Football Rules & Formats

1. The basics: pitch, kit and how a game works

Football's rules are written down by the IFAB as the seventeen Laws of the Game, but you don't need the rulebook to run a club — you need the handful of laws that actually come up every week. Here's the version that matters.

The objective

Two teams try to put the ball into the other team's goal, using any part of the body except the hands and arms (the goalkeeper being the obvious exception, inside their own penalty area). Whoever has scored more goals when time runs out wins. That's the whole game — everything else is detail about how you're allowed to do it.

The pitch and the kit

A full-size pitch is up to 105m by 68m of grass or 3G, with goals 7.32m wide by 2.44m high, a centre circle, two penalty areas (the "18-yard box") and corner arcs. Small-sided football shrinks all of it: 5-a-side and 7-a-side play on caged astro or indoor courts with smaller goals and, often, walls or rebound boards instead of throw-ins. Players need boots suited to the surface, shin pads (required almost everywhere), and two contrasting kits or sets of bibs so you can tell the teams apart. A correctly inflated size 5 ball for adults; futsal and some indoor games use a smaller, low-bounce ball.

How a game flows

A full game is two 45-minute halves with a kick-off from the centre to start each half and after every goal. The ball is out of play when it fully crosses a line; it's restarted by a throw-in (off the side), a goal kick or corner (off the goal line, depending who touched it last), or a free kick after a foul. Grassroots and small-sided games keep the same skeleton but cut the time right down and often bin offside and throw-ins to keep things flowing. The referee — or, in a casual game, the loudest sensible person — keeps the time and settles disputes.

2. How scoring works in football

Football uses timed scoring, and this is the bit that trips up people coming from racket sports where you play to a target number. You do not play "first to five goals". You play for a fixed length of time, and whoever is ahead when the clock hits zero wins. A game can finish 0–0, 1–0 or 7–6 — the only thing that ends it is time.

The clock

A full 11-a-side match is two halves of 45 minutes (90 minutes plus stoppage time). Grassroots and small-sided football runs far shorter — two halves of 20 or 25 minutes is common for 5-a-side and 7-a-side, and rotation sessions often use rolling games of 8–12 minutes so more teams get a turn. Decide and announce the game length before kick-off; "next goal wins" only when the clock has run out and it's still level.

A goal

A goal counts when the whole ball crosses the whole goal line between the posts and under the bar, with no infringement in the build-up. Every goal is worth one — there's no two-pointer, no bonus, no win-by-two margin. That simplicity is why football scores stay low and why a single goal can decide a season.

Settling a draw

In a league, a drawn game just shares the points. In a knockout where you need a winner, the usual order is extra time (two short halves), then a penalty shoot-out. For a quick social session, skip all that — if it's level when time's up, it's a draw, or play a sudden-death "next goal wins" if you need to split a final. In ClubLono you record the final score and the result feeds straight into the standings; the timed format means you just enter the goals for each side when the whistle goes.

3. Rules people get wrong

Most football arguments are about the same five things. Knowing these stops half the touchline rows before they start.

Offside

The one everyone "knows" and nobody can explain. A player is offside if, when the ball is played to them, they're in the opponents' half and nearer the goal line than both the ball and the second-last defender (usually the last outfield defender, since the keeper is often the last) — and they're then involved in the play. You can't be offside from a throw-in, a corner or a goal kick, you're not offside if you're level with the defender, and being in an offside position isn't an offence until you actually play or interfere. Note that most 5-a-side and 7-a-side formats scrap offside entirely.

The back-pass rule

A goalkeeper cannot pick up the ball if a teammate has deliberately kicked it to them, or from a teammate's throw-in. Head it or chest it back and the keeper can handle it; pass it with the foot and they can't. Get it wrong and it's an indirect free kick to the other team — a nasty one inside the box.

Handball

Not every ball that hits an arm is a handball. It's an offence if the player's arm is in an unnatural position making their body bigger, or if they deliberately handle it. Ball-to-hand off a body part at close range usually isn't given. This is the single most argued-about call in the modern game, so set a sensible "we play advantage unless it's obvious" standard for casual sessions.

Direct vs indirect free kicks, and cards

A direct free kick (and a penalty, if it's in the box) is for a physical foul or handball — you can score straight from it. An indirect free kick is for technical offences like offside or a back-pass, and must touch another player before a goal counts. A yellow card is a caution; two yellows or one red means the player is sent off and the team plays a man down. In friendly games, agree in advance whether you're using cards at all — most kickabouts don't.

