---
title: "Youth Football Tryouts: What to Actually Look For"
description: "⚽ Youth football tryouts without guesswork: which qualities you can really spot in 90 minutes, four observation stations and an evaluation checklist."
datePublished: 2026-04-25
tags:
- coaching
- planning
- youth-football
- checklist
---
A tryout is one of the hardest sessions you run as a youth coach. In 90 minutes you have to size up 20 or 30 children, most of whom you're seeing for the first time, often with parents watching, often with the expectation of picking a squad for the entire season. And at the end you make decisions that are very real to a child: in or out.
This article shows you how to plan a youth football tryout that reduces that risk: what you can actually see in the time available, which stations surface the visible, and how to keep the process transparent enough that nobody walks away arguing. At the end you'll find a checklist to take with you.
## Why tryouts are harder than they look
Four typical traps in 90 minutes: daily form mistaken for ability, the "loudest equals best" fallacy, your own favourite player type, and the Relative Age Effect (Q1 players are selected three times as often as Q4). The fix is station design, not concentration.
The impression a child makes in 90 minutes is not the child. It's a snapshot under very specific conditions: unfamiliar teammates, an unfamiliar coach, the pressure of being watched, possibly a bad day at school beforehand. Four traps show up in nearly every tryout:
- **Daily form instead of ability.** The boy who can't hit a thing today scored three times in five minutes at his club training last week. You don't see that.
- **The loudest player isn't the best player.** A child who constantly coaches, calls for the ball, and demands space looks dominant. That isn't the same as decisive.
- **Your favourite player type.** If you were a technical number six yourself, you'll spot the technical number six. The unobtrusive but space-covering full-back you'll miss.
- **Birth month and physical maturity.** A child from the first quarter of the age group is often biologically almost a year ahead of a December-born peer: bigger, faster, stronger. That looks like talent and is the best-documented selection bias in youth football (Augste & Lames 2011). Countermeasure: date of birth on the scoring sheet, discuss the two half-years of the age group separately in the coaching team.
You can't avoid these traps by concentrating harder. You can only soften them through the **design** of the tryout. Ninety minutes has to be enough, because more is rarely possible. So in those 90 minutes enough visible behaviour has to happen that the distortion gets smaller.
## What you can actually see in a tryout
Reliably visible in 90 minutes: first touch, scanning before reception, decision speed, body language, coachability. Partially visible: game intelligence and mentality. Practically invisible: character, trainability, development potential.
Before you build stations, you have to know what stations can show. Most tryouts don't fail at the assessment, they fail at unrealistic expectations about what's visible.
### Reliably visible in 90 minutes
- **First touch.** How well does the child take a mid-height pass? With which foot? Is the ball still playable afterwards?
- **Scanning before the ball arrives.** Does the child look around before the ball gets there? Or only see it once it's at the foot?
- **Decision speed.** How many touches between control and the next action? One? Two? Four?
- **Body language.** How does the child react to a misplaced pass? Push on, or stand still?
- **Coachability.** During an exercise you give a quick instruction. Does the child apply it on the next attempt?
### Partially visible
- **Game intelligence.** Needs game situations, not station drills. Only assessable in 4-v-4 or larger.
- **Mentality under pressure.** A tryout *is* pressure, but a specific pressure. A child can freeze under parental observation and switch on in a competitive match, or vice versa.
- **Consistency.** A single session is by definition not enough. If you can arrange it, run the tryout as two or three sessions over four to six weeks. Successful talent programmes work with multi-year observation, not one-shots (Sarmento et al. 2026).
### Practically invisible
- **Trainability over the next 12 months.**
- **Character, team behaviour, conduct in the dressing room.**
- **Development potential.** A child who looks fully developed at U13 may be left behind at 16. A child who looks awkward at U13 may dominate the age group at 16.
> **Info:** The consequence for station design: plan your tryout to provoke the *reliably visible* qualities, and don't waste it on the invisible ones. A station that's meant to test "character" tests nothing.
