It gives you each player's minutes, who is on the pitch in every stint, and the changes at each break or every few minutes within a period. It covers the formats children play in England from Under-8 upwards, 5v5, 7v7, 9v9 and 11v11, with the FA match length for each already filled in. Below you will find the formula, ready-worked target minutes for the usual squad sizes, and the questions coaches and parents ask most about equal game time.
How the Calculator Works
Your game. Pick the format, from 3-a-side to 11-a-side, and a formation. Choose halves, quarters or one period with no breaks, and set the minutes for each. The FA length for your format is suggested, and you can change it to whatever your league plays.
Your rules. Set a minimum game time for every player (none, a quarter or a half), whether positions rotate or each child keeps a set position, whether the goalkeeper rotates at the breaks or stays in goal all game, and whether substitutions are unlimited or capped at the number your league allows. With a fixed keeper you can name them or let the calculator choose.
Who is playing. First names are fine, and you can paste a list straight from the team WhatsApp group. Add only the children who are actually there, because the point is sharing today's minutes among today's squad.
Doing it live on the day is difficult. You usually have three subs on the sideline all asking when they are coming on and whether they can play the same position, and you also have to consider who on the pitch hasn't played that position and how your subs affect the change after that. So you put little Johnny on as striker and then realise Max has been a defender for two periods and you told him he'd play striker.
I find that hard to do in the moment if you are looking for full rotation. When I have had to do it last minute I tended to use notes on my phone and quickly note down the positions before I had to coach or answer questions.
Then choose how often to change players: only at the breaks, or every few minutes within each half or quarter. The keeper always stays put until a real break. The calculator plans every stint (the spell between one change and the next), brings on the child who has played least, and, when changes fall inside a period, runs several versions of the plan to keep the one with the smallest gap between the most and least played player.
You get each child's minutes, a grid of who is where in every period, a stint-by-stint view of the bench and who comes on and off, and the number of changes the plan takes.
It is the same planner that picks the team inside the Coach App, run change by change. Nothing on this page needs an account.
On the touchline. "Run it on the touchline" opens the full-screen version with a clock for each period, the current lineup and bench, and an alert when a change is due or a break arrives: a beep, a buzz on Android phones, and the screen kept awake while the clock runs. At full time it shows the minutes each child actually played.
How to Calculate Equal Game Time
It is one sum. Outfield positions in your format, multiplied by the match length, divided by the number of outfield players you have today. That is the target minutes per player.
A worked example for 9v9, the format Under-12s and Under-13s play from the 2026/27 season:
- A 9-a-side team has 8 outfield positions once you take the keeper out.
- The match is 60 minutes, so there are 8 x 60 = 480 outfield minutes to share.
- Twelve children have turned up. One is in goal all game, which leaves 11 outfield players.
- 480 divided by 11 is just under 44 minutes each.
With a rotating goalkeeper nobody's minutes are ring-fenced, so you count all 9 positions, including the goal: 9 x 60 = 540 minutes shared by all 12 children, which is 45 minutes each, and that 45 includes each child's time in goal. The target rises because the keeper's slot joins the pool instead of being one child's whole game.
A real plan rarely lands on the exact figure, because changes happen in whole stints: with changes every 10 minutes a child plays 40 or 50 minutes, not 44. A gap of one stint between the most and least played child is as level as a single match gets.
Target Minutes by Format and Squad Size
The FA's Know Your Format guide for the 2026/27 season sets the maximum match length for each format and which age groups play it, and the tables below use those lengths. Under-7s play 3v3 in games of 6 to 10 minutes with no goalkeeper, no substitutes and every child playing, which is why the tables start at 5v5.
The same guide records the FA's best-practice recommendation that from Under-8 every child gets at least 50% of the game.
Leagues can play shorter than the maximum. If yours does, put your real match length into the calculator and ignore the figures here. Each table runs from one spare player up to the largest squad the FA's Standard Code allows, which is double the number on the pitch. The first figure is with one child in goal all game, the second with a rotating keeper, where time in goal counts towards each child's share.
