FairSub / Blog

There is a paradox in youth soccer that we rarely name. The child who plays every match, every minute, may also be the child getting the least soccer development. The goalkeeper.

She is eight years old and plays in goal every match. On paper, her playing time is perfect. Her parents have no obvious reason to object. The coach feels good about the substitutions among the outfield players. The federation's playing-time rules are being followed.

But by the time she turns twelve, she may already be years behind her teammates in parts of the game: reading situations in tight spaces, making decisions under pressure, and handling the first touch. By fourteen, the gap is clear. By sixteen, there is a real risk that she is on her way out of the sport.

That is not necessarily because of a bad coach. The problem is more basic than that. It is something we have not learned to measure.

Pitch time and outfield time

The solution begins with two concepts. Once you have them, the problem becomes hard not to see.

Pitch time is the usual way to measure playing time. It is also the way federation rules work in practice: every minute the child is on the pitch, regardless of position. Goalkeeper minutes count, just like outfield minutes. The child was there, with her teammates, while the match was being played.

Outfield time is the part of pitch time the child actually spends as an outfield player. Goalkeeper minutes do not count. These are the minutes when the child is inside the flow of the game: making decisions, taking touches, making runs, passing, pressing, and joining the situations that build a soccer player. For an outfield player, pitch time and outfield time are the same number. For a goalkeeper, they are not.

A child who plays a full match, with 25 minutes in goal and 25 minutes as an outfield player, has 50 minutes of pitch time and 25 minutes of outfield time. The first number is what parents see from the sideline. The second says more about the soccer development the child is actually getting.

This article is about that difference. About why many parents and coaches only see one of the two numbers, and about what changes when both become visible.

The parent's question and the coach's question

Two people can look at the same season and ask very different questions about the same child.

The parent watches today's match and wonders: Did my child play? How long was she on? Did she play as much as the others? From the parent's point of view, fairness is often about presence. Was my child part of the team today? Did she get her share of the playing time?

The coach needs to ask a different question: Is she getting enough situations outfield? Has she played on her weaker side? Is she getting the repetitions she needs to develop? From the coach's point of view, fairness is also about the right kind of experience.

The two perspectives are not in conflict. When the child plays outfield, they line up: pitch time is also outfield time. But when the child plays in goal, the numbers split. And it is in that gap that the goalkeeper problem in youth soccer appears.

Where the numbers split

Imagine two children on the same team. Same age, same enthusiasm. One plays the whole season in midfield. The other plays the whole season in goal. Both finish the year with 1,000 minutes of pitch time. According to the federation's rules, the parents' expectations, and the team's statistics, they have had the same season.

But they have not.

The midfielder has 1,000 minutes of outfield time. The goalkeeper has zero. Both have improved since the season began, but they have not improved at the same things. The midfielder has spent the season learning to become an outfield player. The goalkeeper has spent the season learning to become a goalkeeper.

For a sixteen-year-old who has chosen her position, that can be both reasonable and desirable. For a nine-year-old who ended up in goal in week two because the coach asked and nobody else raised a hand, it is something else. The nine-year-old has not chosen a position. She has been given a role.

Pitch time cannot see the difference between those two seasons. Outfield time can.

What the federations actually say

I have reviewed playing-time rules and guidance from nine federations. None of them makes a clear distinction between pitch time and outfield time. The differences are in how they regulate pitch time, not in whether they track outfield time.

The federations fall into three groups.

Federations where the match format does the work

Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Italy build the playing-time guarantee into the match format itself.

• SvFF, Sweden. The youth match formats introduced in 2019 use three equal periods and recommended squad sizes. If the format is used as intended, each child gets about 67% pitch time. Stockholm Football Association's club certification, Spelgaranti, also introduces a clear minimum: every selected player must play at least 50% of the match.
• NFF, Norway. The principle is that every selected player should get tilnærmet like mye spilletid, roughly equal playing time. There is no exact percentage threshold per match. Instead, the principle is supported by small-sided formats and recommended squad sizes.
• DBU, Denmark. Lige Meget Spilletid replaced the older Halvdelen Af Kampene principle around 2021. DBU deliberately avoids a strict stopwatch interpretation. The rule is meant as a coaching principle, not a percentage target.
• FIGC, Italy. Italy has one of the clearest rules for making sure every child is actually on the pitch. In Pulcini, U10/U11, and Esordienti, U12/U13, every registered player must play at least one full period out of the first two. No substitutions are allowed during those periods, except for injury.

