Protecting young players in video and data.

Our commitment to youth safety

Football academies develop young talent. Modern coaching relies heavily on video feedback, positional awareness analysis, and tactical review. However, capturing and analyzing match footage of minors (athletes under the age of eighteen) introduces heightened legal, ethical, and moral obligations.

Trequa designs Touchline360 from the ground up to respect youth privacy and support club compliance with national governing body frameworks, including The FA Safeguarding Children Policy, the US Soccer Safe Soccer Framework, and the UEFA Grassroots Charter.

Non-biometric tracking vs. facial recognition

A fundamental architectural distinction in Touchline360 is the difference between spatial tracking and biometric profiling:

• What we do: Our computer vision engine tracks optical silhouettes, jersey numbers, and bounding-box coordinates on the pitch grid (X, Y pitch position, sprint velocity, tactical formations). This spatial telemetry is derived purely for match debriefing and athletic development.
• What we NEVER do: We do not extract facial biometric templates, conduct facial recognition, profile player emotional affect, or compare youth footage against external facial databases. Silhouettes are treated as geometrical positions, not biometric identifiers.
• Zero Cross-Club Scraping: Youth match data is strictly isolated within the uploading club’s tenant database. We do not aggregate youth player profiles across independent academies for third-party scouting or commercial sale.

Club and Academy responsibilities

When recording and uploading youth fixtures or training sessions to Debrief or Kickoff Pulse, the club acts as the data controller and is responsible for:

1. Parental and Guardian Consent: Ensuring that written consent or valid media release documentation has been obtained from parents or legal guardians for all registered academy players prior to filming.
2. Opposition Notice: Following competition regulations regarding notice to visiting teams and match officials that the fixture will be recorded for tactical and educational coaching purposes.
3. Access Governance: Ensuring that only vetted, DBS/background-checked coaching staff and designated performance analysts are granted access to youth team workspaces in Debrief.
4. Stream Security: Never creating unauthenticated public broadcast links for youth tactical footage. Shared coaching links should be password-protected or restricted to verified squad members and their guardians.

Parental rights and takedown protocol

Parents, legal guardians, or youth athletes who have attained the age of legal majority have the absolute right to inquire about data held relating to them or to request that footage containing their likeness be removed.

To request the removal or blurring of a youth player’s image:

• Submit a request through our contact page or email safeguarding@touchline360.com.
• Include the name of the club, team, match date, and specific clip or timestamp.
• Our safeguarding team coordinates directly with club administration to redact, blur, or purge the identified video within ten (10) business days.

Model training restrictions for youth footage

Under our AI Ethics & Model Training Policy, customer footage featuring youth athletes is excluded from commercial machine learning training sets by default (`model_improvement_consent = none`). We never train commercial models on youth academy sessions without explicit, audited, and separate parental consent frameworks.

Reporting a safeguarding concern

If you observe any misuse of video recording equipment, unauthorized sharing of youth footage, or any welfare concern connected to a Touchline360 deployment, report it immediately to our Designated Safeguarding Lead at safeguarding@touchline360.com, or directly to your local football association or child welfare authority.