Welcome to Coachmaatje
Coachmaatje makes the line-up and the substitutions for your youth team. Everyone plays about the same amount, in the KNVB match format for your age group, so you no longer have to work it out on the touchline.
Four steps to your rotation
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Choose your team
In Settings, pick boys or girls and the age, for example JO11 or MO13. That fixes the number of players, the playing time and the substitution rules.
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Add your players
In Squad, enter your players and mark who can play in goal. Turn off anyone who cannot make it.
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Make the rotation
In Match, tap Generate Rotation. You get a line-up for every period, with the substitutions in it.
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Adjust and share
Something not right? Tap a name to swap two players. Export turns the schedule into an image you can send to the parents.
No account needed. Your players and settings are only stored on this device.
More about how it worksPlayers
How Coachmaatje works
Coachmaatje shares out playing time in a youth match, so you do not have to work it out on the touchline.
What it does
You enter your squad and pick the age category. Coachmaatje then makes a line-up for every period, with everyone playing roughly the same amount. Whoever is on the bench this period is back on the pitch the next one.
How to use it
- Pick the age category in Settings. It sets the team size, the number of periods and how long they last.
- Add your players in Squad. Turn off anyone who is not there today.
- Go to Match and tap Generate rotation.
- Something not right? Tap a name and pick a different player. The two swap places.
The player fields
Every field in the player editor, what it does and how it changes the rotation. Four of them change how much a player plays: guest, disabled, availability and stamina. The rest only decide where a player stands once the minutes are settled.
Keeper
The tenth cell of the grid, under the defenders, where the goal is. It has three settings instead of two: cannot keep, keeps if needed, happy to keep. Keepers are chosen before anyone else, because goal is the hardest place to fill, so this cell shapes the rotation more than any other. Time spent in goal counts as playing time.
Sam is happy to keep and Noa keeps if needed. Sam goes in goal first, and Noa only takes over when Sam is not there or has already had a turn.
Guest player
A player borrowed from another team for this match. A guest is guaranteed at least two periods once your squad is big enough that somebody has to sit out anyway, never more than half the match, and never less than the share everyone else gets.
A squad so large that the fair share works out at one period each. Your own players get one period; Ida, a guest, still gets two.
Disabled
Leaves a player out of this match entirely: not counted, not scheduled, not on the sheet. Nothing is deleted. The player stays in your squad and comes straight back when you switch this off.
Kai is ill on Saturday. Switch Kai off, and everyone else’s share of the time grows to fill the gap.
Availability
For a player who is only there for part of the match. Uncheck the periods they are away and their share shrinks to the periods they are actually present for, instead of leaving a hole in the line-up.
Finn arrives late and misses the first period. Uncheck period 1, and Finn is measured against three periods rather than four.
Place on the pitch
Nine places on the pitch, plus the goal. Tap a place to cycle it through neutral, prefers and avoids. Prefers pulls a player towards that exact spot, not towards the whole line beside it. Avoids is a soft block: they are put there only when there is no legal alternative, and you get a warning when that happens. Turn on Fixed place and the same grid becomes a choice of where this player stands, every period they are on. Pick more than one and the line-up moves them between those places.
Kai prefers left back and avoids striker. Kai goes to the left of the defence whenever the minutes allow it, and only ends up up front if the line-up genuinely leaves no one else. Mark left back and left midfield both, and Kai is happy in either.
Five stars each, three is average. A rating only ever decides where a player stands, never how much they play: the minutes are settled first, and the ratings then choose who fills which slot.
Defense
How good this player is at the back. It counts most by far for a defending place, a little for a forward one, and less still in midfield.
Two players are both due a period on the pitch. The one with more defense stars takes the defending slot, and the other goes forward.
Midfield
How good this player is in midfield. It only ever counts for a midfield place: unlike defense and offense, which each also count for the lines beside them, this rating does nothing at the back or up front. Every player you add starts at three stars here, the same as the other two.
A squad saved before this rating existed has no midfield stars at all. Coachmaatje works one out once, from defense and offense, so nobody came back as a flat three. After that the value is yours: changing defense later does not change it.
Offense
How good this player is up front. It counts most by far for a forward place, a little for a defending one, and less still in midfield.
Finn is five stars in offense and one in defense. Finn is drawn forward and kept out of the back, as long as the minutes still work out.
Speed and stamina answer how fast and how long, where the three ratings above answer which line.
Speed
How quick this player is. Speed is worth most up front, less in midfield and least at the back, so a fast player is drawn up the pitch and a slower one is drawn back. Three stars is neutral and changes nothing.
Noa and Kai are equally good going forward, but Noa is faster. Noa takes the forward slot and Kai drops into midfield.
Stamina
How many periods a player can stay on in a row, not how much they play in total. Five stars means no limit, and that is where every player starts. Four stars caps them at four periods running, three at three, two at two, one at one.
Finn is on two stars. After two periods on the pitch Finn sits out the next one, even where the fair share would have kept Finn on.
The match settings
These live in Settings and apply to the whole team, not to one player. They set the shape of the match that the player fields are then fitted into.
