Soccer Tryout Evaluation Form

The form below covers six soccer fundamentals. Each rating definition spells out what separates one level from the next, so a "3" in passing looks different from a "4" and your evaluators stay calibrated all session. Each printed sheet covers one player, so every evaluator needs a sheet per player on the clipboard. If you score online, paste the form into a spreadsheet instead.

Adding up every evaluator's scores by hand? The €19 Tryout Decision Kit marks who's on the bubble and drafts a message to every family ↓

Want a PDF for your club's shared drive? Press Print Form, which prints the evaluation sheet and its rating definitions without the rest of this page, and choose Save as PDF as the destination in your browser's print dialog.

Combine Every Evaluator's Scores Into One Ranking

With four evaluators, each player leaves the field with four sheets. Copy each evaluator's total (out of 30) into the sheet below, one row per player, then work out the average and the spread, meaning the highest total minus the lowest.

The average gives you a starting order. The rank column holds the staff's decision, and the two do not have to match. A spread of 5 or more points out of 30 puts a player up for discussion before anyone is ranked. The compile sheet only holds totals, so look for a two-point gap on a single skill in the four original sheets, then fill a second compile sheet for that skill. If two players are still level after the discussion, settle it with another look, in the scrimmage or on video, before you choose.

Soccer players are easiest to judge in live play. Put them in a rondo or a 4v4 and score ball control, dribbling, passing, shooting, defending, and game intelligence against the written 1-to-5 definitions. Ball mastery should carry the most weight through U12 and tactical play from U13, and goalkeepers get a separate sheet.

The rating definitions above give each number a behavior to look for. The age weighting table also shows where physical qualities fit at each age, and the goalkeeper form covers the one player the six field skills describe poorly. Three habits make the numbers more trustworthy.

Check What Happens Before the Ball Arrives

Good receivers look over their shoulder before the pass is played. Count those checks in a rondo or a positional grid. A player who scans can open their body and take the first touch away from pressure, and that later shows up as a higher ball control score. Players who only watch the ball tend to receive facing their own goal, even with clean technique. Scanning is easy to miss from the sideline, so ask every evaluator to spend a few minutes of each game watching heads.

Watch the First Seconds After the Ball Changes Hands

Transitions separate players who look alike in possession. When their team loses the ball, does the player press straight away, recover behind the ball, or stop and complain? When their team wins it, who runs forward first? A 4v4 on a short field turns the ball over constantly, so ten minutes gives you plenty of moments to score game intelligence and defending with some confidence. That is also why the 24-skill framework treats transitions as a sub-skill of its own.

Make Both Feet Show Up

A rubric that rewards "uses both feet" only works when the session forces the weaker one. Add a rule in one rondo that every pass goes with the weaker foot, or run a 1v1 channel where the attacker must finish on the side they usually avoid. Left alone, most players spend the whole session on their stronger side, and you end up scoring a dribbling level you never saw.

Tryout Scores, Season Evaluations, and Rec Placement Ratings

A soccer player evaluation covers more than tryout day. A tryout picks a roster from candidates, and the evaluators may be seeing most of them for the first time. A player evaluation is usually written by the coach who has watched that player all season, and in recreational soccer it often decides next season's team placement.

AYSO shows how that works at scale. Balanced Teams is one of its six philosophies, and for 8U and older, each coach rates every player on their team(opens in new tab) by the end of the fall season on a 1-to-5 scale, with half points allowed. The coaches in each age and gender division then meet to compare and harmonize those ratings, which reduces sandbagging and personal bias. The harmonized numbers are used to spread the highest-rated and lowest-rated players evenly across next season's teams, and a player with no rating history starts at 3.

For a mid-season or end-of-season review of your own squad, use the 1-to-10 framework below. Repeating its 24 sub-skills at each checkpoint shows which way each player is moving, and the end-of-season numbers give you something concrete to tell parents.

Is There a Free App for Soccer Player Evaluations?

For a single tryout day, every form on this page and the 24-skill scorer do the job for free, and none of them ask you to sign up. The gap shows at the second evaluation of the same player. The scorer keeps nothing once you leave the page, so putting October's numbers beside March's depends on wherever you pasted them.

Keeping that history is what the Striveon app is for. It saves each evaluation to the player's record and shows their progression from one season to the next. The app is paid, and its 14-day trial is free with no credit card, which leaves time to run one real evaluation through it before deciding. See what Striveon costs.

