Track Record

On the Rise Picks

Players flagged in our On the Rise series, dated the day each pick was published. Status moves from OPEN to HIT or MISS; no pick is removed.

Methodology

Every scouting report we publish ends in one of two verdicts: WATCH or MONITOR. A verdict is a structured judgment about a player's readiness for a move to a European league, issued at a fixed point in time and never revised afterwards. When circumstances change — a transfer, a loan, an injury, a breakout run — we record the update on this page with a date and a source rather than rewriting the original call. That distinction matters, because a track record only means something if the predictions were frozen before the outcomes arrived.

WATCHThe higher-conviction tier

WATCH means the data profile and the contextual evidence already support a European move within roughly the next two transfer windows. A WATCH player typically combines top-decile output in at least one per-90 metric for his position, sustained starting minutes at senior level, and a contractual or career situation that makes a move plausible. WATCH does not mean a transfer is certain — it means that if a European club moved now, we believe the data would justify the bet.

MONITORThe early-signal tier

MONITOR is the earlier, lower-conviction tier. The underlying signal is real — an extreme strength in one area, an unusual development pathway, an age-relative performance that stands out — but the evidence base is still incomplete: a short sample, a single season, minutes in a lower division, or an unresolved weakness that European football would expose. MONITOR players stay in our database and are re-evaluated as new minutes accumulate. Some graduate to WATCH; some stall. Both outcomes are recorded here.

Case studyThe documentation tier

CASE STUDY covers reports published on or after the move they describe. Our earliest transfer analyses fall into this tier: they were written to explain a deal that had already been announced, not to anticipate it. They remain valuable as market analysis — they are how we build and test the thesis behind the database — but they are not predictions, and we do not count them as such. REALIZED is reserved for the stricter case: the verdict must carry a publication date strictly earlier than the date the move was announced. That single rule is what separates a track record from a scrapbook, and applying it honestly means most of our current entries sit in CASE STUDY rather than REALIZED. We would rather show a small number of genuine calls than a large number of flattering ones.

Not borne outThe missed-call tier

NOT BORNE OUT covers two situations, both recorded rather than hidden. First, a WATCH or MONITOR verdict for which no move materialized before the relevant transfer window closed. Second, a verdict whose underlying statistical case did not hold up in the following season — the metric that justified the call regressed or reversed. We do not delete these entries or move them into TRACKING; a call that did not come true is exactly what a track record exists to show.

What earns a verdict

Verdicts are grounded in the same framework used across this site: raw statistics normalized per 90 minutes, then converted into percentiles against players in the same position. On top of the numbers we weigh context that statistics cannot see — role within the team, pathway (academy background, loan history, national-team involvement), physical profile, and the realistic demands of the destination league. A verdict is only published when both the data case and the contextual case can be written down and defended in a full report.

Data sources

The statistical backbone comes from API-Football (api-football.com), covering appearance data and detailed per-match metrics for roughly 2,000 players across J1, J2 and J3, and from Football LAB (football-lab.jp) for J.League-specific advanced indicators. Transfer facts — fees, dates, contract lengths — are taken from official club announcements first, with reputable primary reporting cited where clubs do not disclose figures. Where a number is unconfirmed, we say so.

Documented moves

Every move we have on record, with the tier it earned. Each entry states what the report said and what happened.