First of, you get token with TV rights, usually 1 a day, or 2 every 4 days if you choose "Extra for dedication" which is still the most convenient. Or there are "free" offers which can give you a lot of tokens by just watching videos or completing surveys or installing software. Depending on the country you live in you can get some decent offers, I luckily got 2 surveys for 54 tokens each last week, and then they disappeared. So don't give up hopes

Buildings take some time, usually from 3 days and up to 20 or so. You can speed up building using tokes, but I never felt the need. Actually the training ground and the medical structures do actually affect a lot because they give you green and red packs for free every few days, so you can rack up some by doing nothing. The utilites gives you money during home matches.
When you first start the game they don't seem to give a lot, but it's mostly proportional. When you level up you will gain more money from utilities and more packs from other structures. At level 11 I now get 7 green packs every 4 days from the training ground

The only useless structure in my opinion is the youth academy, because at start it takes around a full season to give a 2* free player and 4* star player that is in fact very expensive.

It may seem a slow game of patience, and in fact is, because you slowly build your team
Don't give up early, I played for free from the start and I still don't regret it.