4. Running a social session

A weekly social session is the backbone of most grassroots clubs, and the format you pick decides whether everyone gets a proper game or half the group stands around watching.

Pool then playoff (recommended)

When you've got more players than fit one pitch — say three or four small-sided teams — the pool-then-playoff format is the fairest way to use the time. Split into balanced teams, run a short round-robin where every team plays every other in quick timed games, then send the top two into a final while the rest play a plate or a third-place game. Everyone gets several games, the matches mean something, and you finish on a proper decider rather than petering out. It's the format ClubLono recommends for football sessions and the one that scales best across a busy evening.

Sensible alternatives

• Two settled teams, one long game. The classic. Best when you've got exactly enough for one match and a reliable group — just balance the sides and play.
• Winner-stays-on. Three or more small teams, short games, losers come off and the next team comes on. Great for keeping energy high with a tight rotation, though the strongest team can hog the pitch — cap it at two or three games before they have to come off regardless.
• Mixed / rotating teams. Re-draw the teams each round so nobody's stuck with the same line-up all night. Keeps it social and stops one balanced draw deciding the whole evening.

Keeping it small-sided and balanced

Smaller teams mean more touches, more goals and more fun for mixed-ability groups — 5-a-side gets everyone involved in a way that 11-a-side never will for a casual crowd. Whatever the size, balance the teams properly: a session where one side wins every game by six is a session people quietly stop coming to. Re-balancing between rounds, rather than playing the same lopsided draw all night, is the single biggest thing you can do for a social session.

5. League formats across a season

Once your club has a settled squad and wants competition that lasts, you move from one-off sessions to a season-long league. Here's how the structure works.

Divisions and the table

A league is a set of teams who all play each other and accumulate points in a table. The standard scoring is three points for a win, one for a draw, none for a loss. Teams are ranked by total points; level on points, the tie-break is goal difference (goals scored minus conceded), then goals scored, then sometimes the head-to-head result. Bigger setups split into divisions with promotion and relegation — finish top and you go up, finish bottom and you drop down next season, which keeps every game meaningful even for mid-table sides.

Fixtures: home and away

A full double round-robin has every team play every other team twice — once at home, once away — so a 10-team division is 18 games each across the season. Smaller or shorter leagues run a single round-robin (play everyone once). The home-and-away split matters for fairness when teams have different home pitches; for a neutral-venue small-sided league it's often just one game between each pair. A league secretary sets the fixture list at the start of the season so everyone knows their dates in advance.

League plus cup

Many setups run a league for the season-long grind plus a knockout cup alongside it — a single-elimination bracket where losing once sends you out, building to a final. The league rewards consistency; the cup gives the underdog a shot at glory on the day. It's a proven combination that keeps a season interesting from August to May.

Settling and recording results

Every result needs recording promptly — the table is only as good as the last score someone forgot to send in. Track each fixture's final score, update the points and goal difference, and publish the standings so players can see where they sit. Doing this by hand in a spreadsheet is workable for one division and a nightmare for several; it's the part of running a league that eats the most evenings.

6. How ClubLono runs football

ClubLono is built so the rules and formats above run themselves, leaving you to actually watch the football.

Sessions use the timed scoring native to football — you set the game length, the app tracks the clock and you record the goals for each side. Teams are balanced automatically using a built-in player rating that updates after every game, and the recommended pool-then-playoff format is built in for busy multi-team evenings: it draws the pools, schedules the round-robin and sets up the final without you sketching brackets on the back of a team sheet. Scores feed straight into the standings — goal difference and all — so the table is always current the moment a result goes in.

Full season-long leagues — divisions, home-and-away fixtures, automatic points and standings, promotion and relegation — are a Premium feature, alongside multi-club hosting, kiosk mode for a venue tablet, cross-club stats and DUPR export. Premium is £19.99/month or £199.99/year (with a 14-day free trial on either), and it drops the platform fee on paid games from 5% to 1%. Everything else — the squad, the queue, team balancing, timed scoring, per-session standings, chat and automatic refunds on a called-off game — works on the free tier, which is £0/month for a single club with no time limit and no feature cliff. As ever, ClubLono never holds members' funds: money goes straight to the host's bank account via Stripe, and there is no per-player fee.