3v3 Matchday Planner

A free, single-page tool for organising FA FutureFit U7 3v3 football matchdays.

Enter how many players each team brings and the planner instantly works out:

1. How many pitches you need, and
2. Exactly how every game lines up — which players are on each side, paired Home vs Away wherever possible.

It is built around the FutureFit principle that everyone plays, with no substitutes.

🔗 Live tool: https://first3things.github.io/futurefit/. 📐 More on the format: A closer look at 3v3

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What it does

Grassroots organisers rarely get perfect numbers on a matchday. This tool takes the players who actually turn up for each team and arranges them into the best possible set of 3v3 games, following FA FutureFit guidance:

• 3 players per side maximum.
• No substitutes — every player is on a pitch.
• Home vs Away fixtures wherever the numbers allow.
• Smaller or uneven games (2v2, 3v2, 2v1) are used only when needed, and flagged as "smaller games."
• Superstar teams (mixing both clubs) are created only when necessary to keep everyone playing.

It also shows the FutureFit 3v3 essentials: pitch size, goal size, ball size, match length and recommended playing time.

How the allocation works

The logic runs in two stages:

1. Choose the games — pick the set of game sizes (3v3, 3v2, 2v2, …) that uses every player, preferring full 3v3s, avoiding lone players (a team of 1 is only ever needed at totals of 2, 3 or 7), and avoiding lopsided games.
2. Assign the clubs — a small dynamic-programming pass colours each side Home or Away to maximise genuine Home-vs-Away fixtures, only falling back to same-club games or mixed "superstar" teams when the numbers force it.

The full rules and reference algorithm are documented in docs/pitch-allocation-spec.md.

Tech

• Single self-contained HTML file — no build step, no framework, no dependencies.
• Vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• Loads Barlow / Barlow Condensed from Google Fonts.
• Accessible: associated labels, aria-live results, keyboard focus styles, WCAG AA contrast, prefers-reduced-motion support, and a print stylesheet.
• Styled to match the England Football FutureFit brand.

Files

File	Purpose
index.html	The complete tool (rename of 3v3-matchday-planner.html).
pitch-allocation-spec.md	Full build specification: rules, algorithm, test cases.
README.md	This file.

Accessibility & branding notes

• Home is shown in red, Away in blue, distinguished by both colour and a letter (H / A) so it never relies on colour alone.
• Player counts are capped at 200 to keep results instant.

Credits

Built by First Three Things. Based on FA FutureFit principles for U7 football. Not an official FA product.

License

Copyright © 2026 First Three Things. All rights reserved.

This project is source-available, not open source. The code is public for transparency, but no permission is granted to use, copy, modify, or redistribute it without prior written permission. See LICENSE for the full terms. For licensing enquiries, get in touch via ftt.ai.