7-a-side football: rules, pitch dimensions and how to run a league

Physical activity in England hit a record last year: 30.9 million adults, 64.6% of the population, met the Chief Medical Officers' guidelines in the 12 months to November 2025, an increase of 859,000 on the previous year, according to Sport England's Active Lives Adult Survey. Team sport did not share in it. Football, cricket and netball sit at 3.5 million between them, broadly flat for three years and still below pre-pandemic levels, while the growth went to running, the gym and walking.

The reading is not hard. People are choosing activities they can do when it suits them, and an eleven-a-side fixture with a 2pm kick-off and sixteen names to confirm asks for more than most adults can now give. Small-sided football is how organised football competes with that, and 7-a-side is the format that holds the most of the eleven-a-side game while asking for a fraction of the commitment. What tends not to keep up is the administration: the league lives in a WhatsApp group, the table lives in a spreadsheet, and somebody rebuilds both every Monday night. Before your first fixture, running a 7-a-side league comes down to three decisions: which rules you apply, what pitch you play on and how the competition is structured. This guide works through all three, using the dimensions The FA actually publishes, and finishes with the steps for turning them into a 7-a-side football league that lasts beyond its first season.

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What is 7-a-side football and how does it differ from other formats?

Small-sided football comes in several shapes and the names get used loosely once you are outside the affiliated youth game. Worth settling the vocabulary before talking about pitch sizes, because each format carries its own dimensions and its own rulebook.

What is 7-a-side football?

7-a-side football is a small-sided format in which two teams of seven, six outfield players and a goalkeeper, play on a pitch around half the size of a full one. Matches are shorter, the goals are smaller and substitutions are usually unlimited. The FA sets the dimensions for the youth game; adult leagues set their own.

In affiliated youth football, 7v7 is the mandated format for Under-9s and Under-10s, sitting between 5v5 mini soccer and 9v9. In the adult game it is recreational, run by commercial operators and independent organisers, with no national rulebook behind it. That is why two 7-a-side leagues in the same town can run visibly different competitions.

7-a-side compared with 11-a-side, 5-a-side and futsal

Four formats get talked about together and mean different things:

• 11-a-side – the full pitch, eleven a side, two 45-minute halves and the IFAB Laws applied in full.
• 9v9 – the Under-11 and Under-12 step towards the full game, on a larger pitch with larger goals.
• 5-a-side – the format most adult leagues in Britain start with, played on small 3G pitches, often with rebound boards and a no-heading rule depending on the operator.
• Futsal – five a side indoors on a hard court with a low-bounce ball and its own FIFA rulebook. The ball leaves play at the touchline, so it plays nothing like boarded 5-a-side.

7-a-side sits between 5-a-side and the full game: outdoors on grass or 3G, no boards, throw-ins at the touchline and a keeper in a proper goal.

How many players are in a 7-a-side squad?

Seven on the pitch, keeper included. Registered squads are another matter: most leagues allow between 12 and 16 players, and some go to 18.

That margin exists because availability in adult recreational football moves week to week. A side with twelve registered players rarely puts out the same seven twice running, and with rolling substitutions the whole bench gets through a match. For the organiser it shows up in the records. Unless goals and cards are logged against a named player, nobody can settle who finished top scorer, and suspensions turn into guesswork.

7-a-side pitch dimensions

The FA publishes one recommended size for the youth game; adult leagues play on whatever the operator built. The figures below are the affiliated standard and a sensible default for adult football too.

What size is a 7-a-side pitch?

The FA's recommended 7v7 pitch is 60 × 40 yards for Under-9s and Under-10s. That is roughly half a full-size pitch, and clubs routinely mark two 7-a-side pitches across the width of one.

The rest of the markings scale down with it. The penalty area is 18 yards wide and 10 yards deep, the penalty spot sits 8 yards from the goal line, and The FA asks for a 3-yard run-off around the playing area. Commercial 3G pitches used by adult leagues are frequently smaller, often nearer 50 × 30 metres, because the site allows nothing more. If you hire the venue, measure it before you publish anything.

