Champions Day: a soccer birthday party, planned

The look: turf green, trophy gold and flag bunting

Turf green is the base and gold is the accent, because the trophy is the thing every child is secretly there for. White touchline tape on the floor or grass turns any space into a pitch for the price of a roll.

Flag bunting from lots of countries keeps it about the sport rather than one team, which matters when half the guests support someone else. Put a podium of three sturdy boxes at one end; it hosts the photos all afternoon and the medals at the end.

• A mini goal at each end of the garden or hall, with cones marking the halfway line.
• A green tablecloth with white tape lines down the middle so the food table looks like a pitch.
• Black-and-white balloons clustered like footballs, with a few gold ones for the trophy table.
• A scoreboard on a whiteboard or chalkboard that the birthday child gets to update.
• A player photo booth: a cut-out frame with a shirt number and a blank space for each guest's name.

The invitation

Write it as a team call-up: the player is selected, here is the ground and the kick-off time. Tell parents whether the matches are on grass so they send trainers rather than party shoes, and ask for a shirt number in the RSVP if you plan to print name badges.

You're invited

World Cup Champions

You have been selected! Lace up for a birthday kick-off and a trophy at full time.

✓ Going? Maybe✗ Can't

Half-time food and the jersey cake

Serve it at half-time, on a table the players walk to as a team. Orange slices are the one thing every coach will tell you is non-negotiable.

• Orange quarters on a tray, served exactly as they would be at a real match.
• Sports drinks or water bottles with a printed shirt-number label for each player.
• Football pizzas: small round pizzas with olive slices arranged into a ball pattern.
• Goalpost pretzels: pretzel sticks and a bowl of cheese dip set out between two cone markers.
• Popcorn in paper cones, the way it is sold in the stands.
• The cake: a sheet cake iced as a jersey with the birthday child's age as the shirt number, or a green pitch cake with a small ball and two goals on top.

Matches and games

Keep the teams mixed and the matches short, five to eight minutes, so nobody spends long losing. An adult referee with a whistle stops arguments before they start.

• Penalty shoot-out: every child takes three shots, and the birthday child goes in goal for one round.
• Dribble relay: weave a ball through a line of cones and back, team against team.
• Mini matches: small-sided games with goals made from two cones each.
• Target practice: hang hoops or buckets in the goal and score points for each one hit.
• For the kids who would rather not play: a commentator's table with a toy microphone to call the action.

Planning by age

The same party needs a different balance at different ages. Younger guests want lots of short turns; older ones want a proper match.

How the two hours run

1. 0:00Arrivals: each player gets a shirt-number sticker and a photo on the podium.
2. 0:15Warm-up: the dribble relay through the cones.
3. 0:35First half: mini matches in mixed teams.
4. 0:55Half-time: oranges, pizzas and drinks.
5. 1:20Second half: the penalty shoot-out.
6. 1:35Final whistle and the jersey cake.
7. 1:50Medals on the podium, favours and goodbyes.

What to buy

Pack sizes are for about 15 kids. In PartyPal the list sizes itself to your headcount.

Common questions