Games
Soccer IQ Games for the Days Nobody Goes Outside
Rain, a cast, a fortnight of January. The session is off, and what is left is a child who still wants something to do with the game. Games is eight ways to think about it rather than play it — and the reason it is worth their time is that it is built on the same material as everything else here: the curriculum they are working through, the drills they already run, and the Laws as they are actually written.
Try a round
One real question from each mode, as your child would meet it. Pick an answer and the reason comes straight back, with the Law, the source or the drill that settles it.
Why does a team change formation during a match?
A change of shape is a response to what the game is presenting, not a change for its own sake.
Which parts of a player's body count when judging offside position?
Law 11 counts only "the head, body or feet", and states that the hands and arms of all players, goalkeepers included, are not considered. An arm stretched beyond the defense is not offside, which is why an armpit is not a talking point.
Law 11, Offside — Offside position. Read the Law
A defender under no pressure passes the ball back along the ground to her goalkeeper, who picks it up. What is your decision?
Law 12 gives an indirect free kick where a goalkeeper handles the ball "after it has been deliberately kicked to them by a team-mate". An indirect free kick inside the penalty area is unusual and awkward to defend, which is the point of it.
Law 12, Fouls and Misconduct — Offences by the goalkeeper. Read the Law
A goalkeeper in a 7v7 game catches the ball and punts it up the field. Is that allowed?
U.S. Soccer's small-sided standards ban punts and drop kicks from the goalkeeper, and the Connecticut program says there are no punts or drop kicks in 7v7 games. Your league's rules say how play restarts if one happens.
Five Things to Know: How Small-Sided Standards Will Change Youth Soccer (U.S. Soccer, 2017). Read the source
A player kicks the ball straight into the opponents' goal from a kick-in. Is it a goal?
Futsal Law 15: a goal may not be scored directly from a kick-in. The kick-in is futsal's version of the throw-in, taken with the foot.
Futsal Laws of the Game, Law 15: The Kick-in (FIFA's text, published by The FA). Read the source
Watch that a pass stays on the ground. Why?
The bounce is a symptom, not the problem. Look at whether they are leaning back — the strike point follows the body.
From the coaching points of Wall Passing (Solo) / Partner Passing, a drill in the catalog.
Every touch sends the ball off sideways and they are chasing it around.
The inside of the foot is an angled surface, so it sends the ball across the body. The flat of the laces is the only surface that sends it straight up.
From the common mistakes of Juggling Challenge, a drill in the catalog.
At the 1950 World Cup the United States produced one of the sport's biggest upsets. What happened?
A US team of part-timers beat England 1-0 in Belo Horizonte, Joe Gaetjens scoring. Some British newspapers assumed the scoreline was a telegraph error and printed 10-1.
A session in Spatrian is eight questions like these from one mode, chosen for your child’s age. Nothing from this round is kept.
The eight modes
8 modes, 1107 questions, 8 a session — for ages 13–18 (U14–U18).
Know the Laws Cited
What the Laws of the Game actually say — with the clause that settles it.
Try oneSmall-Sided Games Cited
The youth-game rules a young referee works under: U.S. Soccer's small-sided standards, not the Laws.
Try oneFutsal Laws Cited
FIFA's Futsal Laws of the Game: the court, the stopped clock, accumulated fouls and the kick-in.
Try oneHow the Game Got Here
Where the rules, the records and the tournaments came from.
Try oneEvery cited answer is checked against the IFAB Laws of the Game 2026/27.
Every answer has to be settled by something
The trouble with a quiz about the rules of soccer is that most of them are written by somebody half-remembering. Know the Laws and You Make the Call do not work that way: every question names the Law and the clause that decides it, checked against the current edition, and the child can go and read it.
The third question in the round above is a real one — the deliberate pass-back, which almost everybody gets wrong in the same direction.
It is an indirect free kick, not a penalty, and the offence is the goalkeeper's handling rather than the defender's pass. A child who has been told “you can't pass back to the keeper” has learned a rule that does not exist.
The refereeing scenarios are read aloud
You Make the Call is narrated, the way a radio quiz would put it: the incident is described, and then it is your decision. It uses the same Audio Coach voice your child already hears on the drill clock, so nothing new has to be set up — and a child who reads slowly is not quietly disadvantaged by a mode that is really a reading test.
The other five modes are read on screen. Every one of them prints its question and its options in full, so a deaf or hard-of-hearing child plays exactly the same game.
Three modes are made from your own child's work
Soccer IQ Quiz Time draws on the curriculum unit your child is actually in, so the questions arrive alongside the material rather than from a generic bank.
Why Does This Work? is harvested from the coaching points of the drills themselves. A child who has run a drill twenty times knows what to do in it; this asks why it is built that way, which is the part that transfers to a game nobody planned.
The Coach’s Eye reads the same drill sheets the other way round. It describes what is going wrong — the ball squirting away, the keeper saving everything, the knee dropping in on a cut — and asks what is causing it. It is the one mode written as much for the adult watching as for the child playing.
What a game is not
A game is play. It is deliberately not an assessment, and the product is built so that it cannot quietly become one.
It moves no number on your paperwork. Playing earns XP and nothing else. A game touches no quiz average, contributes no minutes, and reaches no compliance filing, portfolio or transcript. An evening on the sofa answering questions is not an hour of physical education, and Spatrian will never record it as one.
It does not extend the practice streak. The streak says a child moved that day. A dot filling because a teenager sat still and tapped four options would make that claim untrue.
No child is ranked against another. As everywhere else here, the only comparison offered is against your own child's earlier rounds.
For the player who also referees
Know the Laws, You Make the Call and Small-Sided Games are also the practice behind Referee HQ: the steps to a youth referee license, a ladder of all seventeen Laws, the daily Referee’s Eye, a match-day watch, and a log of every game they work.
Something for the wet Tuesday
Games comes with every plan, including the free one. It is in your child's own sign-in, so they can pick it up without you.