Your one-day tournament with 12 teams: how many hours it really takes

Twelve teams signed up, two pitches free and a Saturday ahead. The club running it always asks the same thing: can it be done?

Almost always the answer turns up once everyone has entered, which is too late. Let us work it out first.

The easy number: twenty-one matches

Twelve teams split into three groups of four. Inside each group, round robin in a single round: six matches per group, eighteen in all. Every team plays three.

Four teams go through to the knockout: semi-finals and final, three more matches. Twenty-one in total.

That number is easy, and it decides nothing.

The number that matters: the rounds

With two pitches only two matches run at a time. And there is a second constraint that always gets forgotten: nobody can play two matches at a time.

So the matches cannot be spread out however you like: they group into rounds of two, and no team can appear twice in the same round. Twenty-one matches on two pitches make eleven rounds, and not by chance: no more will fit.

This is the most common miscalculation. «Eight hours of pitch time times two pitches is sixteen matches» is a sum that does not work, because the teams are the same teams.

With two pitches only two matches run at a time. And nobody can play two matches at a time. Eleven rounds follow from that — it is not a number you choose.

And now what decides the day: how long a match lasts

A regulation seven-a-side match is two halves of thirty minutes. Sixty, plus the break and the changeover: call it sixty-five.

Eleven group rounds and the knockouts at that length come to eleven hours and fifty-four minutes. It does not fit in a Saturday, not even opening at eight in the morning.

This is where a club running its first tournament comes unstuck, because the problem does not seem to be anywhere: there are few matches and the pitches look like enough.

What the tournaments that do fit actually do

They do not have more pitches. They shorten the group stage.

MIC Football 7, an international youth tournament, plays its groups at two halves of twelve minutes and the knockouts at two by twenty. The 24 Hours of Futsal of Santa Bàrbara play the qualifying stage as a single twenty-five-minute period on a running clock, with one minute of rest to change ends.

With those lengths, the same twelve teams on the same two pitches fit into five and a half hours.

What each decision saves you

The difference is not arguable: shortening the match is worth eight times more than adding a pitch. And adding pitches stops helping almost immediately, because with twelve teams only six matches could ever run at once, even with six pitches.

The table, for whatever format you run

The rounds are given in two parts: the group stage and the knockout, because the knockout is played with longer matches. And the knockout cannot overlap: there is no semi-final until the quarters are done.

Rest, which is not free

Everything above comes from filling the pitches without looking at who has just played. Done that way, somebody plays two matches back to back.

If you require that no team plays two rounds in a row, the price depends on the format — and the worst case is exactly twelve teams on two pitches: two extra rounds, fifty-four minutes. The day goes from five and a half hours to six twenty-four.

With three or four pitches it costs nothing at all: there is room to spread things out. It is worth checking before you publish the schedule, because it is the number one complaint from teams and it is solved on paper, not on the Saturday.

• 8 teams, 2 pitches: costs nothing
• 12 teams, 2 pitches: two extra rounds (54 minutes)
• 12 teams, 3 or 4 pitches: costs nothing
• 16 teams, 2 or 4 pitches: costs nothing

What this article does not tell you

How long a match should last in your tournament. That is set by whoever runs it, and by the federation if it is official competition. The lengths above are the ones those two particular tournaments use, not a rule: a regulation seven-a-side match is two halves of thirty minutes.

How many hours of daylight you have is not something we know either: it depends on your facility, the month, and whether there are floodlights.

What is certain is the arithmetic. It is simulated by building the schedule round by round, not estimated, and you can redo it with your own numbers.