How to create a playing time policy for your team or club
Saturday, 11:47. The match ended ten minutes ago. A parent walks over. Their kid played twenty minutes. Two others played the full match.
"Is there a rule for this?"
There is. It's in your head. It has been all season.
A playing time policy is a short, written agreement on how minutes get shared in a team: what every player can count on, what earns extra minutes, and how that gets checked. Most youth teams have one. Almost none have written it down.
This post is about writing yours down. Five minutes, one team or a whole club, with a free tool we built for it.
Key takeaways - A playing time policy has four parts: goal balance, a minimum for every player, rules that earn extra minutes, and how matches are classified. - Up to roughly U12, federations in the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Australia and New Zealand recommend or require equal playing time. - Written and shared before the season, a policy turns "why did my kid sit?" into a question with an answer. - The free Playing Time Policy Maker below turns eight answers into a one-page policy you can share as a link or PDF.
If you want the theory first, we wrote that up already. → Why playing time matters in youth football → Choosing a playing time system for your football team
Why write it down?
Because the unwritten version is costing you.
It costs development. A kid who plays 25 minutes a week learns slower than one who plays 60. By spring you can see it.
It costs the group. Losing every week is bad for morale. Winning with the same eight while five watch is worse. You end up with two teams in one shirt.
It costs you Saturday mornings. Nobody argues with a rule they heard in August. They argue with a decision that looked random in November.
And it costs the volunteer. A policy you can't check is a policy you drop by October. Simple rules survive rain and two missing players. Complicated ones don't.
What goes into a playing time policy?
Every system you've seen, from strict equal time to full selection football, is the same four dials set differently.
Goal balance. Development or winning? U8s and a men's first team answer this differently. Both are right. The mistake is not answering.
The floor. The minimum every fit, present player gets. Equal time = a floor of 100%. Many competitive youth teams sit at 50%. Performance teams go to 25% or none. The floor is what protects your least confident player from a season on the bench.
Rules. What earns minutes above the floor? Training attendance is the classic. Turning up on time is another. Pick one or two that everyone can see. Three is already too many.
Match context. Some teams mark a few matches a season as key matches, where the coach gets more freedom, and treat the rest as development matches with a higher floor. On paper, this stops "this one's important" from becoming every week.
Set the dials, and you have a policy. The tool below does exactly that, and then turns it into numbers you can use on the touchline.
Should playing time be equal? What the federations say
You don't get a blank sheet on every dial.
For the youngest age groups the evidence is unusually one-sided: kids who play, stay; kids who sit, quit. Federations have caught up.
| Country | Guidance for roughly U6 to U12 |
|---|---|
Netherlands and Belgium | Equal playing time is standard practice and encouraged by the KNVB and Voetbal Vlaanderen. Not enforced. |
England | Strongly recommended by The FA. Not mandated. |
Australia and New Zealand | Required in most member federations for junior football, with state-level rules such as Football NSW's game time regulations. |
Scandinavia | Equal time is the national norm. |
From U13 onwards it opens up. Competitive teams introduce a meaningful minimum. Performance teams reduce it further. The honest question becomes: what did we tell parents this team was for?
The Policy Maker uses this as a guardrail. Pick a performance-heavy setup for an U10 team and it won't stop you. It will tell you what your federation thinks.
The Playing Time Policy Maker
It's free, there's no sign-up, and it works on your phone. → Open the Playing Time Policy Maker
Pick My team or My club. Answer eight questions. Out comes a one-page policy in plain language: what the team is for, the minimum every player can count on, which rules earn extra minutes, and when you review it.
It also does the maths. Fourteen players, 11v11, two halves of 35 minutes, equal time: 55 minutes each, roughly six substitutions per half. Same squad with a 50% floor: nobody plays fewer than 35 minutes. That's the difference between a policy and a good intention.
Copy the text, download the PDF, or share the link. The link is the one most coaches end up using. Paste it in the parent group once. Point at it all season.
One team, or the whole club?
A team policy solves Saturday.
A club policy solves the conversation between the U9 coach who plays everyone and the U11 coach who doesn't.
In club mode you set the shared rules once (attendance, punctuality, how matches are classified) and then set goal balance and floor per age band. You get one document with a section per age group. That's what a technical coordinator hands to every new coach in August, and what a board points to when a parent escalates.
It also makes the youth plan real. Most clubs say they put development first. A club policy with a 100% floor up to U12 and a written step-down after that is what saying it looks like on paper.
How do you make a playing time policy stick?
Share it before the first match. Send it with the season schedule and say it out loud at the first training. Nobody reads a policy for the first time while angry.
Track the minutes. A notebook works. A spreadsheet works. An app that logs substitutions works. What matters is that at the winter break you can check whether you did what you said. → How to track playing time (minutes played)
Review it once, mid-season, with the whole group. Squads change. Players get injured. A team turns out stronger or weaker than expected. Adjusting in January together is fine. Adjusting silently in October puts you back in the car park.
Frequently asked questions about playing time policies
Until what age should playing time be equal? Most federations and researchers land on roughly U12. Below that: equal or near-equal. Above that: a meaningful minimum for everyone, with the rest set by the team's goals.
What if a player skips training? Decide before the season what attendance earns, apply it every week, and make sure parents know. A player who skipped all week and still gets the floor isn't unfair. A surprise benching is.
Can we have a must-win match? Yes, if the policy says how many and how they're chosen. Two or three key matches a season is a policy. "This one matters" every week is not.
Does a policy make substitutions harder? Easier. When the minutes are decided in advance, the touchline question is who, not whether.
What about goalkeepers? Decide it explicitly. Many youth teams rotate the position until U12 and count it as playing time. Competitive teams often treat it as a specialist role with its own agreement. Both work. Undecided doesn't.
Is there a playing time policy template? Yes: the Policy Maker generates one from your answers, and you can edit the text before sharing it.
Write it down
You already have a playing time policy. The only questions are whether the parents know it, the players trust it, and you can check it in January.
Five minutes. Then paste the link in the group.