## Four stations that surface the visible
Four 15-minute stations: technique under time pressure in an 8x8-metre square, 1-v-1 with a decision (dribble or pass), 4-v-4 plus floaters, 20-minute closing game as the load station. Game intelligence is only reliably measured in game forms.
A 90-minute slot splits cleanly into four blocks of about 15 minutes each, plus warm-up, breaks, and a closing game. Each station provokes a specific dimension of observation. The fact that stations 3 and 4 are small-sided games is not accidental: game intelligence and creativity are most reliably measured in validated game test situations, not in isolated drills (Roth & Memmert 2002).
### Station 1: Technique under time pressure
An 8x8-metre square, four players inside, two balls, alternating pass and reception. After three minutes a coach steps to the edge and calls in instructions ("right foot only", "see first, then receive", "one touch fewer"). You watch:
- Who breaks away from their preferred side?
- Who listens and adjusts?
- Who carries on as before?
That's first touch, coachability, and attention in one drill.
### Station 2: 1-v-1 with a decision
Attacker and defender start at opposing cones. Behind the defender, a free teammate is positioned. The attacker has two options: dribble past the defender, or play the free teammate. The decision has to come fast, because the defender pressures immediately.
You don't see who dribbles best here. You see **who actually decides** instead of running an automatic action. A child who dribbles in every situation hasn't made a decision. A child who always passes hasn't either.
To build the dribbling baseline before tryouts, see the article on [dribbling drills for U9, U10, U11](https://areacopa.com/en/blog/dribbling-drills-u9-u10-u11) for age-specific drills.
### Station 3: 4-v-4 plus floaters
Two teams of four, plus two floaters who always play with the team in possession. Small goals, no keeper, four-minute games, then everyone rotates. Here you see:
- Game intelligence in a unit (who creates space, who sticks to the ball)
- Scanning in real game situations
- Body language as part of a team (who coaches calmly, who sulks, who carries others along)
Important: four minutes is short enough that fatigue doesn't distort the picture, and long enough that every child gets several actions.
### Station 4: Closing game with rotation
A slightly bigger pitch, 6-v-6 or 7-v-7, a continuous 20 minutes with rolling subs. This is the load station. By now you don't care about technique, you care about:
- Who steps up again in minute 15?
- Who slips into "that'll do for today" mode at minute 12?
- Who takes responsibility when it gets tight?
> **Warning:** Don't plan station 4 as a pure fun game at the end. This is exactly where load tolerance shows up, and you don't see it in the first 60 minutes. Parents see a closing game; you see the most important observation phase.
## Keep the process fair and transparent
Four rules for fairness: two observers per station with independent notes, a standard scoring sheet on a 1-to-4 scale, bibs with big numbers instead of memorising names, parent communication in advance with a clear "no shouting from the touchline" rule.
Stations are only half the job. The other half is how you observe, document, and decide. Four rules that make the difference in practice:
**Two observers per station.** Two coaches per station, taking notes separately, comparing at the end. If both independently put the same players in the top half, that's a strong signal. If they diverge, that's an even more important signal: then you have to discuss in the coaching team *why* you see things differently.
**A standard scoring sheet.** Three to five criteria per station, scale of 1 to 4. Not 1 to 10, no decimal points. Four levels are enough: well below standard, at standard, above standard, well above standard. More granularity fakes a precision that isn't there.
**Player bibs with big numbers.** Remembering names doesn't work when 25 children are on the pitch at once. Bibs with clearly readable numbers on chest and back, plus a list ("number 7 = Max Mustermann"). Anyone still guessing after 30 minutes which child just scored has already lost half the observation.
**Communicate with parents in advance.** A short email a week before the tryout: what happens, who decides, when feedback comes, and above all, that parents are *not* to shout from the touchline. If that's clear up front, you save yourself 90 minutes of background noise and a debate at the end. Anyone wanting written feedback after the tryout gets it the following week, not in the car on the way home.
