Pepe’s guide to 5-a-side Football Leagues in London
Following on from our article on Artificial Enhancement: The Solution for Grass-Roots Football? Here’s Pepe’s guide to those who have gone artificial by playing 5-a-side….
Across London there are thousands of men and women itching to take a break from their long working hours and focus on the important things in life…5-a-side football.
With hundreds of artificial and indoor football pitches dotted around London for use during your lunch break or after work. It’s always a time-consuming hassle to check out all of your nearest centres to find a decent league, so hopefully I’ll be able to help you out by providing a bit of unbiased info about the best league-running organisations in town.
Top Corner
If you want to join a 5-a-side league, Top Corner is a good bet. With dozens of leagues for 4, 5, 6 or 7-a-side, for men and women in 20 different locations (as shown in the map below), it caters for all abilities – and you probably won’t have to travel far to get to the game.
They’ll organise everything you need, fixtures, referees, league tables, bibs, trophies, and of course the pitch – which is either astro-turf or 3g rubber crumb (depending on what centre you go to).
Matches will generally cost between £45-60 per game depending on the location, whether it’s 5-a-side or 7-a-side (the more players the higher the cost), and how long you play for (generally between 30-45 mins per week). This should work out at less than £10 for each game played for at least 30 mins of competitive football.
5aside.org
5aside.org does a similar service to Top Corner, with loads of between 5 and 8-a-side leagues fully organised and based at 13 different locations listed below:
Balham, Battersea, Battersea (Newton Prep), Brixton, Chelsea/South Kensington, Clapham, Clapham Junction, Clapham North, Fulham, Ladbroke Grove, Marylebone, Mild End, Old Street.
With the locations being less central, match prices are cheaper and generally range between £35-60 per match, with matches lasting between 30 and 40 minutes. The majority of pitches used by 5aside.org are either 3G or 4G rubber crumb surfaces.
PlayFiveASide
Another alternative is PlayFiveASide, with 5 centres in Zone 1 (Euston, Kings Cross, Liverpool Street, London Bridge & Paddington) and 6 more outside Central London (Chiswick, Fulham, Richmond, Shepherds Bush, Westway & White City).
Games last between 30 and 45 minutes and will cost between £35-40, pitches range from indoor, Astroturf and 3G rubber crumb.
Elms 5-a-side
Elms 5-a-side runs 3 leagues inside the square mile (Mile End, Shadwell & Docklands) and 5 others in Greater London (Battersea, Battersea Park, High Wycombe, Wandsworth & Westway).
Games last between 36 and 50 minutes and will cost upwards of £35, on a range of surfaces.
Alternative Options
There are a few Powerleague (Old Street & London City) and Goals Soccer (Gillette Corner) Centres dotted about central London, both provide top of the range facilities for 5-a-side football and run dozens of leagues for all abilities throughout the week at each centre.
A completely different way of finding a league is by using PitchFinder created by Football Foundation, simply type in your postcode and a whole load of available football pitches near you will come up. You’ll then be able to contact the relevant people and see if they run leagues you can join.
