The Complete Youth Football Substitution Planning Guide

The best coaches plan their substitutions before the match, not during it. When you're managing 14-18 players across a 60-minute match, ad hoc decisions lead to lopsided playing time and frustrated parents. This guide walks you through a systematic approach to substitution planning that works for any team size and format.

Step 1: Count your available players

This sounds obvious, but it's the most common planning failure. You build a perfect rotation for 16 players, then three don't show up and your plan collapses.

Before planning subs, confirm your actual squad. Check with parents for late arrivals or early departures. A plan for 13 real players is infinitely better than a plan for 16 theoretical ones.

Step 2: Choose your formation

Your formation determines how many positions you need to fill and how substitutions flow. Different game sizes suit different formations:

The key number is the difference between your squad size and your on-pitch count. If you have 14 players for an 11v11 match, only 3 players sit out at any time. If you have 10 players for a 7v7 match, only 3 sit out. This ratio drives how frequently you need to substitute.

Step 3: Divide the match into time blocks

The simplest approach is dividing your match into equal segments. The number of blocks should give you enough substitution windows without disrupting the flow of the game:

• 40-minute match: 4 blocks of 10 minutes
• 50-minute match: 5 blocks of 10 minutes
• 60-minute match: 4 blocks of 15 minutes, or 6 blocks of 10
• 70-minute match: 5 blocks of 14 minutes

Smaller blocks give you more flexibility but mean more disruption. For younger age groups (U8-U10), fewer blocks with bigger batches of subs usually work better because kids process the change more easily.

Step 4: Assign players to blocks

Now comes the maths. For each block, you need to assign enough players to fill every position. The goal is to distribute blocks as evenly as possible across all players.

Here's a worked example: 14 players, 11v11, 4 blocks of 15 minutes.

• Total player-blocks needed: 11 positions × 4 blocks = 44
• Blocks per player if perfectly equal: 44 ÷ 14 = 3.14
• So: 10 players get 3 blocks (45 min) and 4 players get 4 blocks (60 min)

Over the course of a season, you rotate which players get the extra block so the cumulative total evens out.

This is where things get genuinely difficult to do manually. Once you have 16+ players, the combinatorics of assigning players to blocks while keeping position coverage is hard. This is exactly what PlayFairly's substitution engine automates — it finds the optimal assignment in seconds.

Step 5: Plan position assignments

Fair playing time isn't just about minutes — it's about where players spend those minutes. A midfielder who only gets subbed on as a goalkeeper isn't getting meaningful development time.

When assigning positions:

• Give every player at least one block in their preferred position. This keeps them engaged and motivated.
• Rotate through 2-3 positions per match. Exposure to different roles is invaluable for youth development. The kid who plays right-back today might be your best centre-mid next season.
• Keep goalkeeper rotations predictable. GK is a specialist position. If you rotate GK duty, decide before the season who plays when — don't surprise kids on matchday.

Step 6: Execute during the match

The whole point of pre-match planning is to remove decision-making from the heat of the match. When the time comes:

• Make subs at the planned intervals, not when it "feels right"
• Batch substitutions — doing 3 subs at once is less disruptive than 3 individual subs
• If the plan needs adjusting (injury, red card), fall back to the principle: who has the fewest minutes?
• Don't let the scoreline change your plan at youth level

Common mistakes to avoid

• Saving your best players for the second half. This sends a clear message to the rest of the squad about who you value.
• Only subbing at half-time. One substitution window means half the squad gets most of the game and half gets almost none.
• Treating fair play as optional when the score is close. Kids notice when "everyone plays" only applies to easy matches.
• Not tracking cumulative playing time. A single match might look fair, but over 10 matches the same players keep getting more. Tracking matters.

Let the app do the maths

Everything above works on paper. But if you'd rather spend your pre-match time on tactics and team talks, PlayFairly handles the entire substitution planning process automatically. You set your squad, formation, and match length — the engine generates an optimal rotation in seconds.