5v5, 40 minutes (Under-8 and Under-9)
7v7, 50 minutes (Under-10 and Under-11)
9v9, 60 minutes (Under-12 and Under-13)
11v11, 70 minutes (Under-14)
By Under-14 most teams have a settled goalkeeper, so these assume a fixed keeper and 10 outfield positions.
A squad of 14 at 7v7, or 10 at 5v5, is where the target drops below half a game. That is the practical case for keeping squads a little smaller than the maximum at the younger ages, or running two teams when the numbers allow it.
Halves, Quarters or Rolling Subs
How the match is split decides how many natural change points you get, and that shapes the plan more than anything else.
Quarters give you three breaks, so at 5v5 with 8 children you can get close to equal minutes without a single change during play. The FA's Standard Code lets leagues from Under-8 to Under-11 choose quarters or halves, many play 5v5 in four 10-minute quarters for exactly this reason, and the calculator defaults to that split.
Halves give you one. A 7v7 squad of 12 playing two 25-minute halves cannot get near 27 minutes each by changing only at half-time: five children would play the whole game and five would miss a whole half. Getting close needs changes during play, which is what the "every 5 minutes" and "every 12.5 minutes" options are for. The calculator shows how many changes each option takes, so the trade-off between a level plan and a disruptive one is in front of you.
Rolling substitutions are what make those mid-half changes legal. The FA's Standard Code of Rules for Mini Soccer and Youth Football Competitions allows roll-on, roll-off substitutes across youth football: a player who has come off can go back on for another player, with the referee's permission, at a stoppage in play.
Leagues can still cap the number of substitutes or changes, which is what the "Limited" setting is for. Our explainer covers what rolling substitutions actually allow at each age group.
I try to avoid changing players part-way through a period and prefer the season-long approach, so that you don't get constant changes. Some coaches do it, or make a sub a minute before the end of the period just to get a player a little warm before the next one. But when you are rotating positions and players it already creates disruption, and I think they need a few minutes to adjust.
For me it makes the game too disjointed if you are making multiple subs per quarter at the younger ages. And depending on how the game is going, if you are changing every 5 minutes they may have only touched the ball a couple of times before you've moved or subbed them.
The breaks-only option is that approach: one child is a quarter up this week, and someone else gets the extra quarter next time. The frequent-change plans are for the coach who wants it level today, usually with a bigger squad.
Rotate Positions or Keep Them Set
Equal minutes is the floor. A child who plays 33 minutes every week but always at right-back is getting a narrower education than one who plays the same 33 minutes across defence, midfield and attack, and over a season the difference shows.
"Rotate positions" moves children through positions from stint to stint. "Keep set positions" holds each child to the positions you have given them, which suits an older team with a settled shape.
Our guide to equal playing time in grassroots football covers the difference between equal minutes and equal position time properly, and our guide to the best football formations by age group looks at which shapes still rotate fairly.
Keeping It Fair Across a Season
One match is easy. The ninth is not. Squad numbers change from week to week, one child misses two Sundays, another arrives late and plays a quarter. A target that is right for a single match drifts as soon as you stretch it over a season, and that is when a child quietly ends up well behind the rest.
We make sure everyone gets at least a half, that is our commitment, but we also even it out over a season and share the numbers with the parents regularly so they can see it. At younger ages equal game time is important to help them develop: while a child may seem behind another player, they'll never catch up without the same opportunities.
Having coached a few different teams, you will have some that are the standout player through every age group, with natural ability, a good attitude and physical attributes. But you'll also have some that peak early, and others that are late developers. So you need to give them all the same opportunities and environment to learn and develop, and see who grasps it.
If you keep your own records, our guide to building a football team spreadsheet includes an Excel and Google Sheets minutes tracker you can run alongside this calculator: note the minutes from each plan after the game, and the running totals tell you who gets the extra stint next week.
