About Soccer Substitution

Updated

SoccerSubstitution.com is a set of free game-day tools for youth soccer coaches: a substitution planner, a playing time calculator, printable sub charts, a lineup maker, and plain-English guides to formations, field and goal sizes, game length and substitution rules.

Who runs the site

The site is run by the SoccerSubstitution.com team and is fully independent. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by any league, club or governing body, including FIFA, IFAB, US Soccer, US Youth Soccer, AYSO, NFHS or the NCAA.

We're not an official source for any rule. When we state a rule, a size or a game length, we link to the official document it comes from, so you can check it yourself.

Why the site exists

Planning fair substitutions by hand is slow. You need each player's minutes, a bench order, a plan for goalkeepers, and a plan B when someone arrives late, usually in the few minutes before kickoff. This site does that math in seconds, on a phone, at the field, and gives you something you can print or hand to a parent helper.

Why the tools are free

Every tool is free, with no sign-up and no paid version. To pay for hosting and development, our pages show ads from the Adsterra network:

  • Ads sit between sections of a page. They never appear inside the tools, in Game Day mode or on printouts.
  • We don't send your team data to advertisers or anyone else.

Our privacy policy explains how advertising cookies work and how to opt out.

Your team data stays on your device

  • No accounts. There's nothing to sign up for.
  • Stored in your browser. Rosters, plans, saved teams and season minutes are kept in your browser's local storage on your device. They're never sent to our server.
  • Share links carry the plan. When you share a plan, it's packed into the link itself, in the part after the "#", which browsers don't send to websites.
  • Works offline. After your first visit, the planner keeps working at fields with no signal.
  • No tracking. Right now the site uses no analytics, no tracking scripts and no cookies.

How we source and check facts

Every rule, size and game length on this site is checked against an official document, or a copy of it published by a state association. Our main sources are:

How we use them:

  • One set of numbers. Our tools and generated tables read from one data file, so a goal size or a game length matches across the site. The example rotations and minutes tables in our guides are generated by the same engine that runs the planner.
  • Where sources disagree, we say so. For example, a 2017 US Soccer news story put the 7v7 build-out line 14 yards from goal, while the official standards place it midway between the penalty area and the halfway line. We follow the official document and note the difference.
  • Leagues vary. Leagues, states and tournaments often change the defaults. We label recommendations as recommendations and remind you to check your league.
  • Dated and re-checked. Every guide shows an "Updated" date and lists its sources at the bottom. We re-check rules pages before each season and whenever a governing body publishes changes, such as the yearly update to the Laws of the Game.

Spotted a mistake?

If something looks wrong or out of date for your league, please contact us, ideally with a link to the official rule. We check every correction against the source, fix the page and update its date.