A tryout sheet gives dribbling one number on one day. It cannot show that a winger's weaker foot went from a liability in the fall to a real option by spring, or that a center back who used to jog after a turnover now sprints to get goal-side. Following that takes smaller pieces and a longer scale. This framework covers the same six areas as the tryout sheet, broken into 24 sub-skills and scored 1 to 10 at checkpoints across the season. Striveon, the evaluation app our team builds, offers it as the soccer starting point, and clubs adjust it to their own playing model.

What the 24 Sub-Skills Cover

Each area holds four sub-skills, and together they are the soccer template Striveon offers during account setup. You can rename any area or sub-skill and add your own, so the list follows your curriculum. As it stands, it breaks the tryout sheet's broad headings down to what a coach watches for in a session, such as a through ball or seeing both the ball and the opponent.

Score One Player Across All 24

Pick an area, rate its four sub-skills from 1 to 10, and the player's profile fills in across all six areas. Nothing you enter is saved between visits. The scorer reports only whether it was started, finished, or exported, never the ratings or names you type. Use its own buttons to copy the scores or download the profile before you leave.

The browser version leaves the meaning of each number to you. In the Striveon app, each level from 1 to 10 comes with a written description, so two coaches who give a 7 for Pressing are scoring against the same text. See the written criteria behind each score in Striveon.

Following the Weaker Foot From Fall to Spring

Re-rate the 24 sub-skills at each checkpoint and the direction each player is heading shows up. For the winger working on their weaker foot, that is the difference between hoping the extra reps helped and watching Close Control Dribbling climb from a 4 to a 6.

In Striveon, next year's numbers line up beside this year's in the same profile, so set the rhythm that fits your calendar, such as the end of each training block or the week before tryouts.

Not every soccer program needs six numbers per player. A rec club placing 100 kids on house teams, or any tryout with more players than the evaluators can watch closely, gets further with three categories.

Three Categories for Rec Placement

Technical, Physical, and Tactical, each scored 1 to 5, give a rec draft enough separation to deal players evenly across teams. Rec clubs use the form in one of two ways. Some hold a single evaluation day and score everyone at once. Others follow the AYSO pattern in the table above, where each team's own coach rates their players at the end of the season. In that pattern, average the three scores into one 1-to-5 rating, rounded to the nearest half point, before the coaches meet to harmonize. The same three-category sheet works for both.

Six Categories for Selective Rosters

Travel, academy, and high school teams are picking a roster, and the players who miss out will ask why. Six scores let you separate two midfielders with the same total, one who dribbles well in tight spaces but holds the ball too long under pressure and one with the opposite profile. That split doubles as feedback, because it tells each player what to work on before next season.

A printed sheet holds one player. For a whole draft list, Copy as Table gives a spreadsheet grid, one row per child.

The US Youth Soccer Player Development Model(opens in new tab) notes that children progress through motor development at their own rate, and its stages of growth put puberty at ages 10 to 14. A U10 and a high school freshman should not be scored on the same priorities. The age guidance and the weighting table below are our own recommendations, shaped by that development picture.

U8-U10: Focus on Ball Mastery and Enjoyment

Most players this young are still working out how to move with a ball at their feet. Score ball mastery first, then willingness to try something new and how much they enjoy the game, and leave tactical understanding and positional play for later.

Look for players who are comfortable on the ball and eager to have it at their feet. A player who wants the ball in tight situations, even when they lose it, is worth more at this age than one who always plays it safe.

U11-U12: Add Technical Precision and Game Awareness

Skill gaps open up in this band. Passing accuracy, shooting technique, and simple choices like when to dribble and when to pass can now be scored with some confidence.

Watch how players respond to pressure. Some look great in warm-ups but disappear when defenders close them down. Others raise their level when the game gets competitive. Once you've identified standout players, a strong player profile helps you record how they develop.

U13-U14: Evaluate Tactical Understanding

By this age, players should understand positional responsibilities and team shape. Evaluate how quickly they decide and whether they find space under pressure. Physical attributes start to matter more, but technical players who read the game well often outperform athletes who rely on size and speed.

