Join the YTSI Revolution!

By Ian Sacs, 23 March 2025  

Revolutionizing Youth Soccer: YTSI Launches to Help Teams Find Their Perfect Match

The world of youth soccer just got a game-changing new tool. The Youth Team Skills Index (YTSI) is now live, providing teams with an objective, data-driven way to compare their strength and find well-matched opponents. Since launching just last week, YTSI has already been adopted by teams from Finland to the United States, proving its value as an essential resource for coaches and clubs worldwide.

Solving a Major Challenge in Youth Soccer

Choosing the right tournament or league has long been a struggle for youth soccer teams. Mismatches can lead to frustrating experiences, wasted time, and significant financial costs, especially for teams traveling abroad. While tools exist to evaluate individual players, there has been no widely available system to assess overall team strength—until now.

YTSI provides a simple and free solution. Coaches and team administrators fill out a short survey, and the system generates a YTSI Score—a single number from 0 to 100 that objectively ranks a team’s strength within its age group. This score allows teams to:
✔️ Arrange competitive friendlies
✔️ Register for the right tournaments and leagues
✔️ Compare their level to other teams worldwide

A Vision Turned Reality

I created YTSI because I saw the need for a team-based skill assessment system after watching my son play in youth leagues and tournaments. Despite the existing categorization systems, team skill levels still varied widely. After researching the issue and speaking with coaches, I realized that no such tool existed—so I built it myself.

I wanted to create something that makes it easier for teams to find the right level of competition. We now have a global tool that any coach can use to make smarter decisions about matches, tournaments, and player development.

Building YTSI involved extensive data crunching, analysis, and web development, with countless late nights refining the scoring mechanism. The result is a platform that leverages team characteristics and country-related factors to produce an accurate, comparable team ranking.

How to Use YTSI

1️⃣ Visit www.ytsi.net
2️⃣ Complete the quick survey
3️⃣ Receive a YTSI Score via email
4️⃣ Compare your team’s ranking in the global YTSI Index

The Future of YTSI

The platform is already gaining traction across multiple countries, and with more teams joining daily, the dataset will continue to grow, increasing accuracy and value for all users. Future enhancements will focus on improved calibration, expanded analytics, other sports, and more features to help teams make data-backed decisions.

YTSI is free to use and available now to all youth soccer teams worldwide. To find out where your team stands, visit www.ytsi.net today.