Rules
Generally the rules for small sided games are much the same as the 11-a-side game with the following additions;
- The ball is not allowed to go over "head height" or else the opposition is awarded an indirect free kick.
- The penalty area is significantly different from regular football: it is semi-circular in shape, only the goalkeeper is allowed to touch the ball within it, and he or she is not allowed out.
- Goalkeepers are only allowed to roll the ball out to another player. The goalkeeper may only kick the ball if it is in the course of making a save.
- There are no offside rules, eliminating the need for linesmen.
- Headers may or may not be allowed.
- Yellow cards may result in the offending player being sent to the "sin bin" for a pre-determined length of time. Red cards work in the same way as the 11-a-side game.
- Charging/sliding tackles are forbidden .
Additionally, metal studded boots or blades cannot be worn, as it damages the playing surface. Players are also required to wear shin pads but this is usually at the discretion of the referee.
Five-a-side is commonly played informally, and the rules are therefore flexible and are sometimes decided immediately before play begins; this is in contrast to futsal, for which official laws are published by FIFA.
The English F.A. have drawn up a full list of laws for the small-sided game which expands upon the rules outlined above and includes minimum/maximum pitch dimensions as well as technicalities on free-kicks and other parts of the game.
Read more about this topic: Five-a-side Football
Famous quotes containing the word rules:
“There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits the evidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Now for civil service reform. Legislation must be prepared and executive rules and maxims. We must limit and narrow the area of patronage. We must diminish the evils of office-seeking. We must stop interference of federal officers with elections. We must be relieved of congressional dictation as to appointments.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs ... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)