High School Soccer Tryout Evaluation

High school tryouts are often the most selective of the year. Spots are few, and many players arrive already settled in one position. Physical qualities stay the second priority, as they are from U13, but at this level you test them directly. A player who cannot recover defensively late in a half hurts the team however good their touch is.

Add fitness benchmarks to the evaluation, such as timed sprints, the beep test (20-meter shuttle run), and scrimmage endurance over two full halves. Judge tactical sophistication by how players react to pressing triggers and a formation change in live play.

Some players will hope to play in college. Help them collect material they can send to college programs, such as full-match video and game stats from a soccer stat sheet. Deciding together which college ID camps to attend is worth doing early.

Our Recommended Weighting by Age Group

Green marks the category we would weight most at each age. Ball mastery leads through U12, and tactical understanding takes over from U13.

A goalkeeper needs a sheet of their own, and even among field players, a holding midfielder and a winger win their place in different moments. Once you know who is trying out for which role, score those candidates on the sheet for that role as well.

Goalkeeper Evaluation

Evaluate shot stopping first, since one mistake in goal can decide a match. Can they react to close-range shots and get down quickly for low drives? Then watch their positioning. Do they cut down angles and command the penalty area, the one place Law 12(opens in new tab) lets them handle the ball?

After a save, watch what they do next: a quick throw to a free full back, or a driven pass that starts an attack. Listen as well. A keeper who organizes the back line out loud is using the view of the whole field that nobody else has.

Field Player Evaluation

Start with the first touch. Can they control a difficult pass and set up the next action in one motion?

Then look at passing range. Can they play short combinations and also switch the field with a long ball? Without the ball, watch for forwards who press with a plan and midfielders who track runners back. Work rate (the willingness to run, recover, and compete for the whole game) often determines who makes the final roster.

Keep this goalkeeper and field player form on screen, or print it for the sideline.

A soccer tryout runs best as a string of small games. Rondos, 1v1s, and 4v4s put every player on the ball many times in a few minutes, and they bring out the scanning and weak-foot habits described earlier, which a line of cones never will. Everything below runs on one full field.

Calibrating the Staff on the Six Skills

The staff works as four separate scorers of the same 40 players. Every sheet covers the full form, from Ball Control to Game Intelligence, and stays private until it is handed in, with no numbers traded before then. At the staff meeting before tryouts, go through the rating definitions together and put a number on a few examples, using video clips or a demonstration: "This first touch is a 3, this one is a 4." Work through each skill on the form, since every evaluator scores the whole sheet.

Mark the field early too, so the first half hour goes to watching players instead of moving cones. The rondo and positional grid areas sit in the middle, the 1v1 and counter-attack stations at opposite ends by the goals, and the lines for four 5v5 pitches go down now for later in the session.

Four Station Drills

All four are small games sized for a group of 10, and each has a rule that puts a particular skill on show again and again. The field markings described above show where each one runs.

For a deeper set organized around first touch, 1v1 duels, and the job each position has to do, see our soccer tryout drills guide.

From Station Grids to Match Pitches

Spread the goalkeeper candidates across the four groups before the first round, and a group without one takes turns in goal. The grass then changes shape twice. The middle grids and goal-end stations give way to four 5v5 pitches after the water break, and those give way to two 9v9 halves for the last half hour.

Short on field time? The printable two-hour soccer tryout plan runs 30 to 50 players through one field in two hours, with a block of position stations built in.

Running Small-Sided Games

Games show who still plays well with a defender close and who talks to teammates. Running the tryout scrimmage in a 9v9 formation on each half of the field gives you a realistic game setting while keeping every player visible. For game design principles that apply to tryouts, see our complete guide to small-sided games.

Comparing Scores and Making Roster Decisions

Once the players have gone home, bring the four sheets and the compile sheet to one table. A note from the rondo station can change a ranking here, for example when a player scanned constantly there but had a quiet scrimmage. Striveon also records which coach scored each evaluation, which helps when next year's staff wants to know who saw what.

Share specific observations with players or parents who request them. "You receive the ball well on your back foot but tend to look down when dribbling" gives a player something concrete to practice. Vague advice like "be more aware" doesn't.

Digital evaluation tools let you track development from tryout to tryout, showing players their growth over time. Once your roster is set, a structured soccer practice plan helps you turn those specific observations into targeted training blocks throughout the season, and our soccer drills fill those blocks with activities matched to each player's development goals.