Learn the language of the cards. Every tag, every dimension, and what the numbers really mean.
🎯 The VV Score
91
Iconic
The single number on every card. It rates one player's one season. Higher is rarer.
95+
Generational, the rarest air the game has ever known. The ceiling of the Index.
Above even the elite sits a tier the Index almost never awards , the seasons that did not merely lead their generation but defined it. Less a rating than a coronation , the seasons an entire era is measured against.
90+
Iconic, the very best seasons football has produced. Prestige territory.
The rarefied air at the very summit of the game. Only a handful of seasons each generation ever reach it, the campaigns that need no introduction and end every argument. Here, greatness stops being a word and becomes a number.
85+
World Class, a season among the best of its year.
Not quite the summit, but within clear sight of it. The seasons that would headline almost any other year, the work of a player operating at the very top of their craft.
80+
Standout, a clear cut above the rest.
A season that tilted matches, weekend after weekend. A clear difference-maker who left no doubt they belonged among the very best on the pitch.
≤79
Accomplished, the honest backbone of the professional game.
Every team needs them. The dependable, useful seasons that keep a side ticking over, the work that rarely makes the montage but always makes the difference. This is the broad base of the professional game and the vast majority of all seasons. The Index rates every one of them with the same honesty it gives the summit.
How it's built
Goals and assists first, the numbers fans remember. Then a capped share for defending, counted as the tackles, interceptions and blocks a player made, and an adjustment for league strength, so a season in a tougher division counts for more. The result is one number for a season, from any of the 9 leagues. It is built mostly on output, so it does not put every position on the same ladder: forwards reach the top bands, and no centre-back season has reached 85.
100 is unreachable by design. The very top is reserved, the ceiling exists so greatness always has somewhere left to climb.
The bands are named levels, not precise cuts. A season near a band edge could sit either side of it. The number is measured more finely than the names divide it, so a band is the neighbourhood a season is in, not a line it cleared.
The VV Score is not a popularity contest, and not a sum of trophies. It measures a single season's output: goals and assists per 90 above all, with a capped share for the defending a player was recorded doing. Then the league is accounted for, because thirty goals in the strongest division is not thirty goals in a gentler one. What remains is one defensible figure, and it argues most fairly between seasons that are alike. Set two strikers side by side and the number settles a real argument. Set a centre-back beside a striker and it mostly tells you which of them scores: the best centre-back season on record is 82.
1Built on output. Goals and assists are the core of the score, and they are recorded everywhere back to 2010. Defending counts only as the tackles, interceptions and blocks a player made, and those exist only from 2015/16.
2The top bands belong to attackers. Of the 650 seasons at 85 or better, 0 were played by centre-backs and only 3 by defenders at all, all of them full-backs. No holding midfielder has reached 90: 0 of the 150 seasons there.
3What a defender prevents is not in the record. Positioning, cover and the attack that never started leave no number behind, so the best defenders score below their reputation. Van Dijk sits in the low seventies, and we say why rather than moving him.
4Compare like with like. The score argues best between seasons in similar roles. Between a centre-back and a striker it mostly measures who scored.
5The dimensions are not the score. The five dimensions below rank a player against his own position; the score does not.
One season, scored step by step, is on the VV Index.
The Foundation
🕸️ The Five Dimensions
Every player is read across the same five dimensions, so any card compares to any other. The shape tells you the type.
Two different readings on every card. The VV Score is one number on one ladder for every outfield season, built mostly on goals and assists. The five dimensions are a different reading: each is a percentile against seasons in the player's own position, so a centre-back's Defensive is measured against centre-backs and never against forwards. That is why a defender can show a full Defensive spoke and still carry a modest score. The dimensions sit beside the score, never inside it.
Tap each point to read the dimension
Goal Threat The danger a player carries in front of goal: the goals he scored and the shots he put on target, per 90. It counts what reached the goalkeeper, not where he stood, so a forward who pulls defenders out of shape without shooting gets no credit for it here.
Creation The chances a player makes for others: passes that led to a shot, per 90, with a smaller part for assists. A pass counts whether or not someone finished it, which is why a creator in a side of poor finishers still reads well. It does not judge how good the chance was.
