What the tier letters mean
Tier letters appear in two different places in VeriScout, and they mean two different things. Untangling them is the fastest way to make sense of a report.
Your program's tier: A to E
Shown on your dashboard next to your association. This is your level — where your program sits inside NCAA D1, D2, D3, NAIA or NJCAA.
It is calculated from your program's RPI rankings over the past five seasons, weighted so that recent seasons count most, and re-evaluated after each season as new rankings publish. It is calculated rather than chosen, so it cannot be edited.
This is the tier that personalises your Match Score, and it is the row marked "Your tier" in the Level Fit strip and the YOU column in the Tier Match Overview grid.
A competition's tier: also A to E
Shown in the Development Path table on every report, next to each season's competition, and under each point on the Development Curve.
This is the player's side of the equation: where each competition they played in sits on that country's ladder. It is what turns "3. Division – Oprykningsspil" into something you can actually judge without knowing Danish football.
The letter is a rank within the age group, not across all football in the country. Always read the Tier column together with the Level column beside it, which is the age group: U17, U19 or Senior.
So tier A at U17 means the top U17 competition in that country. Tier D at Senior means the fourth rung of senior football. Both are A-to-E scales, but they are separate ladders — an A in a youth age group and a D in the senior one are not two points on one line.
This matters most at the moment that decides international careers. A player who goes from U17, tier A to Senior, tier Dhas not been demoted — they have stepped off the top of the youth ladder onto a lower rung of the adult one, which is what stepping up looks like in the record. Watch what happens next: climbing from senior tier D to tier C while still starting is real progress, and it is exactly what the Trajectory circle is built to catch.
Why the same letters for both
They answer the same kind of question — how strong is this environment — on the two sides of the transfer. A tier letter next to a Danish competition tells you what the player has been tested against; a tier letter next to your program tells you what they would be walking into. The Match Score is, in effect, the bridge between those two letters.
What matters is not to read them as one scale. A player at tier C in Denmark is not "one below" a tier B American program; they are different ladders, in different countries, for different levels of football.
How to read the tier column in practice
- Watch the letter move over time. A player who goes from a youth competition to a senior tier D and then to tier C has climbed twice. That movement is exactly what the Trajectory circle measures, and it is more informative than any single season.
- Ignore club reputation. A famous club's third team plays at a low tier; an unglamorous club can play at a high one. The tier letter is about the competition, not the badge.
- Read the level alongside it. A player dominating a top youth competition and a player holding a place in senior football are not the same thing, even if both rows are near the top of their ladders.
- Split seasons are normal. When a league divides into a group stage and a promotion or qualification round, one season occupies two rows.
Where the ladder comes from
Every competition we index is placed on its own country's ladder as part of mapping that country — a substantial piece of work per country, covering senior and youth competitions down through the lower divisions. That mapping is what makes a report from a country you have never recruited from readable at a glance.