Soccer Coloring Pages

Soccer is the one sport every child can play with nothing but a ball, and these soccer coloring pages keep both sides of it: the big match under the floodlights, and the game in the backyard with a sweater for a goal post.

On the field, a player strikes a volley near the corner flag, another takes a corner kick in front of the empty seats, and two more race shoulder to shoulder after a loose ball. There is a bicycle kick in front of the goal, a header contested with arms out, a step over that leaves a defender leaning the wrong way, a sliding tackle with the turf flying, and a scramble of four players with the ball loose on the line. The goalkeepers get a page for every job: diving full stretch to tip the ball away, stretching for the top corner, catching a high cross above two attackers, crouching for a penalty, rolling the ball back out. The ball itself sits in the back of the net, and fills a whole page on its own.

Around the game, a referee holds up a card, an assistant runs the line with his flag raised, a coach draws on a tactics board, substitutes wait in the dugout, the teams shake hands before kick off, and the captains meet in the center circle. A groundsman marks the lines, training balls wait in a net bag beside cones and a ladder, a kit bag lies open on a changing room bench, and a pair of boots hangs by their laces over a shoulder. The stadium appears from high in the stands and from below its floodlight tower, a fan holds up a scarf, and a captain lifts the trophy while the team crowds around. Then the other soccer, the one most children know: a small goal in the backyard, a goal chalked on a street wall, a barefoot game on the beach, and a boy juggling a ball in the park.

Soccer or football?

Both, and the word "soccer" is British. In the 1860s the game was named association football, to tell it apart from rugby football. Students in England liked to shorten words and add "-er", so rugby became "rugger" and association became "soccer". The nickname faded in Britain, where the game is simply football, but it stuck in the United States, Canada and Australia, where another sport had already taken the name. The football coloring pages on this site are the American game with helmets and a tailgate; these are the round ball.

The ball that was drawn for television

The classic soccer ball, the one on the full-page sheet and the one in the laurel wreath, has twelve black pentagons and twenty white hexagons. That pattern was made famous at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, the first broadcast widely in color, though most people still watched in black and white, and the contrasting panels made the ball easy to follow on a gray screen.

It makes a good page for a child who likes rules. Color the pentagons first, then check that every one of them is surrounded only by hexagons: if two colored panels touch, one of them is a hexagon by mistake. Nothing says the pentagons must be black. A team's two colors, or a rainbow of pentagons on white, work just as well.

How to color a goal net

The densest pages are the ones where the net fills the frame, and the net is the part not to color. Its strings are white paper, and they stay white. Color what is behind the net instead: a light green for the grass, pale blue for the sky, the goalkeeper's jersey. The strings then stand out on their own, and the page looks finished without a hundred tiny squares filled in.

The same trick works on the grass. Real fields are mown in stripes, the mower laying the blades one way on the first pass and the other way on the next, so the light catches them differently. Two greens in wide alternating bands, like the groundsman's page, make any field look like a stadium.

Which pages for which player

The collection is spread across the three bands, so a whole team of different ages can color together. The simplest keep one player or one object large on the page, and suit a child of four or five. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

• Big soccer ball
• Assistant referee raising the flag
• Player taking a throw-in

The middle band holds the action scenes, with two or three players and some of the field. The densest pages are the goalmouths, where the net and the crowd of players take time. Lots of detail starts with:

• Goalkeeper stretching for the crossbar
• Goalkeeper diving to tip the ball
• Goalkeeper rolling the ball out

Yellow or red: the referee's card

On the referee's page the card is left blank, which means the child decides the verdict. Yellow is a caution; red sends the player off. The cards were introduced at the 1970 World Cup, the idea of an English referee, Ken Aston, who was stopped at a traffic light and realized that colors cross every language barrier on a field. A card needs no translation, which is exactly why it caught on.

For a team party or an end-of-season table

Print a different page for each player: the goalkeeper pages for the keeper, the header or the tackle for the defenders, the volley and the bicycle kick for the forwards. The coach with the tactics board is a good one to give to the coach, colored by the whole team.

The laurel wreath page has a blank shield under the ball, and that shield is the best part of the collection for a party. Ask each child to design a crest for the team inside it: two colors, a shape, an animal, whatever the team is known for. Pinned up in a row, they make a wall of badges. The trophy page is the natural end-of-season certificate, with the child's name written above the cup.

Printing a page for every player

Every page is a free PDF laid out on A4 at 300 dpi. Print at 100 % on A4; on US Letter, choose "fit to page" and the drawing shrinks by about six percent, nothing is cut off. The printing guide shows the setting for each browser. Tap Add to pack to line up a page for every player and print them at once. The sports coloring pages gather the other games, and the happy birthday coloring pages help when the party is also a birthday.