Loyalty and Home-grown Bonuses
Boosting performance beyond actual skill levels.
Loyalty is a decisive factor that makes players perform better on the pitch as they spend more time at your club. There are two types of bonuses that can be stacked to boost a player's performance:
1. Player Loyalty Bonus
This bonus accumulates for every consecutive day a player remains in your squad.
Progression:
Loyalty is earned faster at the beginning and slows down over time. The midpoint is reached at 12 weeks, but the maximum level, called divine loyalty, is achieved after 3 full seasons (48 weeks).
In-game effect:
A player with divine loyalty receives a +1 skill level bonus in all their functions, except stamina. For example, a "solid" level midfielder with divine loyalty will perform on the pitch as if they were "excellent".
2. Mother Club Bonus (Home-grown)
This bonus is specific to players playing for their club of origin, such as youths promoted from your academy or scouting network.
Identification:
These players are marked with a heart icon on their player page.
Permanent effect:
They receive a permanent extra +0.5 levels in all their skills (except stamina) as long as they remain at the club.
Master Strategy: The total home-grown benefit
The best strategy is to keep players from your own youth system, as it is possible to obtain both bonuses simultaneously.
A player promoted from your youth academy automatically starts with divine loyalty.
This means a home-grown player in your team performs 1.5 levels above their actual skills (1 for loyalty + 0.5 for mother club).
It is vital to know that a player loses all their loyalty the moment they are sold to another club. If you buy them back in the future, you will have to rebuild their loyalty from scratch.
Regarding home-grown players, if you sell them, they lose the heart bonus forever; even if you re-sign them later, they will never enjoy the mother club bonus again.
However, putting a player on the transfer list does not make them lose loyalty if the auction ends without a buyer and they stay in the team.