Career Mode, Loss of Youth Academy Players and disappearing FA's
 

After getting about 5 years into my Career Mode, I noticed a fairly severe issue with the scouting/Youth Academy system. I checked with several of my friends with FIFA 12, and they too had the same problem (although they didn't notice it until I pointed it out). I figured I would share the problem with you guys and get your thoughts.

The issue I am experiencing has to deal with players that are brought up to the senior squad from the Youth Academies having non-renewable contracts. For instance:

Player A was scouted by me and signed to my youth academy. From there, I signed him onto my senior squad for a 3 year contract. However, at the end of the 3rd season when renewing all other expiring contracts, Player A's contract or negotiation status was "contract accepted". This is false, I never offered Player A a contract extension. However, once advanced to the next season under the pretense that Player A had already had his contract extended, Player A was not only no longer on my roster, but not in the game at all (could not be found via transfer windows, not even in free agents).

As a thought for a possible solution, the following year Player B was in the exact same situation, with the exact same contract status. I attempted to negotiate a contract, even though it was showing the status as "contract accepted". The game then told me that since he already accepted a contract (which was obviously never offered), that I could not negotiate. Once advanced to the next season, Player B no longer existed either.

Upon even further examination, I found that ALL of my players brought up from the youth academy and signed to my senior squad had the "contract accepted" status immediately upon joining the senior squad. Therefore, it seems the only way to keep any of my youth players in the game is to sell them all and hopefully re-buy them down the road, or release them all and hope to re-sign them through free agency.

For players like myself that play multiple seasons of Career Mode, this is a serious flaw in the game, as it renders the Youth Academy feature completely useless as I cannot resign any of my scouted players. Why scout players if you'll never be able to re-sign them?

Anyways, I hope none of you are having this problem, but as I said, ALL of my friends with FIFA 12 have this same problem, it just may not be apparent until you get into Career Mode around 5-6 years when you start inexplicably losing your youth players.

Re: Career Mode, Loss of Youth Academy Players
 

I'm almost done with my first season. I'll try and verify this. Has anyone else verified this? If it's true, I would begin to try and contact EA about it.That would be a little bit bigger than a simple glitch.

Re: Career Mode, Loss of Youth Academy Players
 

Verified, unfortunately. :(

Re: Career Mode, Loss of Youth Academy Players
 

I wonder if this also affects youth players from cpu teams. If so, this might cause and issue with young players not coming into the game to replenish rosters, which in turn could lead to all sorts of issues.

Re: Career Mode, Loss of Youth Academy Players
 

Did you negotiate with player B at the end of the season when his contract was supposed to be up? Or prior to that when he still had say, a year or two left on it? If it was the former, then it might be able to be worked around by offering him a contract while his contract isn't up yet. Either way, it shouldn't come down to this. This could potentially be game breaking, like the above poster said. If the CPU can't resign any youth players, there won't be any fresh talent later on in career mode.

EDIT: After reading your post again, it says all players had "contract accepted" as their negotiation status. Mine have that as well, but does that status stay true through the second season with the same players? Meaning they'll always have that tag and you'll never be able to negotiate? Or did you just sign those youth players to 1 year contracts and are stuck with that tag?

Re: Career Mode, Loss of Youth Academy Players
 

It seems, from how I understood the first poster's explanation, that once signed to a 1st Team contract their re-negotiation status from day 1 of the contract to the last day reads "contract accepted." Due to that status, the game will not allow you to renegotiate a contract or renew it at the end and therefore the player is doomed to reach what should be free agency. Instead, the player is then lost from the entire career mode.

Tragic if there isn't a way around this glitch becuase I was really warming up to the depth and replayability of CM. A lot of what I thought could be done to last years game to make the mode better was added in one way or another.

Re: Career Mode, Loss of Youth Academy Players
 

To your first question, both. I tried renegotiating years before the contract would be up (like in year 2 of a 3 year contract, etc) and also during the re-signing period at the end of seasons when the contract was up.

To your second question, yes, it stays that way through a second and other subsequent seasons that your player is under contract with you. For instance, I had a great recruit come thru as a 73 rated 16 year old, signed him to a 5 year contract out of my youth academy. Immediately he had the contract accepted status. I tried resigning him from that point on, but for 5 years the status stayed there, even after loan spells. The player, by the end of his contract, had grown to an 86 overall 21 year old, but I couldn't resign him because of this glitch.

I've sent EA multiple emails and have posted on their bugs/issues forum about this, but no replies yet. Like you guys said, there's no telling what kind of crashes this could have in the long term if CPU's cannot resign them, either. It was already greatly affecting my team in years 6-7, because I had devoted a good deal of resources to the scouting and development of youth players. But when my older players are retiring, and these guys cannot be resigned, the roster for my team just kept getting thinner and thinner.

Re: Career Mode, Loss of Youth Academy Players
 

The problem also extends to player you don't resign. I didn't resign Anelka or Kalou and they disappeared from the game.

Hopefully both these issues are addressed with a patch in the future.