amator.appFive-a-side is the most played form of amateur football and the least codified. It happens in cages with rebound boards, in sports halls, on small artificial pitches and on halves of an Orlik. Each venue has its own habits, and the two things everyone agrees on are five players a side and no offside. This page describes the common conventions, gives the ranges they fall into and points to the documents behind them. Where there is a rulebook, it is The FA's Small-Sided Football laws; where there is none, the callouts say so.
Note: 5-a-side on a hard court with a reduced-bounce ball, a stopped clock and accumulated fouls is futsal, and futsal has official laws. See the futsal page. Everything here is the game outside those laws.
What 5-a-side is and where it is played
Two kinds of venue shape the game. The first is the enclosed pitch: a cage with boards or nets around it, usually artificial turf, where the ball rarely goes out and the game never stops. The second is an open pitch with lines, indoors or out, where the touchline matters and the ball is kicked or thrown back in. The FA's small-sided laws cover both: small-sided football "may be played with or without barriers".
In Poland the typical 5v5 is either a hall booked by the hour, played by futsal habits with varying strictness, or a half of an Orlik pitch played across its width.
Pitch and goal
The FA recommends, for 5- and 6-a-side, a length of 25–50 m and a width of 16–35 m, with a 3 m centre circle. Commercial cages tend to sit at the lower end; a half-Orlik played across is about 28 m long and 26 m wide, since the full playing area is 26 × 56 m.
The penalty area in the FA laws is a 6 m semicircle drawn from the centre of the goal line, with the penalty mark 6 m out. Goals are 3–5 m wide and 1.20–2 m high; the common sizes are 3 × 2 m futsal goals and 5 × 2 m youth goals. Portable goals must be anchored.
Amateur practice: in a cage the ball rebounds off the boards and stays in play. Agree what counts as out, usually only over the fence, and what the restart is when it happens.
Ball
Adults play with a size 5 ball; many venues provide one. Indoor 5-a-side often uses a futsal ball (size 4, reduced bounce), which keeps the game on the floor. The FA laws say only that the ball must be of a size appropriate to the age group, so the choice is the organiser's. Check what the venue allows; some halls ban ordinary footballs on their floors.
Team size and substitutions
Five players, one of whom is the goalkeeper. The FA allows three substitutes per team and unlimited rolling substitutions: the player coming off crosses the line first, then the substitute enters, through the gate if there is one, and a replaced player may return. The FA treats a match as invalid if a team is permanently reduced by more than two players, so in effect three is the minimum.
Amateur practice: most casual games have one or two subs per side, or none, and rotate the goalkeeper every few minutes. Decide before kick-off how the goalkeeper rotates and whether the goalkeeper may leave the area.
Duration and clock
The FA laws allow two equal periods of more than 5 and up to 25 minutes, a half-time of no more than 5 minutes, and competition rules may skip half-time entirely. The clock runs; the referee adds time lost and extends a half for a penalty.
Amateur practice: a booked slot is the clock. An hour on the pitch is usually 50–55 minutes of play, as one run or two halves of 25 with a quick change of ends. Leave the last five minutes for the next group.
Rules that differ from 11v11
No offside
There is no offside in small-sided football, in the FA laws and everywhere else. Goal-hanging is legal; the defence deals with it by marking.
Ball over the touchline
The FA restart is a kick-in: the ball stationary on the line, opponents 3 m away, no goal directly from it, and the kicker may not touch it again until another player has. With barriers there is no kick-in at all unless the ball leaves the enclosure, in which case it is placed 2 m inside the boards.
Amateur practice: some groups throw instead of kicking. Either works; mixing them does not.
The goalkeeper
The goalkeeper restarts with a goal clearance, thrown or kicked from anywhere in the penalty area, with opponents outside it, and it cannot score directly. In the FA laws the goalkeeper may hold the ball for four seconds, may not pick up a deliberate kick from a team-mate or a team-mate's kick-in, and the restart for all three is an indirect free kick on the area line. Competition rules may decide that only the goalkeeper may be inside the area.
Amateur practice: "goalkeeper only in the area" and "no scoring from inside the area" are the two commonest house rules in cages. Both exist to stop the goalkeeper being charged. If you play them, say which: a shot from outside that is deflected inside is where the arguments start.
Fouls, penalties and the slide
The FA list of direct free kick offences matches 11v11 — kicking, tripping, jumping at, charging, striking, pushing, tackling when careless or reckless — plus holding, spitting and deliberate handball. Two things are different: a sliding tackle is a direct free kick in itself, whether or not it wins the ball, and opponents stand 3 m from the ball at free kicks, not 9.15 m.
A foul inside the penalty area is a penalty from 6 m: goalkeeper on the line, everyone else outside the area, at least 3 m from the ball and behind or beside the mark.
The FA's disciplinary tool is the blue card, a two-minute sin bin, for everything that would be a yellow card in 11v11; a second blue card is a sending-off unless the referee chooses a second spell in the bin, and a straight red is a dismissal. An optional head-height rule, where a ball above a stated height gives an indirect free kick, is left to competition rules.
Amateur practice: no slide tackles is the one rule nearly every casual game adopts, because artificial turf and boards make slides dangerous. Head height is common in halls with low ceilings and rare outdoors.
Organising a 5-a-side game
Ten is the number; twelve gives you a sub each side and absorbs a cancellation. Book the venue by the hour and arrive ten minutes before the slot, because every minute of setup comes out of play. Bring two colours of bibs, since venues rarely lend them, and a pump.
Split the teams on the spot, not in the chat. The fairest quick method is to name the two strongest players as captains and let them pick alternately, or to sort by self-declared level and deal the players out like cards. Rotate the goalkeeper every five to ten minutes unless somebody actually wants to play in goal.
With ten players and no referee, three agreements keep the game civil: no slides, what the goalkeeper may do, and who calls fouls. The fouled player calls it, and the team that committed it does not argue. Write the rules once and reuse them. On amator.app the game card carries format, level and price, so the people who join are the people who agreed to the same game.