Progression Moving the ball up the pitch, as far as the record can see it: dribbles completed per 90, with a small part for how much a player passes. It sees the carry. It cannot see the pass that split a line or the yards gained, so a deep passer can read lower here than he played.
Defensive The half of the game that rarely makes the highlight reel: tackles, interceptions and duels won, per 90. It is read in context, each player against his own position, so a full-back and a holding midfielder are measured against their own kind. What it cannot see is the tackle that was never needed. Positioning, cover and the attack that never started leave nothing in the record.
Reliability The season-long view: minutes played out of a full 38-game season. It is the one dimension not ranked against a position, because a minute means the same thing everywhere, and it means a Bundesliga ever-present, with four fewer games to play, tops out lower. It counts no errors; the record has none to count.
Five numbers, but never only numbers. They are the shape of a player , the fingerprint no two careers share. One man lives for the goal; another for the pass that breathes it into being. One carries the ball forward like a rising tide; another holds the line when the night turns cold. Reduce a season to these five and you do not shrink it , you reveal it. This is the shape behind the number, not the number itself: the truth of how a footballer spent his year.
The object itself
🎴 The Card
The number and the badges are explained above, and the trophies beneath a card have a section of their own further down. These are the parts of a card that are easy to miss, and one that only a few cards carry. A small pair of arrows beneath the shield means the shirt number is inferred rather than sourced, and the panel at the end of this section says where every number comes from.
8
84VV
PLAYER
Attacking Midfielder · Club
12Goals
9Assists
The number on a shirt is a form of identification, and it is here for the same reason the name is: a season belongs to a person.
The Glance
84VV Index12Goals9Assists
The score, the goals, the assists, and one line of verdict. The three numbers anyone asks for first.
"Three numbers and a verdict line, chosen because they are what a stranger asks first. They deliberately leave out the tackle, the yard covered and the pass before the assist, all of which sit one layer down. The glance is a summary, not a judgement."
The Trajectory
Goals and assists across every season, so a card can be read against the years around it.
"A single season is a data point. Three of them are a shape. The chart plots goals and assists year on year so a card can be read against what came before and after it, which is how careers are actually argued about."
The Proof
Per 90
Total
Goals
0.40
12
Assists
0.30
9
Key passes
NR
NR
The per-90 rate and the season total behind the score. Where NR appears, the number was never recorded.
"Per 90 is the rate, the season total is the volume, and the two together are what a score is built from. A player with a high rate over few minutes and one with a steady rate across a full season are different achievements, and the table lets you tell them apart. Where a number was never recorded we write NR, because a zero would be a claim we cannot make."
Watch
Watch Player Name , 23/24 season
On every card, the link out to watch that player's season for yourself.
"Numbers, graphs, a scout's reading of ten months of football. And then a link out of all of it, because some things are better seen than described."
The Chronicle✶ Signature Moment
“A lobbed finish to pass Cesar, and a record sixty years old belonged to a boy of twenty-four.”
Barcelona 5-3 Granada · 20 Mar 2012 · La Liga (example)
The single night that season is remembered for, told rather than measured. The gold marker appears only on the few cards that carry one.
"Everywhere else the season is measured. Here it is told. A total explains what a player did across ten months, and it will never explain why a stadium still talks about one evening in March , and both are true of the same season."
The different set
🧤 Goalkeepers
A keeper carries no VV Score at all. The five dimensions are outfield measures, and the Index cannot yet earn a keeper one, so his card shows none rather than showing a number built from minutes. What it shows instead is below.
One keeper, one season, every shot he faced. The rate is not a claim on this page , it is a count you can run yourself.
David de Gea, Manchester United, 2017/18. The fourteenth best save season of the 1,920 we can measure.
143 shots faced · 2017/18
SavedGoals
115Saved
28Goals
80.4%Save percentage · 14th of 1,920
The Index cannot yet weigh a save.
The figure it could compute for a keeper is built from minutes and league strength alone, so nothing he does in his own six-yard box would move it. The fourteenth best save season we hold would score the same as the thousandth, and de Gea's 17/18 is that fourteenth. Rather than publish a number that cannot move, the card shows none.
Every one of those marks is the same size, and that is not a design choice.
We record whether a shot was saved, never how hard it was. A tap-in in the six-yard box and a thirty-yard flying save both count one. The score cannot weigh them, so the card says so rather than implying a precision it does not have.
