List of types of football


This is a list of various types of football, including most variations of gridiron, rugby and association football.

Games descended from the FA">The Football Association">FA rules

  • Association football, also known as "soccer".
  • Varieties with reduced number of team members:
  • *3v3 Soccer
  • *Five-a-side football – played throughout the world under various rules, including:
  • **Futsal – the FIFA-approved five-a-side indoor game.
  • **Beach soccer – played on sand, also known as sand football. Like futsal, it is governed by FIFA.
  • *Indoor soccer – the six-a-side indoor game as played in North America.
  • *Seven-a-side football – a variation of minifootball played by teams of seven players.
  • **Sevens football – a seven-a-side game played in India.
  • Paralympic football – modified association football for disabled competitors.
  • *Amputee football
  • *Blind football
  • *Cerebral palsy football
  • *Powerchair football and wheelchair soccer
  • Crab football
  • Jorkyball
  • Keepie uppie – the art of juggling with a football using feet, knees, chest, shoulders, and head.
  • *Footbag or hacky sack – a small bean bag or sand bag is used as a ball in a number of keepie uppie variations such as hacky sack.
  • *Freestyle football – a modern take on keepie uppie where freestylers are graded for their entertainment value and expression of skill.
  • Rush goalie – a variation of football in which the role of the goalkeeper is more flexible than normal.
  • Serbian rules football
  • Street football – encompasses a number of informal varieties of football.
  • Swamp football
  • Three-sided football
  • *Omegaball
  • Walking football
With elements of another sport:
  • Motoball
  • Roller soccer
Some games, such as football tennis, footvolley and teqball, although they use a football and avoid the use of hands, are not goal sports. The hockey game bandy has rules partly based on association football rules and is sometimes nicknamed "winter football".

Games descended from [Rugby School] rules

Although both sports arose largely independently, Gaelic football and Australian rules football or "Aussie rules" share a number of common characteristics that separate them from the other football codes, most notably the lack of an offside rule, rules requiring bouncing of the ball when running with it in hand, passing by kick or handstrike, and a scoring system with major and minor scores. As such, the sports exist as a form of convergent evolution, which has led to the swapping of players between the codes, and some co-operation between their respective authorities. Both sports are also very popular in their country of origin, indeed the dominant code in each, but with limited global spread, a feature they share with gridiron forms of football.