Federations with a clear minimum number of minutes

A second group sets an explicit minimum in minutes or share of the match.

• US Soccer. The 2017 Player Development Initiative states for U10 that each player must play at least 50% of the total playing time. It is the strongest single rule in the sources reviewed here.
• The FA, England. There is no national minimum number of minutes, but The FA recommends that every player gets a range of match situations. Several county FA leagues also have their own local 50% rules.
• FPF, Portugal. Every player listed on the match sheet must take part. In shorter single-period formats, the minimum is five minutes per player.

Federations where the principle is left to the coach

A third group leaves more responsibility to the coach's judgement.

• KNVB, Netherlands. Fair playing time is supported through small-sided formats, such as 6v6 with two equal halves at U8–U10, and through competition structures that reduce result pressure. There is no exact minimum number of minutes per player.
• CBF, Brazil. Unlimited rolling substitutions are allowed, but there is no minimum per player. Rotation is a coaching matter.
• UEFA. The Grassroots Charter sets the broad principle of football for all, but leaves the practical rules to the national federations.

The common denominator is what gets measured when anything is measured: pitch time. Every minute the child is on the pitch counts, regardless of position. What is not measured is outfield time.

For most children, that is not a problem, because they are outfield players and the two numbers are the same. For goalkeepers, one of the numbers becomes invisible inside a system that is meant to protect their development.

The federations answer the parent's question. They do not answer the coach's.

What the goalkeeper actually misses

The difference between pitch time and outfield time would matter less if the developmental gap between the positions were small. It is not. Three things point in the same direction: a child who mostly plays in goal gets far less of the experience that youth soccer development literature tends to treat as essential.

Touches per match. The number of ball contacts per player rises sharply in smaller formats. A study of U12 players by Small (2006), using ProZone video analysis from two performance clubs and two junior clubs in Scotland, found an average of about 115 touches per player per match in 4v4, 55 in 7v7, and 22 in 11v11. Fenoglio's earlier pilot study at Manchester United, with U9 academy players, found that 4v4 produced 135% more passes, 225% more 1v1 situations, 260% more scoring chances, and 500% more goals than 8v8.

As far as I know, there is no published study that counts youth goalkeepers' ball contacts in the same way. But the structural conclusion is simple. A youth goalkeeper's touches are limited by the number of shots, goal kicks, and back-passes. Those situations are far less common in U10 soccer than in the adult game. A reasonable estimate is that a U10 goalkeeper in a 7v7 match gets a single-digit number of meaningful ball contacts, often without the same pressure as the outfield players, while her teammates out on the pitch may be around 55. Across a 25-match season, the difference is large. Across several years, it becomes enormous.¹

Perception and decision-making. In motor learning, the relationship between perception and action is often treated as central: players learn by repeatedly reading a situation, making a decision, and acting on it. An outfield player faces those decisions all the time. Which foot? Which direction? Pass or dribble? Who is free? Where is the pressure coming from?

The goalkeeper also makes difficult decisions, but they are fewer and different. Should she come out or stay? Should she restart the game long or short? How should she organise the back line? These are important decisions, but they do not replace the many small decisions that shape an outfield player.

The timing of specialisation. Research on early specialisation in sport broadly points in the same direction: children who get to try several roles and contexts before puberty tend to have better conditions for long-term development and a lower risk of dropping out. Early specialisation is more often associated with the opposite.

In youth soccer, goalkeeper is the position most likely to become specialised too early. A child who is put in goal at six and stays there until thirteen may have received about one season of outfield experience, while her teammates have received seven.

The link between early specialisation and leaving sport early is not only theoretical. Wall and Côté (2007) followed competitive youth hockey players and found that those who specialised earlier also dropped out at higher rates and at younger ages than those who had tried several roles. Soccer is not hockey, but the mechanism is similar: a child who gets a narrower set of motor, tactical, and social experiences early on also gets fewer ways into the sport.

