The hype score, explained

What the score takes into account

• Milestones reached on the pitch: a squad call-up, a first appearance, a first start, a goal or an assist.
• Recent minutes and their direction: a player whose minutes are climbing draws more attention than an established one.
• Press mentions over the last seven days, separated according to whether they report a fact or merely a rumour.
• Club exposure and the player's age, as secondary factors.
• What does NOT enter the calculation: the existence of a printed rookie card. That is a publisher's commercial decision taken months earlier, not sporting attention.

Where the data comes from

Every figure on this site comes from an identified source. Nothing is estimated or extrapolated.

Official match data

Squads, match sheets, minutes played, competitions (leagues and national cups) — updated daily.

Press mentions

Aggregated from sports media.

Club crests

Provided by TheSportsDB, credited in line with their terms of use.

Card publisher checklists

Topps, Panini, Futera: set composition and the list of rookie cards, as published by the manufacturer.

How often

Sporting data is refreshed every day, overnight. Press mentions follow the same rhythm. Checklists are updated as each set is released.

When data is missing

A missing value shows as a dash, never as a zero: a dash says "we do not know", a zero would say "nothing is happening". These are two different things, and we invent neither.

What we do not see

Every reason on a player page describes the current season, and only what our match sheets record: the tracked leagues and, since September 2026, the ten national cups. Seasons before we started tracking him, European and international matches are outside that window. So "not yet started" means we have not recorded a start this season — never that he has never started one.

How a player enters the watchlist

• He plays for a club in one of the tracked leagues and appears in its official squad.
• He is early in his professional career: a senior appearance, or a professional contract, and a still-low career appearance total — across his whole career, not just this season.
• The appearance count must come from the provider's career record. Without that proof he stays unverified and never appears publicly.
• He leaves the watchlist (graduates) when his appearances pass the rookie threshold, when he ages out, or when he leaves a tracked league — his page stays online in the archive.

What the milestones mean

Called up

Named in the matchday squad but has not come on yet — the window we watch most closely.

Debuted

Has played senior minutes, not yet as a starter.

Starter

Named in the starting eleven.

Goal / Assist

Scored or assisted in a senior match.

Confirmed vs reported

Confirmed hype comes from official match data (lineups, minutes, goals). Reported hype comes from press headlines and is always labelled as such — alerts only ever fire on confirmed events.