How to read your child's analysis: a parent's guide to the feedback

You uploaded the clip. The analysis came back. You're staring at a screen full of sections, each with headings like "Root Cause" and "Metrics to Track," and the first thought is: what does any of this actually mean?

That's fair. The feedback is structured, detailed, and occasionally full of words a coach might use but a parent wouldn't. The whole point is to make elite-level analysis useful to someone who doesn't have a coaching badge. But structured feedback only helps if you know how to read it.

Here's a plain-English walkthrough of every section you'll see after uploading a clip, what it tells you, and what to do with it.

Why the feedback is structured this way

Most football feedback parents encounter comes in one of two forms: a coach saying "good effort" at the end of training, or a YouTube video demonstrating a drill. Neither tells you what your child is actually doing, and neither gives you a path from "here's what I noticed" to "here's the drill that fixes it."

The AI feedback is built differently. It looks at the clip you filmed, identifies what's happening in the technique, names it in plain language, explains why it's happening, and pairs each issue with a drill you can run together. There are six sections, and they appear in the same order every time.

Section 1: Overall summary

This is the plain-English headline. One short paragraph that describes what happened in the clip. If your child took a penalty that went over the bar, the summary says that plainly - what they were trying to do, what actually happened, and what the rest of the feedback will dig into.

It's the "you are here" marker. Read it first, before diving into the rest, because it frames everything that follows. If the summary says "good power, but the shot went high," that tells you the analysis is about why it went high, not about whether your child should be shooting at all.

Section 2: Strengths analysis

Here's the part most parents skip straight past.

The feedback doesn't just list what's broken. It opens the detailed section with what your child is already doing right - a named strength with a short explanation of why it matters. A clip that overall shows poor passing accuracy might still flag clean ball-striking technique as a strength. The strengths exist because they do two things: they tell you what not to mess with, and they give your child something concrete to feel good about.

Parents tend to fixate on the weaknesses. That's natural. But the strengths section matters because development isn't only about removing faults - it's about keeping the things that already work. A child who knows their shot power is genuinely good is more likely to stay engaged with the drill that fixes their accuracy than a child who's been told everything they do is wrong.

Read this section with your child. Name the strength out loud. Then move to the improvements.

Section 3: Areas for improvement and drills

This is the core section. It's also the one that confuses parents the most, so let's break it down.

Each area for improvement contains several parts:

• A named issue: something specific, like "Striking Accuracy (Penalty Kick)" or "Plant Foot Position."
• A description of what went wrong, with a timestamp reference like [0:01-0:02] so you can find the exact moment in the clip.
• A root cause: the underlying mechanic causing the issue. If the shot went high, the root cause might be "leaning back too much at the point of contact, causing the foot to strike under the ball rather than through its centre." This is the "why" - it explains what's mechanically producing the result you can see.
• A named drill with Setup, Execution, and Coaching Points - a complete drill you can run in the backyard.

Here's the part that catches people: there can be more than one area. A single clip often surfaces two or three fixable things. Your child's passing might break down because of plant foot position and body shape and the angle of their approach. The feedback names each one, gives each one a root cause, and pairs each with a drill.

That's not a flaw. It's how technique actually works. Very rarely does a single thing cause a result; more often it's two or three small mechanics compounding. The feedback is honest about that.

When you read this section with your child, don't try to fix everything at once. Pick the area with the clearest root cause. Run that drill for a week. Re-film. See if the root cause disappears or lessens. Then move to the next one.

Section 4: Tactical and mental insights

This section covers the decisions around the technique - the stuff that isn't purely mechanical.

If your child took a penalty, the tactical insights might cover composure on the approach, whether they scanned the keeper before the run-up, or whether their decision about placement matched what the situation called for. It closes with a recommendation - a short, specific suggestion about what to think about or do differently next time.

For parents, this section is the bridge between "fix the mechanics" and "play the game." Technique in isolation only goes so far. A child who strikes the ball cleanly but panics under pressure will still struggle. The tactical section acknowledges that the mental and decision-making side of football is part of the analysis too.

Section 5: Metrics to track

Two to four measurable signals that let you see progress over future clips. Not vague impressions - actual things you can count. Accuracy percentage. Success rate. Consistency measured across repetitions.

This matters more than it seems. Most parents - and most kids - give up on a drill because they can't tell whether it's working. "We've been doing this for two weeks and I don't know if anything's changed" is the single most common reason a parent stops coaching at home. Metrics solve that. They make progress visible, not just felt. When your child can see their accuracy tracking upward across three clips, the drill stops feeling like a chore and starts feeling like a plan.

Film a clip. Run the prescribed drill for a week or two. Film again. Compare the metrics. If they're moving in the right direction, keep going. If they're not, that's a signal to re-upload and let the analysis find what's still blocking progress.

Section 6: Next steps

A short, encouraging close. It names the drill (or drills) to focus on this week. It doesn't give you a twelve-week periodised plan - it gives you the next step.

That's deliberately simple. The hardest part of coaching your own child isn't knowing what to do eventually. It's knowing what to do today. Next Steps answers that question directly: here's the drill. This week. Go.

How to use the feedback as a parent

The six sections work together. The summary tells you what happened. The strengths tell you what's working. The improvements tell you what's broken and why. The tactical section handles the decisions. The metrics let you track whether the drills are working. The next steps tell you what to do right now.

You don't need to understand every word of the root cause explanation. You don't need a coaching badge to run the drill. The feedback is designed so that a parent who can hold a phone and set out three cones can take the analysis and turn it into a productive fifteen minutes in the backyard.

That's the loop: film a clip, read the feedback, run the drill, get better, film again.

Want to try it? Upload a short clip of your child and you'll get the full analysis - all six sections, with named drills you can run today. Your first analysis is free.

If you want to see what the dashboard looks like before you upload, here's a full walkthrough. And if you're wondering how to film the clip in the first place, the 90-second test shows you the whole loop from phone to feedback. Worried about uploading your child's video? Everything you need to know about privacy - Google Enterprise API, no training on your videos, one-click delete - is in the parent's privacy guide.