Potential Ability (sometimes abbreviated to PA) is an attribute for players and staff in Football Manager and in some Championship Manager games. It dictates the maximum that a person's Current Ability attribute can ever rise to, and therefore how good they can possibly become. It can be a value between 1 and 200 (with 200 being the best).
The value of this attribute can also be a value between -10 and 0 (in the pre-game database) which tells the game to assign a random Potential Ability value within a certain range when creating a new game. For example, a player with PA set to -10 (the best rating), tells the game to use a random value between 170 and 200 for that player's Potential Ability.
0 = 1-200
-1 = 1-30
-2 = 10-40
-3 = 30-60
-4 = 50-80
-5 = 70-100
-6 = 90-120
-7 = 110-140
-8 = 130-160
-9 = 150-180
-10 = 170-200