The spread of save rates across every keeper season we can measure
80.4%
Worst 46.9%Median 68.7%Best 88.5%
Of the 1,920 keeper seasons we can measure, de Gea's 80.4% is the fourteenth best. Each tick is 5% of that field, and nine in ten sit between 59.2% and 76.7%, which is what makes his rate rare.
14thde Gea 2017/18
1,920Keeper seasons we can measure
68.7%The median season · his rate is 80.4%
A save rate means nothing against a striker's numbers, so a keeper is ranked against every other keeper we can measure and against nobody else.
There is no radar
Not one of the five dimensions asks about keeping goal. The pentagon is not hidden, it is inapplicable, so the card puts it away and shows the marks instead.
Shots faced is the defence
Facing more shots earns a keeper nothing. How many arrive describes the team in front of him, not the man behind them, so it frames his rate and never enters his score. De Gea's 143 was busier than most, the 68th percentile of the seasons here, and that is context rather than credit.
Penalties saved is a fact, not a score
Stopping one is genuinely his own act and we count it. How many he faced is not recorded, so there is no rate to be had and none is invented.
Drawn only when the season can carry it: 800 minutes, 60 shots faced, 2015 onward. 1,920 of 2,806 keeper seasons with save data qualify, and every one that does not says which gate it missed. Seasons with no save recorded are not counted at all, because they were never eligible to fail a gate.
The badges of a career
🏷️ Wonder Tags
A number tells you how good a season was. A Wonder Tag tells you what kind of greatness it was , the language of a career, earned not bought.
The rarest seasons football produces. Prestige is reserved for the campaigns that set the standard , the years a career is remembered for. The VV Score ladder above defines every band; these two are the only ones that get a card of their own.
VV
95 and above
Generational
“Once in a generation, the game produces a player who does not merely lead his era but defines it, who bends the limits of what we believed possible and makes them his own. This is not a rating. It is a coronation , reserved for the very few seasons that stand entirely alone.”
12 seasons, ever
VV
90 and above
Iconic
“The year people reach for when the argument begins. A campaign that burned so brightly it earned its place in the permanent memory of the game. The season they will still be talking about long after the final whistle of a career.”
150 seasons at 90 and above
The silverware
🏆 Honours
Numbers fade. Silverware doesn't. The medals a player actually lifted, when the season was on the line.
The silverware, in time
🎒 The Cabinet
Every card is one season. The cabinet beneath it is not , it is everything won up to that point in a career. That is why a 2019 card shows a 2018 trophy.
Early careerPeak yearsFinal seasons
How they play
🧬 Profile Tags
Tap a position to see the role, and the profile tags a card in that position can earn. Different positions offer different tags , that is the whole idea.
Attack
Goal MachineAttack
Goals by the season, not the handful. Volume that bends a table.
"Some players score. This one scores, and scores, and scores again, until the goal becomes less an event than a habit. A season measured in the simplest, cruellest currency the game knows, and there was always more of it to come."
ClinicalAttack
Cold, efficient finishing. Rarely wastes a chance.
"There is a coldness to it, a certainty. Where others hesitate, he has already decided. The chance arrives, the net ripples, and all season long the story barely changes. Ruthless, and quietly so."
ProviderAttack
The pass before the goal. Assists at a rate few can match.
"He does not need his name on the scoresheet to have written the story. The vision, the weight, the moment of generosity that turns a teammate into a hero. A season spent handing out goals like gifts."
PoacherAttack
Lives in the box, lives for the goal. A natural finisher.
"He does not build the move. He does not need to. He waits, in the spaces no one else sees, for the half-yard and the half-second, and then he is gone, and the net is rippling. A predator, patient and merciless."
The WingerAttack
Drifts wide, cuts in, beats his man for fun.
"Give him the touchline and a defender to torment, and watch the old magic unfold. The drop of the shoulder, the burst of pace, the moment the full-back is left grasping at shadows. Football's purest thrill: a winger in full flight."
Midfield
PlaymakerMidfield
The creative hub. Unlocks defences with vision and weight of pass.
"He sees the pass a moment before anyone else, and plays it a moment before they expect. The defence is unlocked not by force but by imagination. Where others see a wall, he sees a door."
