Repeated small-sided games may show similar total work, yet fast running, football actions and spacing differ. We should check fitness and football separately, check spacing if possible, and use study averages as guides, not goals for every team.

The same game setup does not always give the same amount of work. A target is a number or result chosen before play and checked after. Choose one fitness target and one football target.

Ten players under 19 played the same 5v5 game twice. The two sessions were 72 hours apart. The setup stayed the same. Their player-load number was almost the same both times. Their fast-running distance was not.¹

Two terms first. Player load is one number from a GPS device, which records where and how fast a player moves. It adds up movement and changes of speed. Coaches use it as an estimate of total physical work. High-speed running, or fast running, is the metres a player covers above a chosen speed. Each study chooses its own speed limit. In this study, the speed range was 14 to 20 km/h.

Scientists use the coefficient of variation, or CV, to show how much a number changes compared with its usual size. It is a percentage. A low CV means the number was more consistent. A high CV means the number changed more and was less consistent.

Player load had a CV of 4.9%. That was consistent. High-speed running had a CV of 83.0%. That changed a great deal.

Read that 83% with care. It does not mean the players ran 83% farther. It is not a distance. It says only that the fast-running number changed a lot from one session to the next.

Treat that gap as a warning, not as a number to use for your own team.

One more warning before we start. The two-target check in this report does not come from one study. It uses ideas from the studies listed at the end. Nobody has tested this check itself. The research shows that fitness, ball actions, and team shape can each change by different amounts. Team shape means how spread out and spaced the team is.

Write down two things to check

Before you play, write down what you will record, exactly what will count, who will record it, which players you will watch, and whether you will count it during play or from video.

One person cannot watch a whole team well. If that is the problem, film the session and count later. Or choose a small group and make clear that you watched only them. Never call a count from some players a count from the whole team.

A stopwatch can check how long players worked. It cannot record player load or fast-running metres. Those need GPS or another device that records player movement. A notepad or video is enough to count the football action. Never choose a number that the session cannot record.

To check how spread out the team is without a movement-recording system, use video for a rough check instead. Film from a high place. Pause the video. Count the pitch markings between your player who is farthest back and your player who is farthest forward. Do not compare it with a length from a movement-recording system.

In these studies, each block of play lasted five minutes. Possession means the time that a player or team has the ball.

Pick numbers to aim for from your own team. Use full-match numbers, past training, or your coaching aim. The studies below do not give one number that works everywhere.

One systematic review, a structured summary of many studies, combined 24 small-sided-game studies that recorded the same players more than once.² Sixteen studies looked at internal load. Thirteen looked at external load. Six looked at football actions. Two looked at team decisions and positions. Internal load means what exercise does inside the body, such as heart rate. External load means movement outside the body, such as distance and speed.

The review found a pattern. Internal load and slow running were more consistent. Ball actions and fast running were less consistent. But that comparison comes from only six studies of football actions and two studies of team decisions and positions. The studies generally found this difference, but they do not give you a number to use.

The ten players under 19 played on the same 30 by 30 metre pitch each time. Each session had three five-minute blocks. A GPS device tracked them in both sessions. Consistent player load did not mean consistent fast running, even when everything else stayed the same.

Smaller games give more touches, but the counts still change

Sixteen players under 11 played 3v3 and 6v6. They played each kind of game twice, a week apart, with the same teams chosen to be as even as possible.³ Someone counted their actions by hand. Each player’s counts changed a lot in both game sizes.

The authors decided the football-action counts were not consistent enough in either game size to repeat the same type of practice. Shots were the one exception. Shots were more consistent in the bigger game.

For each minute of play, the 6v6 players completed far fewer of these actions than in 3v3, between 65.6% and 87.6% fewer.

In this group of players under 11, the smaller game raised the average number of touches. It still made each player’s count hard to predict. Sixteen children at one academy cannot show that older or stronger groups would get the same differences.

Pick one action: balls received, passes, or shots. Count it for each player. Write down the count for each minute, each possession, or each five-minute block. Do not write down only one count for all players together. That last step is this report’s advice. None of these studies tested it as a coaching method.

More space makes players run more, but does not make the team spread out like a match

Researchers recorded the movement of 280 players in four age groups.⁴ They compared full matches with 4 vs 4, 6 vs 6, and 8 vs 8 games. Every game had goalkeepers. Every game gave each player 320 square metres, a figure taken from full matches.

They recorded team shape in four ways. Length is how far the team stretches from back to front. Width is how far it stretches side to side. Surface area is the ground covered by the team. Interpersonal distance is the gap between two players.

When they counted all players, every game size was smaller than the full match in all four ways. The two smallest game sizes were much smaller. Team shape also changed more in the smaller games. Giving each player the same space as in a full match did not make the team’s width, length, or surface area the same as in a full match.

Small groups showed something else. When researchers looked only at the two nearest teammates, their gap was the same as in the full match in almost every age group. When they looked at groups of four players, 4 vs 4 with goalkeepers gave bigger gaps than the full match for players under 13, under 15, and under 17.

Two players can be the same distance apart as in a full match while the full team is still packed differently. The number of players changes how the whole team is spaced during play, even when each player has the same amount of space as in a full match.

Adding players made the team more spread out and made its shape more consistent. Team shape changed most in the smallest game and changed less as player numbers grew. These were Dutch academy sides. They were some of the best youth teams, not every team.

More space for each player still increases physical work. One meta-analysis, a study that combines numerical results from several studies, combined eleven studies. It found that more space for each player raised total distance, fast-running distance, and average heart rate.⁵ But the eleven studies gave different results, so one team can end up far from that average.

Another study used 2,565 training records from 25 players in Serie A, Italy’s top football division.⁶ It asked how much space each game needs to produce the same running distances as full matches. Those players were adult professionals. No single pitch size gives every physical number at once.

Check whether you reached both numbers

Then change the one thing most likely connected to the result you did not reach. Space affects how far apart players stand. Player numbers affect how spread out the team is. Pitch markings can affect the team’s side-to-side and front-to-back distances. Change one thing, then record the same result again. These are ideas to test. They are not guaranteed fixes.

If you change player numbers or give one team more players, count your chosen action again. Adding or removing teammates and opponents changes ball actions, how defenders support each other, and exploratory behaviour: looking for teammates or open space.⁷

What these two checks cannot tell you

No study has tested these two checks. This report brings together fitness, ball actions, and team positions from separate research.

The strongest evidence from recording the same number or action more than once comes from ten players under 19 and sixteen players under 11. Those are small groups.

The space-for-each-player findings come from adult players in Italy’s top football division. The team-shape findings come from Dutch academy teams. You cannot expect either finding to be true for other players.

None of these studies recorded fitness, ball actions, and team shape together, for the same players, across repeated games.

The evidence supports one point. The three results did not change by the same amount, so record each one on its own. It does not mean one caused another. It gives no numbers to aim for that work everywhere. It cannot tell you how much of a football action a game will give you on any evening.

Use these two checks in your next small-sided game. Mark whether you reached each number. Then change one thing and record the same result again.

The original source titles below use harder scientific terms. They are kept exactly as the researchers wrote them.