That is the goalkeeper paradox. The child who plays the whole match in goal, every match, can have perfect pitch time and almost no outfield time. The playing-time rule is satisfied. The development the rule was meant to protect is not.

What dual measurement looks like in practice

The practical solution is simple: measure pitch time and outfield time separately for every child, in every match. Start in the youngest age groups and follow the numbers across the season. Show both in the reports a coach shares with parents and players.

Pitch time answers the parent's question: did my child play, and how much?

Outfield time answers the coach's question: did the child get the kind of soccer experience needed to develop?

When both numbers are visible, two things happen.

First, the season's pattern becomes clear. A child with high pitch time but low outfield time may be heading into trouble, but it rarely shows in a single match. It shows as the pattern builds over time. Visibility makes it possible to spot the problem while there is still time to act.

Second, agreements can be followed up. If coaches, parents, and players agree that a young goalkeeper should play half the match outfield, it becomes possible to see whether that actually happens. Dual measurement makes the promise concrete.

The 13-year line

No fixed position before the age of thirteen.

The age is not chosen at random. It aligns with Côté's Developmental Model of Sport Participation, where ages 6–12 are described as the sampling years. During those years, children should be able to try several roles, play, and learn broadly, without being narrowed too early. Ages 13–15 are described as the specialising years, when a clearer focus can begin to emerge. The full investment phase begins around the age of sixteen, when teenagers have better physical, cognitive, and motor conditions for choosing a role more seriously.

The age boundaries in this article follow that logic. Before thirteen, goalkeeper should be a role children rotate through. After thirteen, with the child's own willingness and the coach's judgement, it can begin to become a position to choose. From sixteen, a full commitment to the position can be both reasonable and desirable.

For coaches of teams under thirteen, this leads to four practical principles:

1. Rotate the goalkeeper across the whole squad. Not only among the volunteers. The child who says she does not want to go in goal may need the experience. The child who always wants to go in goal is often the child whose wider development you need to protect most.
2. Make "half the match outfield" a clear structure, not a verbal promise. For a child under thirteen who loves the goalkeeper gloves, 50/50 is a good starting point.
3. Track pitch time and outfield time in every match, from U6 upwards. One match says little. A season pattern says a lot.
4. Ask two questions after the season. Did every child get enough time on the pitch? And did every child get enough time as an outfield player? If the answers differ for any child, you have found a development problem you can act on.

For a child who loves playing in goal, 50/50 is not a punishment. It is protection. She should be allowed to love saving shots. But she should also get the chance to discover what it feels like to dribble past a defender, play a pass through midfield, or be the player who builds the attack.

Do not make her choose all of that away at the age of nine.

The child who chooses the gloves

Everything so far has been an argument against putting children in goal by default before they have had enough broad experience to understand what they are giving up. It is not an argument against goalkeeping itself. And it is not an argument against the older child who chooses it.

Goalkeeping is one of the most demanding roles in team sport. It requires techniques other positions do not: handling, footwork in small angles, distribution with foot and hand under pressure, set pieces, and the courage to leave the line at the right moment. It requires tactical understanding: organising the back line, reading attacks before they become dangerous, and making decisions in fractions of a second. It also requires mental strength: carrying on after conceding, staying focused through long stretches without the ball, and living with the consequences of every decision inside the box.

A child who, at the right age and with the right preparation, chooses the goalkeeper role deserves coaches who can develop her there. She deserves a club that supports the choice without turning it into a life sentence. Modern goalkeeping demands more from young players than ever before. Choosing that path is admirable, but the choice has to be a choice.

Dual measurement helps that child too. The modern goalkeeper often plays as an extra outfield player. She needs to be comfortable with the ball at her feet, able to start attacks from goal kicks, and available as the deepest passing option in the build-up. The days when the goalkeeper was only expected to catch and clear the ball are over.

That is why even a 14-year-old goalkeeper who has chosen the position still needs continued outfield time. Not because she is not a goalkeeper, but because the position now demands more outfield qualities than before.