MaestroMidfield
The conductor of a team's attack. Vision, control, and the passes others don't see.
"He does not run the game. He composes it. Every pass a note, every movement a phrase, the rhythm of an entire team bending to his tempo. You do not watch a Maestro. You listen to him."
RegistaMidfield
Dictates tempo from deep, sprays passes across the pitch.
"From the quietest part of the pitch, he runs the loudest game. A glance, a touch, and the ball travels forty yards to feet. He does not chase the spotlight. He bends the whole match to his rhythm and lets others dance in it."
Engine RoomMidfield
The relentless heartbeat of midfield. Covering ground, linking play, never stopping.
"While others rest, he runs. The unseen miles, the quiet work, the lungs that never beg for mercy. No highlight reel will ever do him justice, and yet without him, none of it happens."
The DribblerMidfield
Beats his man and keeps the ball. Carries it where others lose it.
"Others give the ball away when the pitch gets crowded. He keeps it. Surrounded, hounded, doubled up on, he lowers his head and goes, and the tighter the space, the more alive he seems. A footballer who treats a crowd as an invitation."
Defence
The WallDefence
Immovable. Wins his duels, heads everything, gives nothing away.
"Strikers came, and strikers left empty-handed. A season of saying no, of the header won, the tackle timed, the door bolted shut. Nothing glamorous, nothing soft, just an immovable certainty at the heart of the defence."
DestroyerDefence
Tough, tireless, wins the ball and the battle.
"The unglamorous heart of a team. The tackle, the block, the ball won back before the danger grows. He does the work nobody sings about, so that those who are sung about have a stage to perform on."
Ball HawkDefence
Reads the pass before it is played. Lives in the passing lanes.
"He defends with his mind as much as his legs. The ball is cut out before it ever arrives, the danger snuffed before it draws breath. Anticipation is its own kind of pace, and his was the quickest read on the pitch."
Ball-Playing CBDefence
Defends first, but starts attacks with the ball at his feet.
"The defender who is also the architect. He wins the ball, and then he does the harder thing, he uses it. A season of quelling danger at one end and igniting it at the other, all from the foundations of the team."
All-Round
CompleteAll-Round
Elite at both ends. Gives as much as he takes away.
"Football usually asks a player to choose: create or destroy, build or break. He refused the choice. A season of doing it all, at both ends, with a balance that bordered on greed. The rarest profile the game produces."
Iron ManAll-Round
Plays through everything, never misses a game.
"While others came and went, nursed and rested, he simply played. Every week, every minute, the one name the manager never had to think about. There is a quiet greatness in always being there."
Career Stage
WonderkidBreakoutPeakThe Last Dance
The Standard
Early careerPeak yearsFinal seasons
Tap a stage to read what it means
Settling debates
⚖️ Verdict Tags
The language the engine uses when it weighs one season against another.
When the gap is the story
Drag the spectrum. The further apart two seasons finish, the more decisive the language becomes.
DecisiveInseparable
VV
VV
When the gap is not the story
These are decided by something else , era, age, league, or two players who barely share a job.
The Method
📊 What "percentile" means
A measure of rarity, not just volume.
When a card says a player is in the 95th percentile for creation, it means only 5 in 100 seasons in his own position pool created more. The pool spans every league in the record, so a centre-back is measured against centre-backs and never against forwards.
95th
The Method
🔎 What "Data Confidence" means
How complete the record is. Not how good the player was.
Every card carries a five-dot confidence mark. Five dots means a fully documented season, every match logged, every touch counted. Fewer dots means we had less to work with, and we would rather show you that than pretend otherwise. It measures the record, not the player. A three-dot card is not a worse footballer, it is a season we know a little less about. Where a single statistic was never recorded, you will see NR , Not Recorded , in its place. Older seasons and some leagues never logged assists or detailed actions at all. We mark those as NR rather than write a zero, because a missing number and a number of zero are not the same thing, and we will not let one masquerade as the other.
"Every number here is only as honest as the evidence beneath it. Some seasons left a full and faithful record; others, older or more distant, gave us only fragments, and where the trail runs thin, we will not invent what we cannot see. These five dots are our conscience made visible: the confidence we show is the confidence we have earned, and never a dot more."