Goalpost sizes and markings

For 7v7 The FA recommends goalposts of 12 feet wide by 6 feet high, against the 24 by 8 feet of the adult game. Portable aluminium goals at that size are the standard bit of kit for anyone running a league on hired grass.

Adult 7-a-side pitches at commercial venues tend to have smaller goals fixed in place, sometimes closer to 16 by 7 feet, sometimes rebound-board goals left over from 5-a-side. None of that is wrong so long as the dimensions are written down and every side knows them before the season starts.

What size ball is used in 7-a-side football?

Size 4 through the Under-9 to Under-12 age groups, which covers the whole of youth 7v7. Adult 7-a-side uses a size 5, the same ball as the eleven-a-side game.

Put it in the rules along with who supplies the match ball. In leagues where each side brings its own, the argument about whose ball gets used turns up eventually.

Turning one 11-a-side pitch into two 7-a-side pitches

A good number of leagues begin by taking a full-size pitch during dead hours. The conversion is simple and the kit is cheap:

1. Split the pitch across its width at the halfway line and lay out two pitches running touchline to touchline.
2. Set portable 12 × 6 goals on each touchline.
3. Mark the penalty areas with cones or temporary paint, to the dimensions you published.
4. Leave a buffer between the two pitches so stray balls do not cross into the other match.

Set up that way, one 11-a-side pitch takes two 7-a-side matches at once and doubles the number of sides you can fit into the same two-hour hire.

7-a-side football rules

Here is the thing that catches first-time organisers: adult 7-a-side has no national rulebook. IFAB governs the eleven-a-side game and The FA publishes the youth 7v7 standard, but an adult recreational league writes its own rules around its pitch and its time slot. The rules that govern your league are the ones you publish.

How long is a 7-a-side match?

Two 25-minute halves is the usual arrangement, within a range of 2×20 to 2×30. Adult leagues gravitate to the short end for a practical reason: pitch hire is charged by the hour, and the warm-up, the match itself and clearing off for the next group all have to fit inside it.

Two 25s with a five-minute interval gives a 55-minute match that fits an hourly slot. Where a league runs several matches back to back on one pitch, that arithmetic sets the shape of the whole evening.

Substitutions, offside and restarts

These three vary most between leagues, and cause the most argument when they are not written down:

• Substitutions – almost every 7-a-side league uses rolling, repeated substitutions with players coming on and off at a marked zone. Some require a stoppage first.
• Offside – The FA applies offside in youth 7v7 from a retreat line. Adult recreational leagues commonly drop it altogether to make the match refereeable by one official, and some apply it inside the penalty area only. Whichever you pick changes how sides defend.
• Restarts – throw-ins are standard, though a number of leagues use kick-ins instead. Youth 7v7 adds the retreat line, which pushes the defending side back at goal kicks to encourage playing out.

Cards and discipline

Yellows and reds work as they do in the full game, with one common addition: many 7-a-side leagues use a sin bin, where a cautioned player sits out two or five minutes and the side plays a man short. The idea comes from futsal and hockey, and it suits recreational football because it punishes the offence without ruining the match.

The part that lands on the organiser is accumulation. If two yellows across separate fixtures bring a one-match ban, someone has to track every card against every player across the season. Kept by hand, that record is among the first things to go once a league grows past a dozen sides.

Writing your league's own rulebook

With no adult standard to point at, your rulebook is the document that settles disputes before they begin. A workable one runs to two pages and covers: pitch and goal dimensions, match length, squad size and players on the pitch, the substitution policy, whether offside applies, restarts, cards and accumulation, tiebreakers in the table, and what happens when a side fails to turn up.

Publish it before the first fixture, somewhere captains can find it without messaging you. A league run on FLM System keeps that rulebook on its own league site alongside the fixtures and the table, so the answer to "how does the sin bin work again?" is already online.

Steps to run a 7-a-side league

With the rules and the pitch settled, what is left is the work that turns a set of matches into a competition. Four decisions, in this order.

