Football Competition Concepts

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Good evening. Thanks for joining us. Here's some ideas I've had, and many of which have been played out in real life. If you're looking for new and exciting ways to do competitions, engage players, and add a bit of incentive or ingenuity, maybe these could be of use.

Football Threesome

This one came from talking to my dad about a session I did the other day. Many people have tried some way to get three teams to compete in a game of football. The pitch usually is a weird shape, with three goals, and the team in possession is always overloaded. That doesn't look too fun. So let me draw what I've come up with.

Picture your typical British 5v5 game. Indoor, or on turf. Walls. Small goals. Similar size to a futsal court. So not a typical American 6v6 pitch which is a converted ice hockey rink, where the game becomes about running. No. We want to do football, not athletics.

Nevertheless, these leagues usually have a lot of restrictions in their games. This would be no overhead height, only keepers allowed in the box. For me, the game should be as similar to football, and as simple as possible. The keeper can come out of the area, and everyone else can go in. You can pass to the keeper as often as you want, but like in football, they cannot pick it up.

How do we make it a threesome? Three teams, play for one hour, winner stays on. The games are a maximum of five minutes. You have to win to stay on. As soon as a goal is scored, the waiting team enters, and restarts the match. If there have been no goals after five minutes, the team which has been on the pitch for longest leaves.

Simple. One goal, winner stays on. Max five minute games.

Can this be turned into a league? Absolutely. Here's how.

One league of twelve teams. Those three teams play each other for an hour. Every win is worth one point. Let's take Pitch 1.

Wednesday get 7 wins
City get 4 wins
Arsenal get 2 wins

That makes Wednesday the winner. They won that game, with City and Arsenal being losers. What happens if two teams get the same number of wins in a night? The winner is decided by who won the first game between those two teams. That's the decider. These one hour fixtures happen every week, and then we apply weekly promotion and relegation. This is done so teams are always grouped with those they can compete with. To demonstrate, I will apply some results.

The teams in red have been promoted to the next bracket, while the teams in blue have been relegated. The league is separated into four brackets; gold, silver, bronze, and wooden spoon. The league will change every week. After these results, next week's games will look like this...

These are next week's games. Do a ten week season or whatever. How do you decide the two teams that start the game? The two bottom teams in each bracket. It will almost work like a ladder. The team who wins the gold bracket on the final day of the season is the team who wins the league.

When it comes to working with kids, I like them to have more wider age brackets. Like 13-16. Great mix up, and fantastic for the social and physical corners. I like kids making their own teams, being inclusive, mixing boys and girls, being relaxed with registration so we don't waste time with cards and forms, so we can get kids in playing quicker. As for kit, provide the league with two colours, and the league will see if there's a clash each week. As demonstrated below.

Simple enough. What's your team name? What two colours are you wearing? Great. We'll highlight your colour each week. It's not about making money. It's not about looking flash. Keep it simple, and get them out there playing.

Futsal Tournament

This was an idea I had for a futsal tournament to use in Missouri. It was supposed to be the last thing I was doing before leaving, and then some FBI raids happened in some offices in Boston, and they asked all the visa staff to leave a little earlier. But I can still share the slides and the concepts I had. Even bought trophies for this, and everything.

Cool poster, bro! Six teams compete over three hours. Kids sign up and are assigned a team. It's wide age ranges, and for girls and boys. Most of the kids signing up, we would have known fairly well, so would have been able to make somewhat even teams.

Kids register and are randomly assigned a team. Their team is named after a country, and they have to wear the colours of that country. That already, to a kid, makes it interesting and exiting. Futsal rules have been simplified, and we added in some random intervals of music, in which goals count double, to add more excitement, and another dynamic of gameplay. This tournament never happened, but the template is a good one. Six teams, over three hours, play one game against each team.

I really believe in mixing ages and genders. I also like the image conveyed of representing teams. Kids get to play for France or Brazil. Some of them had the shirts of these countries, and were excited to be able to wear them. Assigning what colours to wear ahead of time also allows the kids to personalise their experience. You may not have a red spain shirt, but you have a red Manchester United shirt you want to wear. Too much of the US experience is uniformed, literally, as we sell them endless amounts of training kit. Rarely do we see them in their own skin (Fortnite reference), being who they are, showing us who they want to be.

The idea of random music meaning two goals are scored adds an element of panic and excitement. It could be thirty seconds. It could be two minutes. Picture being a goal down, and hearing music. How might you then play? Or being ahead by two goals, with only a minute remaining? Quick sub and change of strategy? Kids would have to figure this out, and will learn from the trial and error. Another benefit was that all the games were on the same pitch, one after the other. When we had done similar things on camp, in the form of tournaments, the kids not playing got really into it. They watched attentively, and cheered for the teams they needed to win, because it affected their own chances of winning, as were shown on the live table.    

3v3

This one I actually got to do for real, and it was a great success.

This is how the pitch looked. If there's a wall, play off the wall. If the ball goes over the line, then put the ball on the ground, and either kick or dribble in. Every restart is direct. Just make the rules as simple as possible, to stop wasting time and remove arguments. Play for three minutes, and the winners move up, the losers move down. You want to get to pitch one and stay there. The team to win the final game on pitch one is the winner of the tournament. That's how ladders work. In one hour, of three minute games (with one minute rest after three games, so nine minutes playing, one minute drink from every ten minutes), that makes for eighteen matches. In theory, a team could lose the first fourteen games, win the final four in succession, and be champions. If there's a draw for any game, it was the team who scored first that would be seen as the winner. In the event of a rare 0-0, it was one of rock paper scissors (essentially sudden death).

