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Furbol — How It Works

Teams

Teams

Most Furbol games are two teams playing each other on one pitch — the classic pickup format. But the team count isn’t fixed: a host can spin up a game with one team, or up to eight, depending on what they’re organising. The count you see on a game tells you what kind of thing the host is putting together.

What different team counts are for

Three shapes cover almost every game. You pick between them when you create one; the default is two.

One team — a squad heading out to face someone off-app

The host is putting together a single squad that will play an opponent Furbol doesn’t manage: a club challenge match, a tournament fixture, a friendly against another group. Furbol owns one lineup — yours; the other side lives outside the app.

Everything else works the same as any other game: roster, quorum, roll call, fees, feedback. Furbol doesn’t store a name for the external opponent — there’s no opposing-team field. Coordination with the other side happens outside the app (WhatsApp, email, whatever the host uses).

Two teams — the everyday pickup game

The classic format. A host rents a pitch, the app splits players between the two sides, and everyone plays. This is the default when you create a game, and the shape the rest of Furbol is tuned around.

Three or more teams — a gathering

Three, four, up to eight teams on the same booking. The shape fits gatherings: groups that rotate through matches, round-robin-style afternoons, small internal tournaments where several squads play each other off a single pitch reservation. All teams live on Furbol; all players see all rosters.

Furbol doesn’t score the matches between teams — there’s no “team 1 beat team 3” tracking. What the teams actually play against each other, and in what order, is for the host and the group to sort out on the day. Furbol manages the rosters and the feedback; the tournament format is yours.

Which team you land on when you quick-book

On a two-team game, if you tap the generic quick-book button instead of picking a specific spot, the app puts you on a team for you. Roughly, in order:

  1. Your role preference. If you’ve said you’d rather be on the field than the bench, or you don’t want to go in goal, Furbol tries to land you in a spot that matches.
  2. Keeping the sides the same size. Of the roles that fit you, Furbol picks the one that keeps the two teams closest in size. If one has 4 players and the other has 2, you’ll land on the team with 2.
  3. The smaller team wins a tie. When two options look equally good, the smaller team wins — the gap shrinks even when it wasn’t big to start with.
  4. The first open spot wins the next tie. If there’s still a tie, Furbol fills spots in the order they’re laid out on the screen.

The result: ordinary two-team bookings stay roughly even without anyone having to think about it.

On a one-team game, there’s only one team to land on, so “balancing” doesn’t apply — the app drops you into the next open spot that matches your role preference.

On a three-or-more team game, the auto-balance doesn’t extend cleanly across many sides, so placement is explicit: you (or the host) pick which team you want by tapping a specific spot on a specific team’s formation. This is also the norm for gatherings — teams often form around existing friend groups, not around size-balance.

Picking your own spot

If you don’t like what the app picked — or if you’re dragging a friend into a specific side — you can tap a specific spot on a specific team instead. The balance rules no longer apply: you’re overriding the auto-pick, and Furbol respects that. If the spot is free and the team isn’t full, you go there.

Team size and benches

Each team has:

  • A field size. The standard 5-a-side, 7-a-side, 11-a-side etc. — based on the game format.
  • Bench slots. Extra spots for players who don’t start, depending on the format the host chose.

Once the field part of a team is full, only bench slots are offered for that team until someone leaves. Once both the field and the bench of a team are full, nobody new can go on that team at all.

Goalkeeper

The goalkeeper is a special role. Some games require one; some don’t. See The Goalkeeper. Auto-assignment respects your preferences — if you haven’t said you’re up for going in goal, the app won’t auto-book you into the goalkeeper slot.

Moving players around

The host (and the person who placed a follower or a guest) can drag players around on the game screen to reorganise them:

  • Move someone from one team to another.
  • Move someone from the bench to the field, or the other way.
  • Swap two players with each other.

Lineup reordering is open until the lineup locks at kickoff. Once kick-off happens, the teams are frozen.

What triggers a reorder vs a removal

Dragging onto a free spot on a different team moves the player there — they stay in the game, different team. Dragging onto another player attempts to swap the two. Dragging onto the bin icon removes them from the game (see Being Removed from a Game).

Changing the team count after creation

The host can edit the team count on an existing game, going up or down. Furbol either adds empty teams or removes the empty ones and redistributes players from any team that disappears. The edit follows the usual editing-a-game rules — some fields lock once a second player has joined.

Ratings don’t know about teams

When feedback is collected after a game, teammates rate each other on performance, energy, fair play, and so on. Furbol then ranks every player on the pitch — regardless of which team they were on — and feeds that ranking into the scoring behind your level. The team count doesn’t change this: ratings are a flat leaderboard per game, not team-vs-team.