---
title: "Two Pitches, One Team"
description: "The same two teams play two games at once, and a team that wins both earns a roamer who can switch pitches whenever they like: where are you needed right now?"
canonical: https://hobbit.football/drills/two-pitches-one-team
language: en
publisher: Hobbit (https://hobbit.football)
---

# Two Pitches, One Team

> The same two teams play two games at once, and a team that wins both earns a roamer who can switch pitches whenever they like: where are you needed right now?

U8 to U14 · 12 to 18 players · 43 × 25 m · 20 min

Also called Control both pitches, 7 gegen 7.

![Diagram of Two Pitches, One Team](https://hobbit.football/api/game-library/diagram/two-pitches-one-team)

## How to play

1. Mark two pitches side by side, each 20 metres wide and 25 long, 3 metres apart, with a mini goal at each end. Two teams, each split across both pitches: with 16 players, 4v4 on each; with 18, 4v4 on one and 5v5 on the other; with 12, 3v3 on each, on pitches 15 by 20.
2. Both games start together and last 4 minutes. Each pitch keeps its own score.
3. Win both games and your team goes up a level: in the next round one of your players is a roamer, free to switch pitches whenever they like. Every level adds a roamer, up to three. Lose both and you drop a level. Win one each and you stay.
4. Between rounds, give each team a minute to choose its roamers and its plan.
5. Both teams start at level zero, with no roamers. Note each team's level at the end, and start from there next time.

## The decision it trains

Every player has two games to read, not one. The roamer looks across: we are a goal down over there and level here, so go and make it five against four where it matters, knowing the pitch they leave is now a player short. The teammates left behind change their game too: keep the ball, slow it down, do not concede until the roamer comes back. The other team has to spot the overload and answer it, with a roamer of its own if it has one. And between rounds the team decides together who roams this time: the fastest runner, the best passer, or whoever reads both games best.

## Make it harder or easier

- **Too hard:** drop the levels. Anyone may switch pitches at any time, and the scores of the two games are added together.
- **Too easy:** add a boss level. A team with three roamers has to win both games without conceding in the last two minutes of either, and then it has completed the game.
- **Pause:** once per game, a team may stop both games for 60 seconds to change its plan, or to ask the coach for one clue.

## What to ask at the breaks

- "How did you decide which pitch to go to?"
- "When your roamer left, what did the rest of you change?"
- "How did you choose who would roam this round?"

## Where it comes from

The FA documents it in its England Football Learning sessions as "Control both pitches" (2022), a video game inspired session shared by Amy Price, FA women's national coach developer, with levels, saves and pauses. A simpler form, where players switch pitches freely and the two scores are added together, appears in "Passing and receiving session: connecting with teammates" (2025), shared by Emily Senior, an FA regional coach developer. No source names who created it.

## Documented by

- The FA (United Kingdom): Control both pitches
- German FA (DFB) (Germany): 7 gegen 7
- German regional FAs (Bavaria, Hamburg, South Baden) (Germany)
- Ontario Soccer (Canada)

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