FIFA 15 scouting glitch: how to see your youth players’ hidden stats and OVRs


Sometimes the youth academy in FIFA 15 can be a little vague. It’ll give you a rough estimate of your players’ OVRs, but you can’t find out what they are until you promote them. The same goes for their individual attributes, and you’ve got no indication of how good their weak foot and skill moves are at all.

Luckily, there’s a way to find out. Today I’m going to show you how you can scout your own players without even promoting them from the academy. This was suggested to me by Tony Fox on Facebook, as well as a few other people in the past, so thanks to everyone who prompted me to do this. So let’s find out how it’s done.

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How to scout your own youth players

Basically, the idea is you can scout your own youth players by searching for them in the transfer market. So we’ll take a look at this player here, Sergio Mendez.

Scouting glitch: how to see your youth players' hidden stats and OVRs

We’re going to find out exactly how good this player is

First of all, search for your player’s name in the transfer market. In my example, there’s one result – a 16 year old attacking midfielder called Sergio Mendez. So it matches what we know about the player in our youth academy.

Scouting glitch: how to see your youth players' hidden stats and OVRs

Just one result, and his name, age and position match those of our youth player

Click on his name. You know he’s not a real player because, aside from the generated face, his club badge and team name are both a bit broken. They obviously don’t match any real team in the game.

Now before we scout him, if we bring up his info we can see that in this instance, he has a potential status. It’s ‘Has potential to be special’, which means his potential is at least 91. It’s the best potential status you can get, so he should have a very decent OVR.

Now tell your scout to take a look at him so we can find out exactly how good he is. We’ll come back to Sergio Mendez later.

Scouting glitch: how to see your youth players' hidden stats and OVRs

He has the best potential status possible, meaning his potential is at least 91

How to scout players too young to be promoted

This is a great way to see your scouted player’s OVR before they’re promoted. But you could ask why can’t you just promote your youth players, then reload your save game after you’ve seen their OVRs? That way you can see their stats and it’s much quicker than scouting them.

The answer is that you can’t do that with 15 year old players, who are too young to be promoted. But by scouting them, you can still find out how good they are. Let’s try it with this player, Jorge Gavilan.

Scouting glitch: how to see your youth players' hidden stats and OVRs

You could just promote 16 year old players, but how do you know how good 15 year old players are?

Here he is, and as you can see it’s telling us that he’s 15. Normally you can’t find players this young in the game, but thanks to this glitch, you can.

Scouting glitch: how to see your youth players' hidden stats and OVRs

Once again, this player’s name, age and position match those of our youth player

As before, tell your scout to have a look at him.

When your scout reports back, you’ll be able to see all of the youth player’s stats, even if he is still in the academy. You can also see their transfer valuation.

To view their stats quickly, just add them to your shortlist. You’ll be able to see their stats like any other player that you’ve scouted. Here’s what Gavilan’s stats look like.

Scouting glitch: how to see your youth players' hidden stats and OVRs

Jorge Gavilan has some amazing stats – and a superb OVR – for his age

He’s rated 69 at 15 years old, which is an amazing OVR for a player of that age.

How to see youth players’ skill moves

As a bonus, adding the players to your shortlist means that you can view their weak foot and skill moves. Just push in on the right analogue stick, then scroll to their key info. Here’s what I got for Sergio Mendez – those five star skills should come in handy!

Scouting glitch: how to see your youth players' hidden stats and OVRs

Adding a player to your shortlist allows you to see their skill moves and weak foot rating

And here’s something strange. Jorge Gavilan’s height and weight were listed as 4’11” and 121lbs when he was in the academy. Yet when we look at him in the shortlist after he’s been scouted, it says he’s 5’5″ and 134lbs. Why is this?

Scouting glitch: how to see your youth players' hidden stats and OVRs

I could have sworn he was 4’11” just now…

I suspect it’s similar to what I discovered in FIFA 12, where if you released a player from your youth academy, they would appear in the free agents as a 16 year old player (even if they were 14 or 15 when you released them). It seems like the game is bumping their height and weight up to what it will be when they’re 16, but is keeping their age showing as 15. Very strange!

Finally, scouting your youth players can give you an early indication of whether players might be mispositioned. The player below, for example, would be much better as a centre forward than a central midfielder – he’d actually be rated 74 at CF!

Scouting glitch: how to see your youth players' hidden stats and OVRs

This player would be better playing further up the pitch as a striker or centre forward

Once I know that, I can start planning other scouting trips or transfers based around this player. If I hadn’t scouted him, I would have thought he would be best in central midfield – but now that I know he’s better up front, I can tell my scout to keep looking for central midfielders, as this player will be better suited elsewhere.

How to scout other teams’ youth players

So this is a great way to really get a good idea of what your scouted players are like, even if you can’t yet promote them.

Interestingly, you can even do this with youth players that aren’t in your own academy. For example, the player below is not one of my youth players but he still has the broken badge and club name, and his generated face shows he’s not a real player. Let’s scout him and see what he’s like.

Scouting glitch: how to see your youth players' hidden stats and OVRs

This player isn’t one of my youth players, but isn’t a real player either

Turns out he’s not amazing, but nevertheless it suggests that he’s a youth player in another team’s academy.

I simmed forward a few seasons and he still had a broken badge and team name, so I don’t know at what point he will appear on a real team, but it’s an interesting indication that your own youth players don’t appear to be the only ones in the game.

Scouting glitch: how to see your youth players' hidden stats and OVRs

While not amazing, this player can still be scouted even though he’s not one of our own

Just note that it’s really hard to find players like this. You have to get their name, you can’t search for them using the traditional parameters – any search will yield no results. So that makes it even more mysterious and suggests these players are not in the game as professional players but hidden and unavailable in the same way that your own youth players are until you promote them.

So if you have any ideas about these random players (or any more tips on scouting your own players in general), make sure you leave them in the comments.

Anyway, this has been my quick tutorial on how you can scout your own youth players and possibly even those on other teams. Hopefully it’ll help you get a better idea of how good your youth players are, and maybe even find some random players on other teams at the same time.


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