about

//: state

we're not here to sell you anything. we're not here to entertain you. we're not here to catch a child in a loop of little rewards. we're here to mirror the work — to keep track of effort, and show you the progress that comes from it

you log your matches. your training shows up on its own, read off the calendar your club already uses. across a season it becomes a record you weren't keeping — and the record becomes a report

logging matches is open to anyone. so is the report. some players go further and log what they see on the pitch before the ball reaches them — where the space is, who's closing you down, what's behind you, which of your teammates has room. that's scanning, and it's the one thing you do from match video rather than memory. it's the narrow path. most won't take it, and the diary is complete without it. that's the design, not a compromise

//: why bother logging it

people have kept training logs for a hundred years. here's what they get out of it, and you will too

you forget. not most of it — almost all of it. the log doesn't

twenty sessions in, the number is real. you did that, and you can see it instead of taking it on faith

the log shows what works for you. evening sessions or morning ones, what you ate before the good games, what you skipped before the bad ones — patterns you only catch written down

progress hides on a flat week. the legs lie, the log doesn't. you go back out because it says you're moving even when you can't feel it

the warnings come early. tired sessions stacking up, a skipped week, an ache that keeps returning — invisible day to day, obvious across a month

too little and nothing happens. too much and something tears. the log is where you see which way you're heading before it costs you

skip a week and the gap is right there. the log doesn't care about your excuses. that's the point of it

last season is the only honest guide to this one. you can't use it if you didn't write it down

it saves you time at training. you know what you did last time, so you start where you left off and push a notch past it, instead of guessing

one bad match feels like the end of something. scroll back, count the good ones, and get on with it. the log does that for you

//: it's free

we aim to keep the site free for players. we don't know what it costs to run at scale, and we won't pretend it will be free forever. what we can say is that the diary you build is yours, the data is yours, and nothing about that changes if the rest of it ever does

beta testers who log twelve full matches keep a free membership for life. that offer doesn't come back

//: on the horizon

none of this is here yet. it's the direction the diary is walking

your training, imported from the calendar your club already uses, so the log fills itself in while you do nothing

a report you ask for as often as you want it: hours on the pitch, hours in the gym, hours running, drawn against last season and the season before, so you can watch the shape of your own work over years

matches and league tables read straight off the football association, for the ages where that data exists

readiness and load from the watch on your wrist, if you wear one

mental reps the night before a match, if that's something you do

a coach's view that shows attendance and effort and who's turning up, and never once shows a number a player didn't agree to share

a penalty shootout tool, because someone once kept one by hand and won a cup final with it

the diary works today without any of it

//: the fine print nobody makes you read

there is no leaderboard. comparing children is a hobby for other apps

it will not buzz at 9pm asking if your kid misses it

built by one person. if it's down, he's probably at a match

there's confetti, but you have to earn it

no badge will love you back. that's not a joke, it's actually a badge

//: dopamine

something changed. a kid can win a match now and walk off flat, because the part of him that was supposed to feel it got used up earlier, on a phone, on apps designed to use it up

this is not the kid's fault, and it isn't the parent's either. a whole society decided this was normal, handed the most addictive machine ever built to children far too young, and called it keeping up. we think that's worth being angry about

we can't fix it alone. but a diary doesn't pull a child in. it waits while he's out doing something hard, with other kids his own age, in the cold, and it's there when he gets back. hard things feel hard again. good things might start to feel good again. that's all, someone has to start somewhere

the diary's already running
— you just haven't filled it in yet

the punctuation on this page is deliberate. the missing full stops are doing fine