Professional soccer fields are of a huge size. While they usually vary in size, all of them are still huge. A soccer field usually has a width between 70 – 80 yards and a length between 110 – 120 yards.
With that said, the area covered by the professional soccer field is huge, and there are reasons behind this choice. Here are some of them.
1- Bigger soccer fields give more freedom of movement for the players.
It’s true that soccer fields are big, but the number of players on the field is big too. In a professional soccer match, 22 players will be on the field simultaneously.
When these 22 players spread across the field, the field will not seem huge anymore. Each of the players will have enough room to think and act instead of just having to take an instant decision because their opponent is so close to them due to the small soccer field.
The time that the players get in order to think and act accordingly can make a soccer match much more enjoyable and a little bit easier for the players.
2- Big soccer fields force team players to collaborate with each other.
The bigger the field is, the harder it gets for the soccer players to keep running back and forth on the field all the time with full speed.
Big soccer fields make it very hard for a single player to keep chasing the ball during the whole match. The player will get tired usually after less than an hour and they might not be able to perform at all during the rest of the match.
For that reason, if the players do not cooperate on the field and take turns of who should chase the ball depending on where it’s positioned, then the whole team will collapse after the first half of the game.
With that said, the big soccer fields force the players to cooperate and play as a team instead of depending on individual effort.
This kind of forced cooperation between the soccer players makes the games much more interesting to watch and gives the managers a variety of options when it comes to tactics and formations. Which brings me to the next point.
3- Bigger soccer fields means more tactics and formations options.
The title of this section says it all. Bigger fields yield a variety of options for managers. Some managers even decided to complain about some soccer field sizes that are smaller than the standard field size used.
Soccer managers want more space on the field in order for them to have more options when it comes to what formation they should pick.
4- Bigger soccer fields generate more money.
You should never forget that soccer is yet another entertainment industry. With that said, one of the main goals of soccer is to generate revenue.
The bigger the soccer stadiums are, the more audience they will be able to hold which means the more tickets teams will be able to sell.
A 110 ~ 120 yards long soccer field requires a huge stadium with a huge audience.
For example, the Camp Nou soccer stadium has almost 100,000 seats. That’s millions of dollars per a single match only from selling tickets to the game.
Alright, these are the 4 reasons why huge soccer fields are beneficial. A quick final note before I end this article.
Is playing on small soccer fields less entertaining?
If you just want to play soccer with your friends as a workout or as a hobby, you absolutely do not have to find a standard sized soccer field to play on.
Any small field that can fit all of your friends is a great option and is as entertaining as playing on the professional soccer field.
Remember, 22 players play on the professional soccer field. If you and your friends are 10 people. You only need less than half the size of the professional soccer field in order to play soccer.
So my last words here are the following. If you want to play soccer, do not worry about the field size at all and just pick any place that can handle the number of people that you want to play with.