Player development
A player is more than what they did with the ball. 4CM tracks development across all four corners of the FA model — technical, physical, psychological and social — and treats the last two as the foundation rather than the afterthought.
The framework
The Four Corners, with Harwood’s 5Cs within the psychological corner. Everything — every drill, every rating, every observation — is tagged against it, so a season's work adds up to a picture rather than a pile of notes.
The skills and the game intelligence. A player can have lovely technique and still read the game badly — so these are tracked apart, not averaged together.
Always read against biological maturity, never against a birthday. An early developer isn’t better; a late one isn’t worse. The app won’t show you a physical figure without that context attached.
Chris Harwood’s 5Cs live here — the vocabulary most academy coaches already use for the mental side.
The 5Cs
Plus resilience, composure, coachability and a growth mindset.
Football is a team game, and most of these children will not turn professional. What they keep is this corner — so it is weighted like it matters.
Blind dual rating
A player checks in on how they slept and how they feel, then rates their own four corners. You rate them too. Neither sees the other until both are in, so nobody anchors on the other’s number — and the gap between the two becomes the most useful conversation of the week.
Player self-rating and Coach vs Me Coming during beta. Player accounts are for 13+ — and the pilot issues none yet, so today the coach holds the whole record.
Player accounts start at 13, because a younger child's account needs verified parental consent and we would rather ship that properly than quickly. Nothing about that reduces what a coach can do for a U7–U12 squad.
The coach plans their sessions, rates their development across the four corners and tracks it over a season exactly as they would for an older team. The child simply is not a user of the software. The parent view of that recordComing during beta — during the pilot the coach holds it and shares it directly.
A player development journal Planned — it is not built, and nothing on this site should be read as saying otherwise.How children’s data is handled.
Why psychological and social come first
There is no league table of players in 4CM. Physical data always carries its maturity context, so an early developer isn’t flattered and a late developer isn’t written off — and welfare flags go to the coach, never to the child or the parent.
We are working with a small number of UK clubs and coaches while we evaluate the platform with real teams.