So the argument is not against goalkeepers. It is against accidental goalkeepers.

What a federation could do next

If I were writing a policy proposal for a national federation today, it would have three parts and fit on one page.

First: define both terms in the rulebook. Pitch time and outfield time. Simply giving the words a place makes the conversation clearer for coaches, parents, clubs, and federations.

Second: add an outfield-time minimum to existing playing-time rules. A federation that says every player must play at least 50% of the match can also say that every player must play a certain share as an outfield player. The exact level should be set by the federation together with its coach education programme. The principle matters more than the number: if the federation has already taken a position on enough presence, it can also take a position on enough developmental exposure.

Third: show both numbers on match sheets, from U6 upwards. Many digital match sheets already capture minutes per player. Splitting that number into pitch time and outfield time is a small technical change, but a large knowledge shift. Federations that do it would, within a couple of seasons, have a unique view of what is actually happening to young goalkeepers in their member clubs.

None of this requires new equipment, large education packages, or major investment. It requires a few sentences in a rulebook and two clear columns in a match sheet. The technical threshold is low. The real threshold is attention.

Limitations and open questions

There are several caveats to the argument above.

The 50% and 67% thresholds are practical thresholds, not exact research thresholds. No study shows that a child who plays 49.9% of a match develops measurably worse than a child who plays 50.1%. These thresholds are conventions. They are easy to understand, easy to follow up, and they give coaches a useful nudge towards fair rotation. The same applies to any possible minimum for outfield time. The point is not that 25% is the perfect level, but that some form of minimum for outfield time is needed.

Outfield touches are measured. Goalkeeper touches are estimated. The figures cited for outfield players come from studies of small-sided games. The goalkeeper's ball contacts, by contrast, are a structural estimate. I am not aware of any published youth study that measures ball contacts per match for goalkeepers at U10 or younger. The direction of the difference is clear, but the exact numbers need better data.

The claim about decision frequency is qualitative. The argument that outfield players make more and denser decisions is based on literature about perception and action in sport. I am not aware of a study that counts decisions per minute for different positions in youth soccer. The difference is reasonable and important, but it is not precisely measured here.

The research on early specialisation is strong, but not completely settled. Côté, Baker, and others represent a broad and well-established line of research. At the same time, there are sports where very early specialisation is often described as necessary, such as gymnastics and figure skating. Soccer sits closer to the part of the spectrum where early breadth and later specialisation make most sense, but the research is not closed.

Federations do not fully agree on the age boundaries. The 13- and 16-year boundaries in this article are based on Côté's model. Some federations move earlier, others later. The FA's transition from Foundation Phase to Youth Development Phase happens at 11–12. US Soccer is close to U13. SvFF speaks more clearly about position-specific roles only at older ages. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends postponing single-sport specialisation until later adolescence, around 15–16. The boundaries used here therefore sit in the middle of a wider range.

Measurement does not replace coaching judgement. Measuring outfield time does not automatically create better goalkeepers or better soccer players. It creates visibility. Coaches still have to coach. Parents still have to understand the whole picture. Children still have to be children. But visibility is often a condition for better decisions.

What is at stake

There is a quiet imbalance in youth soccer that many people recognise. Clubs without a goalkeeper try to find someone who wants the role. Clubs that find a goalkeeper sometimes hold on to her too tightly and for too long, at the cost of her wider development.

The way forward is not to ban goalkeepers, ration positions, or write longer rulebooks. It is to make the invisible visible. Measure what each child actually does on the pitch, not only whether she was there. Show both numbers to the coach, the parent, and the child herself. Let the season's pattern emerge where everyone can see it.

The eight-year-old does not yet know whether she is a goalkeeper. She knows she likes diving and saving shots. She does not know whether she is also a striker, a midfielder, or the player who will one day become the best in the team at finding spaces or moving the ball through the pitch.

The honest answer is to let her find out. And to count her minutes in both ways while she does.

The goalkeeper is playing. Good. Now let's make sure the goalkeeper is also playing soccer.

Anders Henke is the founder of FairSub, an app that helps youth soccer coaches manage fair playing time across the squad. Pitch time, outfield time, and starts are tracked separately, match by match.