It was great to watch. Some teams moved all the way up and all the way down multiple times. A real rollercoaster of emotions. We didn't anticipate just how popular it would be. It's an hour 3v3 tournament in a shed. I should have known. Americans bring everyone. There were probably three other people per kid, all crammed into this small viewing area, moving up and down to try and view their kids as they ascended or descended the ladder. The parents got really into it, and the noise was deafening. It was crazy how seriously people took it, but it was a really fun and interesting concept. Different to the usual money grabbing nonsense. This was $20 per team. We didn't make much money on it, because that wasn't the point. Just cover the field and trophy costs, and get kids out there having a great time.

I wish there were more space for this kind of event. It was a bit of a hard sell at first, particularly as Americans view cheap as inferior, and fun as a luxury when it comes to the sporting experience and general mental wellbeing of children. 3v3 tournaments are not uncommon, but their format is completely different to how I structured this one. It costs upwards of $100 per team. You're guaranteed three or four games, that are usually fifteen or twenty minutes. And the games are spread across the weekend. Like how they do normal tournaments. Mine was quick. One and done. All at the same location, one after the other. Show up at 8:45, you're back home by 10:30. Youth sport has a monopoly on families' time. I want to give them that time back. Parents with reduced time become stressy. Stressy parents should at their kids on the field, because they expect a performance for their donation of time and money. The kids play with fear and without joy. The coaches then pander to the parents because it's the path of least resistance. The clubs and organisations love it, because they will play on the fear of missing out. They FOMO these parents to death. "Well, if you're kid's a serious baller, you'll sign up for this incredibly expensive, incredibly time consuming tournament..." 

Bollocks. The kids at our 3v3 had way more fun, way cheaper, the parents were considerably less inconvenienced, and the atmosphere was one of fun and creativity, but still taken seriously. Adults forget that kids are naturally competitive. Give them a way to score points, and kids will go to war. All we need to do is to facilitate that. We don't need to be on top of them telling them to knuckle down and take it seriously. Incentivise their performance, and they will take it seriously. And that's how you facilitate fun.

The kids got to make teams with their friends, pick their own names, and choose their own colours. So much autonomy. Yet most parents are of the opinion their kids can't wipe their own arses. Or the lives of the kids are so busy, the parents end up waiting on them hand and foot.

Two Games Simultaneously

I've talked about this kind of thing before. First, I will explain the idea of the game. Then, how to turn it into a tournament.

It's one 9v9 game divided into two pitches, or two separate games. The players can cross into the other game at any moment. You can put all defenders or all attackers on one side. You can run across to defend a free kick and then come back. You can assign more players to the pitch in which you are losing, in order to bring the score back, or more players on the pitch you are winning to consolidate the win. The strategy is entirely up to the team. The only players who can't move pitches are the goalkeepers. In theory, you could have two games of 8v1. You choose how much you want to commit to the overload.

How does it work? Let's say it's fairly standard in terms of indoor or futsal rules. Handball, free kicks etc. Preferably it would be two indoor courts with walls, but it works just fine outdoors too. I prefer SSGs to have walls nearby so we're not forever chasing balls, and the game is continuous. The game lasts for half an hour. There are four points total available. Two for a win, one for a draw, zero for a loss. If you win both games, you are awarded four points. Win one, draw one, three points. Draw both for two points. Draw one, lose one, only one point. Lose both, and it's zero points.

More is at stake. More can be gained. If you're losing heavily on one side, should you just forget about that game and try to gain something from the other side? If you have nine players, the team cannot split evenly, so there will be plenty of overloads occurring all the time. This makes for great attacking and defending scenarios.

A league format would be pretty standard. The team with the most points at the end of the season is the champion. What I like about this and all these games is that it makes the emotions of football happen quicker. We want to expose our kids to as many different scenarios as possible, to best prepare them for the adult game, and for adult life in general. These formats encourage them to think, to analyse, to strategise, to communicate, to weigh up options. Like in video games, the consequences of your actions are rewarded or punished quickly, and there's plenty of chances for do-overs.

If we do it right, all of the decision making will be placed onto the kids. These formats create the right environment, or apply the right constraints, that now the kids have to think about how it is going to work, and they have to think on their feet and solve problems for themselves, without our interventions. The constraints have forced them into the kind of scenarios we want them to face. These are really fun, engaging, kid friendly formats. I want to take the game away from egotistical and money hungry adults and give it back to the children. We have the resources, we have the facilities, we have the know-how. We shouldn't be looking to generate profits off of their hopes and dreams. We should be providing rich experiences for them to learn, grow, discover, experiment, develop etc. These formats provide so much trial and error, in small, fast-paced environments. Having tried these kinds of games a lot over the years, I have seen how much the kids enjoy it, how seriously they take it, and the many ways it challenges them. I would love to have done stuff like this as a kid. And to me, that's the way we should be approaching how we design activities for children; "I would love to have done stuff like this as a kid."