Age category
The one setting to get right first. It sets how many players are on the pitch, how many periods the match has and how long they last, taken straight from the KNVB match formats. Everything else is worked out from it.
Change the category and every playing-time number in the app changes with it, because the number of periods being shared out has changed.
Formation
How the outfield players are arranged: how many at the back, in midfield and up front. It decides which slots exist for the rotation to fill, and the choices on offer follow the team size the age category set.
A 2-1-2 puts two defenders, one midfielder and two forwards on the pitch. Switch to 1-2-2 and there is one defender fewer and one midfielder more to fill every period.
Keeper rotation
How the goal is shared among the players you marked as able to keep.
With two keepers on Swap at half-time, each of them also spends half the match outfield: the half they are not in goal.
Max bench in a row
The longest run of periods any player may spend on the bench. It does not change how much anyone plays in total, only how that time is spread, so nobody sits and cools down for a long stretch.
Set it to 1 period and no player is ever benched twice running, even where the fair share would have allowed it.
Keep positions
How hard Coachmaatje tries to leave a player where they stood the period before.
On Strict, a player who started at right back stays at right back, and only moves if fair playing time cannot be reached any other way.
Swap mid-period
Splits a period in half, so the bench comes on halfway through instead of waiting for the next period.
A squad that does not divide evenly over whole periods leaves some children playing a quarter more than others. Splitting the period evens that out, and nobody sits out a whole period.
How it shares out the time
Fair playing time comes first. Coachmaatje works out how many periods each player should get, then picks the players who are furthest behind for each period. Only after that does it look at positions: a player who prefers to play at the back is put at the back, if that can be done without making the playing time uneven.
Keepers are assigned first, because goal is the most constrained place. A guest is guaranteed at least two periods once the squad is big enough that somebody has to sit out anyway, never more than half the match, and never less than the share everyone else gets.
How the points work
Once the playing time is settled, every player is scored against every open place, and each place goes to the highest score. These are the real numbers, so you can check any line-up Coachmaatje gives you.
| What | Points |
|---|---|
| Stars for the line itself | 0 to 20 |
| Stars for a line next to it | 0 to 4 at the back and up front, 0 to 2 each in midfield |
| Speed | 4 up front, 2 in midfield, 1 at the back, either way from three stars |
| A place you prefer | 45, against 30 for a neutral one |
| A place you avoid | minus 1000 |
| Keep positions | up to 20 on When possible, up to 250 on Strict |
A place is worth about 70 points at most. That is why avoiding a place works: minus 1000 outweighs everything else on the page put together, so the player only goes there when there is no line-up without it.
Two things are deliberately not in the table. Stamina is never scored, because it answers how long you stay on rather than where you stand. And a fixed place is settled before the scoring runs at all, which is why every fixed place is one thing less for Coachmaatje to balance.
What it does not do
Coachmaatje is not a tactics tool. It does not decide who is better than whom, and it does not track goals.
Your data
Everything stays on your own phone. Your squad never goes to a server. That also means you lose your squad if you clear your browser data. Export a team file from Settings now and then. That is your backup.
Add Coachmaatje to your home screen and your phone keeps the data longer. Safari deletes stored data after a week if you do not open the site. An installed app is not affected by that.
Allow analytics
Off until you accept the cookie banner, and only on coachmaatje.nl. When it is on, Coachmaatje reports which age category and formation you use, roughly how big your squad is, and which parts of the app get used. No name is ever sent: not a player's, not yours, not the team's.
A generated rotation is reported as the category, the formation, and a squad of 10 to 12 rather than the exact number, because an exact count and a category together can point at one specific team. You can turn it off again under Privacy in Settings.
Rules and training
The KNVB publishes one infographic per match format: playing time, pitch size, substitutions and the rules that go with them. They all open in a new tab.
Your match format is under 4v4.
Your match format is under 6v6.
Your match format is under 8v8.
Your match format is under 9v9.
Your match format is under 11v11.
9v9
- O13, division 1 to 4 your match format
- O13, Regio Noord (pilot 2026/'27) your match format
- Two documents for O13 at 9v9. Regio Noord is running a pilot with different rules, so your district decides which one applies to you.
- MO13, category B your match format
- MO15, category B your match format
- MO17 and MO20, category B your match format
11v11
- O13, category A and B your match format
- O14, category B your match format
- O14, category A your match format
- Two documents for O14, one for category A and one for category B. The playing time is the same in both. Your competition decides which one applies to you.
- O15 up to O23 and seniors your match format
- MO13, category A and B your match format
- MO15, MO17 and MO20, category A and B your match format
Rinus
Rinus is the KNVB training app: ready-made sessions and exercises for every age group. You need a free KNVB account to open it.
Links checked on 9 September 2026. The KNVB puts new documents online every season, so if one stops working, use the link above.
Why Coachmaatje exists
I helped out as an assistant coach at my son's youth team, and what struck me was how much trouble the team leaders had putting a line-up together. It was usually pieced together in Excel, and sometimes on the back of a beer mat...
There had to be an easier way, I thought, so I started building this app. It began as something very basic, and over the summer holidays it grew bit by bit into Coachmaatje.