Often
you set your team's game strategy based on different factors -
opponent's strengths or weaknesses, your team's strengths and
weaknesses, injuries, key players, etc. One of those
factors might be field size.
Say you pull into a town the night before a big
tournament and at the coaches' pre-tournament meeting you find
you're playing at a field you've never seen before. You
drive over to the location shown on the map just to get an
idea if there's anything strange or different about the field
that you should know before you get to the game the next day.
For example, if the grass is real long or the field rough and
bumpy you might want to get your team to play the ball in the
air rather than on the ground. If the field is
narrow you might want to use a 4-3-3 instead of your normal
4-4-2 or you might want to use long corner kick plays rather
than short corner kicks. But how can you tell how large
a field is without a tape measure?
By making two simple measurements you can get a pretty
accurate field size with a tape measure.
An average person has a long stride length of about a
yard - it varies slightly depending on height.
Remember that the large box in front of the goal (called the goal
area) by soccer's laws must be 44 yards wide x 18 yards deep. Step off the
distance between the box and the touchline (by counting long
strides). Shown as distance "A" on the diagram above. Take that
number of strides it takes to get from the goal box to the
touchline and double it and add 44 and that's your approximate width.
For example, if it takes 13 strides then the field is about 70
yards wide (13+13+44=70).
One simple measurement will let
you easily determine the length of a field as well. Remember
that from the goal line to the penalty spot is 12 yards and
it's another ten yards to the top of the arc over the goal
box. It's the same distance at the other end so
that's 44 yards total (12+10+10+12). Add the 20 yards diameter of the center circle and you
are at 64 yards. All you need to do is pace off the distance
from the top of the arc to the edge of the center circle, double
that and add it to 64 yards. Shown as distance "B" on the
diagram above.
Now everyone can go out and measure fields, just by pacing off
two simple areas, and applying a simple math formula.
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