5 Aside football
I play both 5-aside and football. Now the season has finished it will mostly be 5 aside, thanks to the
larges indoor football complexes that now seem to be everywhere. 10 years ago you couldnt have imagined
it, somebody out there has made allot of money from a good idea.
My first taste of 5 aside was as at about the age of 8 and i have been playing ever since. Things were abit
different then, i remember the first time i played, it was at manchester citys all new indoor training facility
at there academy on platt lane. Even to date it is better than anywhere else i have ever played with the soft carpet
like turf in the airconditioned arena. It was like something you would expect at the home of ajax!!
Unfortunatley not everywhere was as good as this and there was no powerleague centre or jjb complex back then.
One of the most interesting places i have played was at a place called the ball park on an industrial estate in stockport.
That was brilliant, there wasnt many pitches but it was thin carpet and you played inside a cage-like net, it was something
like you would see in a nike advert.
The most common form of 5 a side used to be played with a proper indoor ball which was fury and flourescant yellow!! This
was also played indoor and usually in a school gym or leisure centre sports hall and often resulted in injury for me due to
the hard unforgiving surfaces.!!
Fortunatley now, there are so many 5-side centres up and down the country, you can play any night of the week, even as late
10pm if you wish. Pitch hire usually starts from around £50 which is only £5 a head if have 10 players. If cannot organise
this then it is very easy to joing a league near you with a minuimum of 5 players. Most centres have leagues every night of the
week and sometimes upto 7 divisions containing as many as 8 or 10 teams in each.
Taking it one step further, there are constant tournaments up and down the country that you can enter both regionally and
nationally and there are some big prizes to be won. Most tournaments are held at the weekend however.Some of the more
well known tournaments are the x box 5′s and the Nike 5′s. I have been involved in both and the Nike 5′s is especially fun
as you get to wear the latest nike kit and boots and they film your games and post the best goals and tricks from that night
