The best football stats app for a parent is one that keeps your own child's goals, assists and minutes across every season. For that, Progress is our app for parents, the Football Parent Coach App covers a whole grassroots team, and a match log book does the same job with no screen at all.
This list is about tracking the matches your child plays in. If you're after professional player stats, this isn't that list.
What Is the Best Football Stats App for Kids?
- Best football stats app for parents: Progress, for keeping one child's stats and development across every club and season.
- Best football stats app for coaches: Football Parent Coach App, for logging a whole team's goals, assists, cards and minutes live from the touchline.
- Best without an app: a football match log book, for families who would rather write it down after the game.
- Best for movement data: a football tracker your child wears, such as the Footbar Meteor, for distance, sprints and touches.
Each one answers a different question. An app or a log book records what happened in the match: who scored, who set it up, how long your child played. A tracker records how they moved, so the two work well together.
Which Football Stats Are Worth Tracking?
At under-7 to under-10, keep it to the basics: games played, goals, assists and minutes. Many coaches rotate players through positions at these ages, so detailed stats mostly reflect where a child happened to play that week. The FA does not allow results or league tables to be published from under-7 to under-11, which says a lot about where the emphasis is meant to be.
From under-11, when games move to 9v9 and then 11-a-side, positions start to settle and a few more numbers become worth keeping:
- Minutes, and the share of minutes available. Twenty minutes means something different in a short small-sided game than in a full 11-a-side match.
- Position played. A child who has spent a season at right-back has had a different season to one who rotated through midfield and attack.
- Goals and assists by type. Left foot, right foot or header is the simplest picture of how two-footed a player is becoming.
- Player of the match awards and coach feedback. These capture the games where your child played well without scoring.
Clean sheets matter for goalkeepers and defenders, but only if you note who was in goal for each game. Without that, a clean sheet only tells you about the team.
Three Ways to Track Football Stats
Paper. A notebook or match log book in the kit bag, filled in on the drive home. It costs almost nothing, never needs charging, and children who like writing often enjoy keeping it themselves. The downside is the totals: adding up a season by hand is where paper records often fall away.
Spreadsheet. A shared sheet works well for one season, especially for a coach tracking the whole team. Our guide to building a football team spreadsheet covers the columns and formulas. The weak points are logging during a match, which is fiddly on a phone, and carrying the data into the next season.
App. A football stats app does the adding up for you and keeps every season in one place. The trade-off is that someone has to log each match, so the right app is the one quick enough to use on a cold touchline.
I used to keep it on a notes app. I'd have one note where I'd put his goals and try to remember them, and another where I'd pop something I thought he could work on in training or during a match. If I noticed he was taking a bad first touch or wasn't getting into space, I'd make a note. Reading them back over time, it was a really good way of spotting patterns, but it would be nice to have it over a longer period and to be able to filter to a particular area, like first touch.
Best Football Stats App for Parents: Progress
Progress is our football stats app for parents, built to keep one child's football record from their first Saturday morning team onwards.
You log a match after the final whistle or live from the touchline: who scored, who set it up and how (left foot, right foot or header), your child's minutes on the pitch and where they played. The app adds it up into season and career totals across every club and age group. Already a few seasons in? You can add previous seasons with their games, goals and assists, so the record does not start from today.
Three things set it apart from writing it down:
- Coach feedback. Send your child's coach a private link and they can rate them across the FA's four corners and write what is going well, in their browser, with no account needed.
- Training notes. Jot down what went well and what to work on after a session, tag it (first touch, confidence, weaker foot) and see which themes keep coming up.
- Two parents, one record. Share the player with another parent so either of you can log a match, and add a second team if your child plays for two.
He also went to a few different development centres, so I thought it would be nice to be able to save the feedback and scores to see how he developed over time.
It's a web app, so it opens in your phone's browser and adds to your home screen, on iPhone and Android.
Best Football Stats App for Coaches: Football Parent Coach App
The Coach App is our football stats app for grassroots coaches and team managers, and it tracks the whole team rather than one child.
During a match you log goals, assists, cards and substitutions as they happen, and appearances, goals, assists, cards and minutes for every player are calculated from that automatically. Because it also runs team selection and equal-time rotation, minutes are recorded as part of picking the team rather than as a separate job.
If you're a parent rather than the coach, it's worth knowing whether your child's coach uses it: parents can be sent a link to see fixtures and results without installing anything.
Log every goal, assist and man of the match from the touchline.
See how it worksBest Football Stats Books and Match Journals
A football stats book is the simplest tracker there is, and for a younger child who likes to fill things in, it can be the one they actually keep up with.
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The match log book suits a child who wants to record every game; the training and match record book suits a player who also wants to log training sessions; the diary suits a younger child who would rather write about the game than count it.
Football Stats Trackers Your Child Wears
A football stats tracker you wear measures something an app or a book cannot: how your child moved. GPS vests record distance, top speed and sprints, calf sensors such as the Footbar Meteor estimate passes and shots as well, and boot sensors can count touches with each foot.
They do not record goals or assists, and the numbers tend to mean more from 11-a-side onwards than on a small pitch. Our guide to the best football GPS trackers for kids compares the options, which ones need a subscription, and when a child is old enough for one.
Keeping the Numbers in Proportion
Stats are a record of a season, and children can read them as a verdict on themselves if adults treat them that way. Goals in particular say as much about where a child plays and who they play with as about how well they played.
A few habits help:
- Compare your child with themselves. This season against last season tells you far more than a teammate's totals, especially around puberty, when late developers can look behind on paper because of growth rather than ability.
- Let them decide when to look. Logging the match is your job; talking about it is theirs. Our guide on what to say after a football match covers why the car journey home goes better without a performance review.
- Record the good games that do not show up. A player of the match award or a coach's comment is often the best thing in a season's record.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a free app that can track football stats?
A spreadsheet in Google Sheets is free and does the job for one season. Progress has a free trial with everything included, and the Coach App's team selection and rotation are free, with live match stats on its paid plan. The Footbar Meteor's core stats are free once you have the sensor.
How do I check my child's football stats from previous seasons?
Many grassroots clubs don't keep individual player stats from one season to the next, so the record is often whatever a parent kept. If you have the old seasons on paper or in a spreadsheet, Progress lets you add them as past seasons with their games, goals and assists, so they count in the career totals.
Can both parents log the same child's stats?
In Progress, yes: share the player with another parent and either of you can log a match. You approve them first, and they see the same record.
What is the best football tracker for kids?
For most children starting out, a calf sensor such as the Footbar Meteor, because it fits any size of leg and works indoors. Our GPS tracker guide covers vests and boot sensors for older players.
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Keep your child's whole football journey in one place
Goals, assists and career stats, training and coach feedback, and season cards worth sharing.
