Why I Built YTSI: Solving a Big Problem in Youth Football
By Ian Sacs, 21 March 2025  

No coach wants to sign their team up for a  0-12 loss or a 12-0 win.

For any coach or parent involved in youth football (or soccer, where I come from), one of the biggest challenges isn’t just training, tactics, or player development—it’s finding the right teams to play against. Unlike professional adults, youth play is more focused on development, teamwork, and building sporting character, and while wins and losses naturally contribute to making kids better players, 0-12 losses and 12-0 wins do not.

I learned this the hard way while watching my son play in various leagues and tournaments from U9 to U11. Here in Finland, where teams are categorized into Elite, Competition, Challenge, and Recreational levels, we still faced wildly mismatched games. Sometimes our team dominated, sometimes we were completely outmatched, and in both cases, it wasn’t a great experience for the kids.

I started asking questions: Why is it so hard to find the right level of competition? Why is there no easy way for teams to see how they compare to others? And most importantly, could there be a way to fix this?

The Problem: No Way to Measure Team Strength

I started by talking to coaches, asking other parents with lots of experience supporting teams, and researching youth football online. Individual players have tons of rating systems and KPIs, even scouting reports, and ranking tools. But at the team level, especially for youth teams, there was literally nothing.

Coaches and parents were relying on guesswork, word of mouth, or just hoping they picked the right tournament or league. When traveling abroad for tournaments, this guesswork became even riskier—significant time, effort, and money were on the line.

My research and inquiries to friends and family around the world led me to realize this wasn’t just a problem in Finland—it was a global issue. And no one else was working on a solution.

So I decided to solve it myself.

The Idea: A Universal Youth Team Skill Index

The concept was simple:

1️⃣ Coaches answer a quick survey about their team.

2️⃣ A scoring system calculates their team's YTSI Score (from 0 to 100).

3️⃣ Teams could then use this score to find good matchups—whether for friendlies, leagues, or tournaments.

An YTSI Score wouldn’t be based on game results. Instead, it would factor in team characteristics, player development, and country-level competitiveness. The goal was to create a fair, balanced way to compare teams globally.

The Hard Work Begins: Building YTSI from Scratch

With the idea in place, the next challenge was actually building it.

I started with the core scoring model, using team survey data and country-based soccer/football strength metrics. But once I got the scoring system working, I hit the next big hurdle: making it accessible to the world.

I had to learn web development, data processing, and how to connect everything together. Late nights after my day job were spent watching tutorials, testing ideas, and debugging endless problems.

At first, the system barely worked. But I kept refining it, and eventually, I had a functional prototype.

Launching YTSI: A Game-Changer for Youth Soccer & Football

Even with all the work that went into it, YTSI needed more than just a scoring system—it needed a platform where teams could register, get their score, and compare it to others.

I built www.ytsi.net to make this possible. Now, any coach, team manager, or club representative anywhere in the world can:

✅ Take the quick YTSI survey

✅ Receive an YTSI Score via email

✅ View other teams in the YTSI Index

Best of all? It’s free. The goal is to help teams make better choices.

Since launching, teams from Finland to the United States have already started using YTSI. And this is just the beginning.

The Future of YTSI: Helping Teams Find the Right Match

YTSI is already helping teams make better scheduling decisions, and I am convinced that YTSI is the world's absolute best method for youth teams anywhere in the world to make objective comparisons. But there’s so much more potential.

Imagine a world where:

⚽ Coaches can instantly connect to good-fit teams for friendlies.

🏆 Tournaments can use YTSI Scores to create balanced brackets.

🌍 Teams from anywhere in the world can compare their level with confidence.

This is what I hope YTSI will become—a global benchmark for youth soccer/football teams.

If you’re a coach, club manager, or tournament organizer, I invite you to try it out and see the impact for yourself.

👉 Take the survey & get your YTSI Score today: www.ytsi.net

Let’s build a stronger youth soccer/football community—one score at a time.