5-a-side: The Perfect Intro to Football?

22 January 2016

You’ve been building up your ball skills, practising your footwork and having the odd kickabout with your mates. You’re feeling ready to move beyond the piled-up jumper goalposts, but you’re not sure what your options are. Where do you go from here?

The thought of a full-blown 11-a-side game might be intimidating to begin with. Maybe you want to get started on a smaller scale – still in a game environment, but with a less competitive feel. If that’s true of you, we reckon we’ve found the solution.

5-a-side can be the perfect combination of friendly competition and laid-back fun. It’s a great opportunity to try out your footballing skills in a game with like-minded players.

Playing in a smaller team gives you the chance to build your footie confidence in a group. Often the focus in 5-a-side is just on enjoying the game with your team. Sometimes, there’s no need to even keep score.

Because of that, 5-a-side games are a chance to get used to footie rules and to being on a pitch. From there, you might decide to move on to 11-a-side games – but plenty of people love the relaxed 5-a-side games and fellow players so much, that they’ve stuck with them for their entire footballing careers.

Social life aside, studies show football is better than any other sport for lowering blood pressure and body fat, as well as improving the health of your heart. And 5-a-side has all the same health-related benefits as ‘proper’ footie. Score.

As with any football game, it’s the people who make 5-a-side great. If you’ve been inspired to give it a try, you’ll have the option to put together your own team for a session – maybe some of your mates will fancy joining you – or find existing 5-a-side teams near you.

5-a-side and other small sided football games are massive in the UK, so you won’t be short of options. Around 30,000 teams of between four and seven people play regularly up and down the country. And over 120,000 people can’t be wrong…