Choose your competition format

The format decides how many matches each side plays and how long the season runs. Three options cover nearly every case:

• Round robin – every side plays every other once or twice. It is the fairest structure and works best with 6 to 12 sides. The mechanics are set out in our guide to round robin scheduling.
• Groups and knockout – with a larger entry, splitting into groups and advancing the top sides keeps the season short.
• Straight knockout – single elimination for weekend competitions.

Beyond a dozen sides, divisions with promotion and relegation keep matches competitive and give the bottom of the table a reason to keep turning out in March.

Build the fixtures and the table

A round robin with ten sides is 45 matches. Building that by hand in a spreadsheet is possible, and so is breaking it the first time a match is called off.

The table is the other point of friction. Points, goal difference, matches played and tiebreakers all recalculate after every result, and one mistyped cell is enough to start an argument. In FLM System the fixtures generate in one click from your registered sides, and the table updates itself as soon as a result goes in.

Collect team fees and register squads

Registration and subs take up more of an organiser's time than anything else and get noticed least. Every season means collecting side and player details, confirming who has paid and chasing the ones who have not.

FLM System holds the squad records and flags who has paid and who has not, fixture by fixture, so each side's standing is visible at a glance. Taking the money still happens your usual way, by transfer or in cash; what goes is the second notebook where you tracked who owed you. Our guide on collecting team fees works through the process.

Publish results where sides look for them

This last step separates a league that grows from one that quietly folds. Players want the result the same evening, their name among the scorers and next week's fixture without having to ask in the group.

With FLM System the referee or a coordinator enters incidents from a phone during the match, and the result, the statistics and the table appear on the league's public site in real time. Every side and player has a profile with history that carries from season to season. A 7-a-side league with its own site, a table that is always current and public statistics reads as a proper competition, which is what brings sides back the following year and gets a local sponsor to answer your email.

Setting up an account and importing sides takes minutes, pricing is $1 per team per month, and you can try it without a card before committing to anything.

Frequently asked questions

What size is a 7-a-side pitch?

The FA recommends 60 × 40 yards for Under-9 and Under-10 7v7, with goals of 12 × 6 feet, a penalty area 18 yards by 10 and the penalty spot 8 yards out. Adult pitches at commercial venues are often smaller. If your league moves between venues, publish the range you accept rather than a single figure, so nobody objects when a match lands on a shorter pitch.

How long is a 7-a-side match?

Two 25-minute halves with a short interval is the most common arrangement, within a range of 2×20 to 2×30. Where matches run back to back on one pitch, leave five minutes between them for the changeover; without that cushion, one late kick-off drags the rest of the evening with it.

How many players can a side register?

Seven play at a time and registered squads usually run between 12 and 16, with some leagues allowing 18. Each competition sets its own cap, and it comes down to two things:

• Your substitution policy – with rolling subs a deep squad gets used, which makes a higher cap worth having.
• Squad lock-down – a lower cap stops a side signing new players midway through to strengthen before the run-in.

Whichever number you settle on, close registration on a fixed date and say so from the start.

What size ball is used in 7-a-side football?

Size 4 for youth 7v7 across Under-9 to Under-12, and size 5 for adult 7-a-side, the same as the eleven-a-side game. Specify in the rules who provides the match ball and you head off the argument before kick-off.

Is there offside in 7-a-side football?

It depends on the league. Three approaches are common:

• Offside with a retreat line – The FA's youth standard, which also pushes defenders back at goal kicks.
• No offside – widespread in adult recreational leagues, because it makes the match manageable for a single referee.
• Offside in the penalty area only – a middle ground that stops goal-hanging without full enforcement.

What does it cost to start a 7-a-side league?

Pitch hire, referees and league software are the real costs, and hire dominates. Most organisers begin by booking a weekly block at a 3G venue rather than building anything, recovering it from sides through entry fees. Software is the smallest line on that list: FLM System is $1 per team per month, so a twelve-side league costs $12 a month to administer.