The Coach App is our free app for grassroots coaches, and it is where this calculator comes from. Save the squad you have just typed and it becomes your team with the same rules, every match from then on evens the minutes out from the week before, and each child's season total is there to check. Minutes tracking is free. Our round-up of grassroots football apps covers the wider options.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should kids get equal playing time?
For children's football in England, the national guidance recommends it. England Football's coaching guidance describes equal playing time as every child in the team getting the same time on the pitch on matchday, for two reasons: children left on the sideline lose interest, and it is hard to tell at 8 or 9 which children will be the strongest at 15, so holding minutes back from the ones behind now narrows the pool for no gain.
The FA's Know Your Format guide puts a number on it as best practice from Under-8: at least half the game for every child. Our guide to late developers in football covers why the children behind at 7 or 8 so often catch up when they get the game time to do it.
What do the FA guidelines say, and does it change by age?
The FA's position is best practice rather than a law: from Under-8, at least 50% of each game for every child, and at Under-7 no substitutes at all. How clubs apply it above that floor is their own policy. Cornwall FA's guidance on equal playing time quotes a policy some clubs have adopted: equal time in every match from Under-6 to Under-11, then equal time over the whole season from Under-12 to Under-16, so a coach can protect a child against a far stronger opponent one week and make the minutes up the next.
Whatever the policy, it should be written down, shared with parents and applied consistently.
How long is a grassroots football match at each age group?
Under the FA's 2026/27 formats, the maximum is 40 minutes at 5v5 (Under-8 and Under-9), 50 at 7v7 (Under-10 and Under-11), 60 at 9v9 (Under-12 and Under-13) and 70 at 11v11 from Under-14, with Under-7s playing 3v3 games of up to 10 minutes. These are maximums. The same rules cap a child's total football in one day too: 60 minutes at Under-8 and Under-9, 90 at Under-10 and Under-11, 120 at Under-12 and Under-13, and 150 at Under-14 and Under-15, which matters on a tournament day. Leagues can agree shorter games, and tournaments and festivals usually do, so put the real length into the calculator rather than the figure for your age group.
Is half-time 15 or 30 minutes?
In grassroots youth football it is short, often 5 to 10 minutes. The FA's Standard Code lets each league set its own interval provided it does not exceed 15 minutes, and the referee has to agree to any change on the day. Fifteen minutes is the interval in the adult professional game, which is where the figure comes from. Nothing in football has a 30-minute half-time. The break length does not change the equal playing time maths, because only playing minutes are shared out.
Is there a downside to equal playing time?
The honest case against has two parts. In a competitive league, a team rotating everyone will sometimes lose to one that does not, and that gets harder for children to accept as they get older. And a child a long way behind physically can have a miserable afternoon against a much stronger side, which is what the season-long version of the policy exists for: a shorter game that week, more the next.
Neither argument carries much weight below Under-12. If equal minutes feel unfair to the strongest child in a squad, that is usually a sign the child is ready for a stronger team or for playing up an age group, which is a different conversation from cutting another child's game.
Is there an app that works out equal playing time?
Yes. The equal game time calculator on this page is part of the Coach App, our free app for grassroots coaches. Save your squad from the calculator and the app keeps the same rules, plans every match with the minutes evened out from the week before, and tracks each child's season total. You can also keep using the calculator here without an account for as long as you like.
Can I use it for 3v3 at Under-7?
You can plan a 3-a-side or 4-a-side game, but at Under-7 you should not need to. The FA's 3v3 format has no substitutes and no goalkeeper: every child plays the whole 6-to-10 minute game, and clubs run several short games across the session.
Where it helps at that age is a festival with odd numbers, where you want each child to play the same number of games. Our explainer on the new FA youth football formats covers how 3v3 works and why the FA introduced it.
Try it on your own squad at the top of this page, or open the calculator full screen.