One more point for the email itself: not being selected is the assessment of a snapshot, not a final verdict on the child. Putting that sentence into the parent letter and pointing to the club pathway, future tryouts, or open training sessions noticeably reduces drop-out among non-selected children. Roth and Memmert (2002) show that less successful children often leave the club because they're denied playing time, not because they give up on the game.
## Checklist: tryout in 90 minutes
Operational checklist in four blocks: one week before (date, parent email, observers, scoring sheets, bibs), 30 minutes before kick-off (stations set up, assignments, welcome), during the 90 minutes, 30 minutes after (compare sheets, provisional selection).
After all the principles, here's the operational checklist to take with you on the day. Same logic as our [tournament checklist](https://areacopa.com/en/blog/football-tournament-checklist), but for tryouts.
**One week before**
- [ ] Date, pitch, time confirmed
- [ ] Participant list finalised, parent email with the agenda sent
- [ ] Observer team briefed (at least two per station)
- [ ] Scoring sheets printed, one stack per observer
- [ ] Bibs with numbers, number-to-name list prepared
- [ ] Equipment: cones, balls, goals, pen, clipboards
**30 minutes before kick-off**
- [ ] Stations set up and walkable
- [ ] Observers assigned per station, sheets handed out
- [ ] Children's welcome planned (who you are, what happens, what doesn't)
- [ ] Parent area clearly marked
**During the 90 minutes**
- [ ] Warm-up 10 minutes (loose, no scoring pressure)
- [ ] Stations 1 to 4, 15 minutes each plus 2 minutes transition
- [ ] Quiet breaks with drinks, no parent conversations in between
- [ ] Closing game as a deliberate observation phase, not a wind-down
**Right after the whistle (30 minutes)**
- [ ] Coaching team together, sheets compared
- [ ] Where are the unambiguous cases (top and bottom)?
- [ ] Where do observations diverge, and why?
- [ ] Provisional selection noted, parents told the next day, not now
If you're serious about tryouts, you don't run them as a one-off event but as the kick-off of a season. Once your new squad is set, it's worth planning the first team session as a small internal tournament: short games, mixed teams, a first real read on the group. How to put that first tournament together physically, organisationally, and mentally is in our [tournament preparation roadmap](https://areacopa.com/en/blog/preparing-youth-team-for-tournament).
[Plan your first internal tournament after the tryout](https://areacopa.com/en/tournaments/new?utm_source=agent&utm_medium=markdown&utm_campaign=youth-football-tryout-session)
## Download the checklist
The 90-minute tryout as a printable planning template: stations, observation sheet, parent-mail template, and selection grid. Print it and clip it to your clipboard on tryout day.
## Sources
- Augste, C., Lames, M. (2011): The relative age effect and success in German elite U-17 soccer teams. *Journal of Sports Sciences* 29. Evidence for RAE in German youth football.
- Müjdeci, İ. et al. (2026): Coaching effectiveness in competitive youth contact sports and martial arts. *Frontiers in Psychology* 16. Birth-quarter effect on 4Cs character scores.
- Roth, K., Memmert, D. (2002): Sportspielübergreifende Talentförderung. *BISp-Jahrbuch*. Game test situations as a validated diagnostic instrument; drop-out among non-selected children.
- Sarmento, H. et al. (2026): The road to expertise in U-20 football world champions. *International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching*. Multi-year observation rather than one-shot tryouts in successful talent programmes.
- Andronikos, G. et al. (2026): A Qualitative Investigation of Successful Junior-to-Senior Transitions in Elite Athletes. *Athens Journal of Sports* 13(1). Structured coach challenges as a developmental mechanism.
- Wein, H.: *Game Intelligence in Soccer*. "Talent develops in the repeated meeting of many players in the small-sided area."
- DFB: *Wettbewerbsformen im Kinderfußball*, edition 09/2024. Reference for the small-sided formats stations 3 and 4 are built on.
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Source: https://areacopa.com/en/blog/youth-football-tryouts-guide