Two pitches, both legal, one two-and-a-half times the other

Law 1 of the Laws of the Game sets out the field of play in two registers, and does not comment on the difference between them.

The pitch itself gets a range. The touchline must be a minimum of 90 m and a maximum of 120 m; the goal line a minimum of 45 m and a maximum of 90 m; and the touchline must be longer than the goal line. For international matches the range narrows to 100–110 m by 64–75 m.

Reference The permitted pitch dimensions, the narrower international range, and the requirement that the touchline be longer than the goal line, from Law 1.3 and Law 1.4.

Everything drawn inside the pitch gets a number. The penalty area is 16.5 m from the inside of each goalpost, extending 16.5 m into the field. The goal area is 5.5 m by 5.5 m on the same construction. The penalty mark is 11 m from the midpoint between the posts. The centre circle has a radius of 9.15 m. The goal is 7.32 m between the posts and 2.44 m to the underside of the crossbar. None of these is a range. Every one is a single value.

Reference The penalty area, goal area, penalty mark, centre circle and goal dimensions, each given as a single value, from Law 1.5, 1.6, 1.10 and the field diagram.

Put those two facts together and something has to give.

Smallest pitch Law 1 permits

90 × 45 m — 4,050 m² · penalty areas cover 32.9% of it

Largest pitch Law 1 permits

120 × 90 m — 10,800 m² · penalty areas cover 12.3% of it

The number that follows

A pitch at the legal minimum is 90 × 45 m — 4,050 m². A pitch at the legal maximum is 120 × 90 m — 10,800 m². The larger is 2.67 times the smaller.

The penalty area does not change. It is 16.5 + 7.32 + 16.5 = 40.32 m wide and 16.5 m deep, which is 665.28 m² of ground, twice over.

On the smallest permitted pitch the two penalty areas together take 1,330.56 m² of 4,050 — 32.9 per cent of the entire field. On the largest they take the same 1,330.56 m² of 10,800 — 12.3 per cent. Same rule, same paint, two-and-a-half times the difference in what it means.

The numbers behind this chart

Row	Square metres of the field enclosed	Detail
Smallest legal pitch	4,050	90 × 45 m — Law 1.3–1.4
Largest legal pitch	10,800	120 × 90 m — Law 1.3–1.4
Both penalty areas	1,331	2 × 665.28 m² — Law 1.6
Centre circle	263	radius 9.15 m — Law 1.2
Both goal areas	202	2 × 100.76 m² — Law 1.5

Source The IFAB, Laws of the Game 2026/27, Law 1. Compiled 6 September 2026.
Method Areas computed from the single dimensions Law 1 states: penalty area (2 × 16.5 + 7.32) × 16.5; goal area (2 × 5.5 + 7.32) × 5.5; centre circle π × 9.15². Doubled where the marking appears at both ends. Markings that enclose no region are excluded.

Width is where it bites

Area understates it, because the fixed markings are not square and the pitch’s range is not proportional.

The penalty area is 40.32 m across. The narrowest legal pitch is 45 m across. The penalty area therefore spans 89.6 per cent of the width of that pitch, leaving 2.34 m of grass on either side of it — less than the width of the goal is tall. On the widest legal pitch the same marking spans 44.8 per cent, and there is 24.84 m of open flank beyond each edge.

The centre circle behaves the same way. Its diameter is 18.3 m: 40.7 per cent of a 45 m width, 20.3 per cent of a 90 m one.

Lengthwise the squeeze is milder but real. Two penalty areas consume 33 m of the pitch’s length regardless. On a 90 m pitch that leaves 57 m of midfield; on a 120 m pitch, 87 m. The distance from the edge of the penalty area to the halfway line — the space a defence has to work with before it is defending its own box — is 28.5 m at one extreme and 43.5 m at the other.

What the law is actually holding constant

It is worth being precise about what is and is not being fixed here, because the obvious reading is the wrong one.

Law 1 is not fixing the shape of the game. If it were, the markings would scale with the pitch and every field would be a photographic enlargement of every other. It is fixing the distances a player has to cover to do specific things: eleven metres from the penalty mark to the goal line; nine-fifteen from the ball at a free kick to the nearest opponent; 16.5 m of depth in which a foul becomes a penalty rather than a free kick.

Those are calibrated against a human body, not against a field. The penalty kick is a duel between a striker and a goalkeeper, and its difficulty depends on the distance and the size of the goal — quantities that would be meaningless if they moved with the touchline. So the law holds them still and lets the pitch vary around them.

The cost is that everything else about the game does scale. How far a full-back has to travel to close a wide player down, how much grass a pressing team has to compress, how far a goalkeeper’s clearance carries relative to the field — all of that is a function of dimensions Law 1 declines to fix.

Offside inherits the range

There is one law whose entire operation is defined against the variable dimension rather than the fixed ones.

Law 11 places a player in an offside position by comparison with the second-last opponent and with the halfway line. Neither reference has a fixed location. The halfway line moves with the length of the pitch; the second-last opponent moves with play. Offside is the one major law with no metric constant in it at all.

Reference That offside position is defined relative to the second-last opponent and the halfway line, rather than to any fixed distance, from Law 11.1.

That is why the two drawings above look so different in the middle and so similar at the ends. The penalty areas are identical objects placed in fields of different size. The offside line is not an object at all — it is a relation, and relations rescale for free.

What this is not

Two cautions, because a scale drawing invites conclusions it cannot support.

These are the limits of a rule, not measurements of stadiums. Nobody plays on 90 × 45 m at senior level, and competition regulations routinely narrow the range further — Law 1 says explicitly that competitions may determine the size within the permitted bounds. The drawings show what the law tolerates, which is a different question from what the sport does.

And a pitch’s dimensions are a poor predictor of how a match looks. The relationship between space and play runs through eleven players making decisions, and none of the arithmetic above says anything about them. What the arithmetic does establish is narrower and firmer: football’s laws describe a game whose proportions are not fixed, and which is played on fields that can differ from one another by more than the difference between a football pitch and a basketball hall.