of potential clubs willing to affiliate (this might take a few days/weeks in-game). They might say, “We have found the following clubs that meet your criteria…”. Review each suggestion – look at their country, division, facilities, reputation. If your goal was work permits, make sure the club is indeed in the right nation (e.g. Belgium or Portugal, not somewhere that doesn’t help). If your goal was player development, check that the club isn’t too low-level or unstable.
- Select the Best Fit: Choose the club that makes the most sense and confirm with your board. Sometimes the board might only give you one choice – take it or leave it. Other times you get a handful. For example, you might get three Belgian clubs to choose from for a work permit feeder; you’d then pick the one with maybe the best facilities or which often plays in European competition (so your loanees get higher exposure).
- Manage the Relationship: Once the affiliate link is in place, use it! Send your players on loan there (FM makes this easy – you can right-click a player and use “Move to Affiliate” to offer them to that club). Arrange a friendly with them if the deal includes it. Keep an eye on their league – if they get promoted or relegated, it might affect the link (in some cases, playing in the same division voids an affiliation). Essentially, treat them as an extension of your club. Also, remember you can have multiple feeder clubs for different purposes; as your manager reputation grows, your board will be more willing to add more links.
- Reevaluate and Expand: Every so often, assess if the affiliation is working out. Are your players getting games there? Are you seeing the benefits (like work permits secured or scouting knowledge increasing)? If not, you can sometimes cancel an affiliation and look for a new one. On the flip side, if it’s going well and you’ve been at the club a long time, you can try to request additional affiliates or even ask for a specific club. Down the line, boards can allow you to propose a particular club by name – for instance, you might specifically want that rich club in Japan as a commercial partner once you have the clout. Keep growing your network as your club grows.
Remember that as a manager, you often need to prove the value of affiliates to a skeptical board. Early on, they might reject your requests (“We don’t feel an affiliate is currently needed”). Don’t be discouraged – improve your performance, and ask again later. Once they see the wonderkid you loaned out come back as a star, they’ll be more inclined to grant your next affiliate wish!
Long-Term Benefits & Strategic Planning
Feeder clubs are not a one-season fling; they’re a long-term relationship. If you approach affiliates as a strategic extension of your club, the benefits compound over time. Think of it as building a global pipeline of talent and influence. Early on, you might only manage to get one small affiliate, but years later you could have a whole web of clubs feeding into your system – a South American feeder bringing you the next Neymar, a European one handling your permits, and a couple of domestic lower-league teams polishing your rough diamond youth prospects.
The key is to integrate these affiliates into your holistic club planning. For example, when doing youth intakes or transfer scouting, always ask: Could this player benefit from time at one of our affiliates? If yes, you have that avenue ready. When signing a raw 18-year-old from abroad, you’ll already know where to park him for development. Essentially, you create a conveyor belt: scout globally, sign, send to feeder for growth/permits, bring back, repeat. This forward-thinking approach can yield a sustainable cycle of talent that saves you millions in transfer fees.
Long-term, feeder clubs also help shape your club’s identity and global presence. After a decade of managing, you might notice you’ve built a reputation in certain countries because of your affiliates. Maybe your club is beloved in Belgium due to all the players you’ve sent and the success they’ve had – making it easier to sign Belgian players in future. Or perhaps your senior affiliate (if you’re a smaller team) has lifted you up the divisions with a steady flow of quality loanees, and now you’re in a position to become a parent club yourself for an even smaller team. There’s a lifecycle there: today’s feeder club user can become tomorrow’s feeder club provider as the club grows.
Strategically, always revisit if an affiliate is still serving its purpose. If the work permit rules change (hi, post-Brexit FM saves!) you might need affiliates in different countries or to focus more on homegrown development instead. If your affiliate in a lower league keeps getting relegated to semi-pro, maybe find a new one so your players aren’t in too weak an environment. Be proactive in managing these links; they’re like living assets.
In closing, feeder clubs and affiliates, when nurtured properly, make your club so much more than just the first XI on the pitch. They form a behind-the-scenes network that bolsters everything you do: transfers, youth development, finances, and global scouting. The most successful managers in FM often have a keen eye on this aspect, essentially running a mini football empire. It’s immensely satisfying too – there’s a personal pride in seeing a player go through the ranks of your network, or noticing that your influence now spans continents.
So, whether you’re chasing Champions League glory or trying to climb out of the third division, consider investing in some feeder club relationships. My own journey from that devastated manager losing out on a Brazilian star, to one who circumvented the system via a savvy affiliate loan, showed me just how powerful these links can be. Give it a try in your next save – set up a feeder club masterplan – and watch as your club’s reach expands far beyond what you thought possible. Happy managing, and may your global pipeline never run dry!
