Football League Software
Ten teams, 90 matches, one table that keeps up with protests, walkovers and yellow cards
A Sunday, six-a-side or company football league needs fixtures, a table with a tie-break rule written down before the first ball, and a record of who scored and who is banned. In JudgeMate you create a match league with football as the discipline, set the half length and the home-and-away option, and choose head-to-head or goal difference as the first tie-break. Results come from the live scoreboard or are typed in, and a confirmed result can still be corrected after a protest.
Ten teams, home and away: the size of the season
With 10 teams every team meets the other nine twice. One round has 9 matchdays of 5 matches, so the season runs 18 matchdays, 90 matches in total and 18 matches per team.
A matchday on one pitch with halves of 25 minutes is longer than it looks. Give each match a 55-minute slot (2 × 25 plus 5 for half-time) and 10 minutes to clear the pitch, and five matches take 5 hours 25 minutes. A second pitch cuts that to three slots, or 3 hours 15 minutes.
With 11 teams one team sits out every matchday. Each round then has 11 matchdays of 5 matches and the season grows to 110 matches. Publish the bye weeks together with the fixtures.
Half length and team size: your rules, set once
The IFAB Laws of the Game 2026/27 set two halves of 45 minutes and a maximum of 11 players a side, with no match played below 7. Law 7 allows shorter halves only when the referee and both teams agree before kick-off and the competition rules permit it. For youth, veterans, disability and grassroots football, national FAs (and confederations and FIFA) may modify the length of the halves, the number of players and the size of the pitch.
That is the legal basis for the formats amateur leagues actually play: 2 × 25 on a small pitch, six against six, rolling substitutions. In JudgeMate you set the period length (1 to 90 minutes) and the number of periods (1 to 6) once for the whole league. Both can be changed later in the league settings, and a single match can get its own length in its match settings, for example a fixture moved to a shorter pitch slot.
The team size is not a league setting. Each team gets a roster of up to 30 players with names and shirt numbers, and those numbers are what the scoreboard uses when it credits a goal or a card.
Table points and the first tie-break
The table gives 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss unless you change the numbers. The harder decision is what happens when two teams finish level.
JudgeMate offers two orders. Head-to-head first: a mini-table of the matches between the tied teams (points, then goal difference, then goals scored in those matches), followed by overall goal difference and goals scored. Goal difference first: overall goal difference, goals scored, then head-to-head. In the settings they are labelled after UEFA and the Premier League.
An example from a ten-team season. Rovers and Athletic both finish on 31 points. Rovers have a goal difference of +14 and Athletic +9, but Athletic won 2-1 at home and drew 1-1 away against Rovers. Head-to-head gives Athletic 4 points to Rovers' 1, so Athletic finish above. With goal difference first, Rovers do.
A new order re-sorts the whole table, including matchdays already played. Pick it from your league rules before the first matchday and print it on the rules sheet.
Fixtures, pitches and referees
Generate schedule creates every matchday in one step. With home and away switched on, the second round mirrors the first with home and away swapped.
Add your pitches as resources. Auto-schedule spreads all unplayed matches across them from a single start time, without a team or a pitch being booked twice, using the slot length, turnaround and team rest you enter. That fits a league that plays a whole matchday at one ground on one Sunday. If your teams play on different evenings at different grounds, set the date, time and pitch in each match instead. Auto-schedule never moves a match that already has a result.
Each match can carry the name of its referee. The schedule exports to PDF and CSV, and the public league page shows it to anyone with the link.
On the touchline: the live scoreboard
Open a match and tap Start live scoring. The scoreboard takes the league's match length and gives you a judge link, so the panel runs on the phone of whoever keeps the score.
The football board runs the clock upwards across both halves, adds stoppage time in one-minute steps or with +1, +3 and +5, and records goals, yellow cards and red cards. A second yellow turns into a red automatically. For a goal you pick the scorer's shirt number and then, if you want, the player who gave the assist. Skipping the number still counts the goal.
A wrong entry is fixed from the event list: cancel it, restore it, move a goal to the other team or add the shirt number afterwards. When the match ends, Confirm result writes it to the table, the scorer list and the public page. A match played without the board goes in through Enter result manually, with the score only and no scorers.
Protests, walkovers and a team that quits
Correcting a confirmed result. A protest is upheld, or somebody typed 3-1 instead of 1-3. Open the match and use Correct result. The new score overwrites the old one and the table and classifications recalculate. If the match ran on the scoreboard, its goals and cards stay with the players, so the scorer list keeps them even when the corrected score changes.
Walkover. When a team does not turn up, enter a walkover. In football it goes into the table as 3-0 for the team that was there, which is also the score FIFA's disciplinary bodies award for a forfeited match. If your rules use a different score, set it in the league settings. The match is marked w.o. in the schedule.
Withdrawal. A team folds in March. Withdraw from the competition keeps its played matches in the table and turns every unplayed match into a walkover for the opponent. There is no one-tap undo. If your rules wipe out the results already played, correct those matches one by one.
Points deductions. A team can get a deduction or a bonus with a short note, for example minus 3 for an unpaid league fee. Goal difference and head-to-head stay as they were.
Card bans that count themselves
Card suspensions are off until you switch them on. Then you choose how many yellow cards lead to a ban (2 to 5, or no limit) and how many matches a red card costs (1 to 3).
A ban is served in the team's next confirmed match after the one with the card. Matchday numbers do not decide it. With three yellows per ban, a player booked on matchdays 3, 6 and 8 misses his team's next match. If matchday 9 is moved to a later date and matchday 10 is played first, the ban falls on matchday 10. A red card that came from two yellows counts once, as a red.
Suspended players are listed under Stats. When a scoreboard starts, a suspended player is flagged in the number list and can still be picked, so whoever runs the match makes the call. On the public page the Suspended tab appears once at least one player is banned.
Bans only work if cards are credited to a shirt number. A card with no player cannot suspend anybody.
Setting the league up in JudgeMate
Start from create for football, choose League and sign in.
- League type: League matches, discipline football.
- Basics: name, season, location and visibility. Public lets players and families see the table without an account.
- Format: points for a win, draw and loss, Home and away rounds, period length and number of periods, walkover score, tie-break order and card suspensions.
In the league cockpit, add the teams by name and colour with their rosters. Players need no accounts. Then generate the schedule, add pitches if you want auto-scheduling, and play the first match. A co-organiser with an account can confirm and correct results from their own login.
The public page sits at /en/leagues/ followed by your league's address. It shows the table, the fixtures, matches being played live, and the tabs Top scorers, Assists and Cards. Only featured leagues appear in the public league index and in search engines, so share the link in the team chat.
If your season is a series of separate tournament days ranked by finishing places, that is the other league type in the same menu, described in running a league built from events.
What JudgeMate does not do for a football league
No substitutions or sin bins on the board. The football scoreboard records goals and yellow and red cards only. Temporary dismissals, which the IFAB permits in grassroots football, have to be timed by the referee.
No link to federation systems. Nothing goes to or comes from Extranet PZPN, DFBnet or any other association system, and the match record is not an official federation report.
No payments and no notifications. League fees are settled outside JudgeMate, and teams get no email, SMS or push messages about fixtures. They follow the public page.
For the rules behind the scoreboard, read how football scoring works and the football referee guide. For a single match on a screen without a league, use the football live scoreboard.
Set up your event
Free for organizers. No athlete cap. No commission on registrations. See football features · Organizer guide