Pitch sizes: eleven-a-side, seven-a-side and futsal

A club with three pitches has three separate rulebooks on the table without realising it. Eleven-a-side is written by the IFAB, seven-a-side by the Spanish Football Federation, and futsal by FIFA. They are not versions of one text: they are independent documents, and each decides its own measurements.

Here are all three, taken from those rulebooks and from nowhere else.

The goals change most

You would expect the big difference to be the size of the pitch. It is not: it is the goal, which is what actually changes the game.

Eleven-a-side: 7.32 × 2.44 metres. Seven-a-side: 6 × 2. Futsal: 3 × 2.

The futsal goal is exactly half the width of the seven-a-side one. But between eleven-a-side and seven-a-side the gap is far smaller than people imagine: from 7.32 to 6 metres is 18%, not a half. A child moving up from seven-a-side finds a goal only slightly wider — and quite a lot taller.

The futsal goal is exactly half the width of the seven-a-side one. The eleven-a-side goal is only 18% wider than seven-a-side.

The pitch has no single size: it has a range

This is the part that surprises almost everyone. IFAB Law 1 does not say a football pitch measures so much by so much. It says it measures between 90 and 120 metres long and between 45 and 90 wide.

Do the arithmetic: a 90 × 45 pitch is 4,050 square metres. A 120 × 90 one is 10,800. Two perfectly legal pitches can differ by almost double in area, and both follow the rulebook.

For international matches the range narrows to 100–110 × 64–75. The famous 105 × 68 of the big stadiums does not come from Law 1: it is a UEFA competition requirement, not a law of the game.

The ranges for the other two

One thing worth knowing about seven-a-side: there is no standard size at all. Neither the Spanish federation rulebook nor the national sports facility standards give a recommended figure. They only give that range. Any specific number presented as "the usual one" was invented by somebody.

Three details almost nobody carries in their head

In futsal the penalty area is not a rectangle. It is the only one of the three that is not: two quarter-circles of 6 metres radius drawn from outside each post, joined by a straight line of 3.16 metres. If the shape of a sports hall area has ever looked odd to you, it was not your imagination.

In seven-a-side, offside only exists in the last twelve metres. Outside that strip you cannot be offside, however far forward you are. It is the difference that catches out players coming from eleven-a-side.

And the penalty is taken from three different distances: 11 metres in eleven-a-side, 9 in seven-a-side and 6 in futsal. Futsal also has a second penalty mark at 10 metres, for accumulated fouls.

All three at a glance

What this article does not tell you

What size your club pitch should be. That is not decided by the laws of the game but by the competition you play in and by how the facility is certified. Those are different documents.

And the sizes by age group — under-10, under-12, under-14 — are set by each regional federation and are not the same everywhere. You have already seen that what circulates online about seven-a-side does not always match the rulebook; by age group it is worse.

If your pitch measures something that appears in none of these tables, it is most likely perfectly fine. The ranges are wide on purpose.