Soccer Facts for Kids

Ten soccer facts to share with the young fan in your life, plus a plain-English soccer dictionary for parents and grandparents who are new to the game. All of them come from Big Debate: Soccer.

Soccer facts for kids

Kickoff Basics: Soccer is an English nickname for association football.
Striker's Boots: A hat-trick means three goals by one player in one match. The name came to soccer from cricket, where it meant three wickets in a row.
Keeper's Gloves: A full-size goal is 8 yards wide and 8 feet tall: 192 square feet for a keeper to help defend.
Midfield & Defense: Midfielders often cover lots of ground: roughly 11 to 13 kilometers, or about 7 to 8 miles, in a full pro match.
Set Pieces & Shootouts: Yellow and red cards came after confusion at the 1966 World Cup over who had been booked. Former referee Ken Aston got the idea from a traffic light.
Matchday Life: The 1999 final drew 90,185 fans, a Women's World Cup record through 2023.
Team & Bench: The men's World Cup first allowed substitutes in 1970. Five subs per team were allowed for the first time at the 2022 men's World Cup.
Big League Dreams: The first World Cup in 1930 had only 13 teams and every match was played in one city, Montevideo in Uruguay. The hosts won it.
Legends & History: Through 2022, Brazil had won the men's World Cup five times. Through 2023, the United States had won the Women's World Cup four times. Both are records.
Weird & Wild: The biggest win in men's senior international soccer is 31-0: Australia beat American Samoa in 2001, and one player scored 13 of the goals.

Soccer terms for kids

Clean sheet
A match where your team lets in no goals.
Hat-trick
Three goals by one player in one match.
Nutmeg
Passing or dribbling the ball between an opponent's legs.
Offside
Offside position means being in the other half beyond both the ball and the second-last opponent when a teammate plays or touches it. Being there alone is not against the rules: you must become involved in play. No offside directly from a throw-in, corner or goal kick.
Olympic goal
A goal scored directly from a corner kick.
Own goal
A goal a player scores into their own team's net.
Penalty
A kick from 12 yards, given when a defender fouls inside their own penalty area.
Set piece
A planned play from a restart, such as a corner or free kick.
Shootout
Up to five penalties each, then one each until a round breaks the tie.
Stoppage time
Minutes added at the end of each half for injuries and delays.
Through ball
A pass played into space behind the defense for a teammate to run onto.
VAR
A video assistant referee helps check big decisions under the competition's review rules.
Volley
Kicking the ball before it touches the ground.
Golden Boot
The award for the top scorer in a league or tournament.

Where the facts come from

  • Laws of the Game: pitch, ball, offside, cards, substitutes, back-pass: IFAB (theifab.com) and its rules history
  • World Cup records and finals: FIFA (fifa.com)
  • Club competition records: UEFA; Premier League and La Liga archives
  • Penalty and shootout research: Bar-Eli et al., Journal of Economic Psychology 2007; Apesteguia & Palacios-Huerta, American Economic Review 2010
  • Corner, free-kick and shot conversion rates: published analyses of top European leagues, recent seasons
  • Running distances and sprint speeds: match tracking data from FIFA and UEFA technical reports
  • Youth heading rules: US Soccer Recognize to Recover initiative, 2015
  • Player career facts: FIFA, UEFA and club records; Ballon d'Or from France Football

Now put them to work: 50 soccer Would You Rather questions →