The research and design decisions behind turning coaching observations into coordinated action and individual player development.
I surveyed 22 youth football coaches across academy teams to map their biggest daily pain points.
100%
lack a clear, complete picture of individual players and overall team progress.
75%
rely on WhatsApp and face-to-face talks, leading to irregular, unstructured communication.
92%
admit they often forget insights because there's no structured place to record them.
Michael ZandbergU19 Coach
Maccabi Tel Aviv
"I can't always tell you where each player stands right now. I have a rough feeling, but nothing written down. By the time the next session comes, I've forgotten half of what I noticed in the last one."
"Everything lives in WhatsApp and quick conversations. I had a note about a player's attitude in training, and it just disappeared into the thread — no record, no way back to it."
"I plan at the team level — training, tactics, the week. But for the individual player there's no real plan. I notice someone needs work on something, and I'm just tracking it in my head until it slips."
I benchmarked NextMove against the tools coaches already use to find the gap, not reinvent the wheel.
| FEATURE | HUDL | EASY | NEXT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Centralised player profiles |  No | No |  Yes |
| Tasks & follow-ups | No | No | Yes |
| Staff collaboration in context | No | Yes | Yes |
| Goals & progress per player | No | No | Yes |
| Match statistics & game data | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Video tools | Yes | Yes | Yes |
In youth football, success means helping young players become senior professionals. NextMove brings match analysis, individual goals and staff follow-up into one workflow, so observations can inform each player’s development beyond the next match.
With information scattered across messages and notes, coaches need a clear starting point. I organised the dashboard around the next match, today’s schedule, open tasks and player availability, placing relevant actions alongside each task. The aim was to make the day easier to understand and act on. A wellbeing insight also keeps individual needs visible alongside team priorities.
A player’s development can disappear inside team statistics. I gave personal goals and progress over time a prominent place in the player profile, with a clear Current Focus. This gives the coach a specific priority to revisit across matches, while keeping broader performance data available.
Coaching insights lose value when they stay in messages or memory. I made New Task a prominent, persistent action across the main screens, so coaches can turn an observation into a concrete next step. Each task can include relevant clips and involve staff or players, keeping the evidence and the people involved together. Open tasks on the dashboard bring those next steps back into the coach’s daily view.
If I had more time, my next moves would be: