Soccer game

For many countries like England, Germany and France, soccer is not just a sport–it’s a national passion. The wars of old have ceased to exist and yet they seem to have transferred into epic games that have kept millions watching. Soccer mania knows no age, and if your kid is a soccer fan, you can be sure that he or she already has a favorite team, a favorite player and yes, even a favorite country, when it comes to soccer. Get in with the game by throwing a soccer party for your child.

This Season’s Soccer Party Invitations

Soccer invitation

For the uninitiated, soccer colors may only come in black and white in hexagonal shapes. Of course, while you can use the classic and universally-recognized soccer ball as a design for your invitations, you can also expand your color palette and design choices. While invitation cards in the shape of soccer balls and soccer goals are acceptable and easy, you can make it even more personalized. Why not use your child’s favorite soccer team’s colors, or cut them out in the shape of soccer kits, or the kit of your child’s favorite soccer player?

Another soccer invitation idea is to take a picture of your child in his soccer uniform, preferably in a soccer field or a digitally added soccer field. You can also digitally add his favorite players to be standing alongside him or her. This will make the invitation more personalized, and will leave your guests with no doubt of who the party’s MVP will be.

Your invitation should include all the pertinent details of the party, contact details for RSVP, and RSVP deadline. If you wish the guests to come in soccer uniforms or costumes, it’s also better if you include a request in the invitation as well.

Score Excellent Decorations

When it comes to decorating for a soccer party, it’s great to draw inspiration from actual soccer games. The air is always exciting, festive and full of color! You can start by using your child’s soccer gear like soccer balls, soccer score cards, banners with “Go Team!” messages, big posters of your child’s favorite players and pictures of famous soccer teams.

Balloons, streamers, banners, tablecloths, paper plates and paper cups can be designed to look with the soccer ball patterns. To break from the black and white colors, you can still use your child’s favorite team colors. For example, Spain’s national soccer team features yellow, red and dark blue. Germany’s team colors are red, white, yellow and black while France’s are blue, white and red. Teams typically have standard colors, but it’s better if you get updated on their current team uniforms online because they change annually.

Grass-green carpets

Soccer ballon

Include lots of white stripes, a staple design in sports uniforms because stripe designs suggest movement and action. Orange cheer cones are appropriate for the theme and also provide that burst of color all throughout the party space.

Simulate a green soccer turf by laying out grass-green carpets in your house. If you already have soccer-patterned tableware and utensils, you can make contrast by using green butcher paper with white lines drawn to look like a soccer field. Action figures of famous soccer players with small soccer balloons attached to them make for interesting centerpieces.

Provide a photo opportunity for your child and guests by having a lifesize cardboard cutout of a famous soccer player. Set up a background of a soccer field to make the final picture look more realistic. Encourage goofy and silly smiles and poses to make the photo opportunity even more fun.

For a final and special touch, put a captain’s armband on your child’s upper left arm.

Kicking Soccer Party Games and Activities

The stage is set and the players are assembled. It’s time to kick ball! Make your guests feel like soccer stars for a game with a variety of games and activities.

Play a Round of Soccer
• Play a Round of Soccer. Put on your soccer cleats, or any typical sports shoe, for a round of soccer. Typically, there should be two teams with 11 players each. Each team should have a goalie, who is the only one allowed to touch the soccer ball with his arms or hands. Assign an adult to act as coach for each team. Teamwork is crucial when playing soccer, and you should remind the kids to work together to score that crucial point. The first team who gets three points first wins, although ties are subject to soccer tiebreakers.
• Soccer Obstacle Course. Set up an obstacle course on your lawn consisting of seats, tires, traffic cones and other things that you can think of (without potentially causing any direct harm, of course). Each participant will then go through the obstacles while kicking a soccer ball, and must score a goal at the end. The guest who completes the obstacle course in the shortest possible time, wins.
• Guess the Final Score. If you throw your party the same day as a major soccer game, ask your guests to make bets on what the final score will be. They should list their guesses on a slip of paper and submit it. The person who makes the closest guess to both teams’ final scores, wins.

Steven Gerrard
• Name the Player. Print pictures of famous soccer players past and present like Pele, Steven Gerrard, Diego Maradona, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and David Beckham. Paste them on a large manila paper and assign each player a number. Hand out a list of the players jumbled up and ask your guests to put the number of who they think the corresponding faces are to the listed names. The guest who gets the most correct answers, wins.
• Soccer Bloopers. Soccer has been around for a while, and in the advent of videos and easy recording, a lot of soccer bloopers have been caught and memorialized on tape. Make a collection of funny, hopefully not so painful, soccer bloopers.
• Blindfolded Soccer. If your party can’t be held outdoors, don’t worry, you can still play soccer. Draw a soccer goal on a large sheet of paper and tape it up on a wall. Each participant will try to hit a hackey sack in the goal while blindfolded. Each area within the goal has a corresponding number of points, with the middle part assigned the highest number of points. Each participant will have three chances to shore up the most points to be the winner.

Design a Shirt
• Design a Shirt. Here’s an activity that’s suitable for the younger guests. Cut out paper soccer “shirts” that are approximately the correct size for an adult soccer player. Divide the participants into three or four groups and assign each of them a paper shirt. Provide the participants with art materials, coloring pens and crayons. It’s up to each of them to design the shirt as best as they can. Your child will then decide on the best-looking shirt, and the winning team gets a prize.
• Hackey Sack. Participants must form a circle and are given a hackey sack each. They must keep the hackey sack in the air using their knees, legs or elbows, no hands. If the hackey sack falls to the ground, the player is out. This must go on until everyone until only one remains as the winner. (Learn how to make the proper hackey sack)

Soccer Block
• Soccer Block. Assign a Kicker and a Soccer Blocker while the rest of your guests form a line on one side of the area. The Soccer Blocker stands in the middle between the line and facing the Kicker. The Kicker must try to kick a hackey sack past the Soccer Blocker to the line of guests. If the Blocker is successful in preventing the hackey sack from flying across, he or she joins the rest of the guests and the Kicker becomes the Blocker. One of the guests will then take the place of the Kicker.
• Personal Sports Card. Ask each of your guests to pose in their soccer outfit with a soccer ball and banner for a souvenir photo. Print out the pictures to look like a sports card with the “stats” being actual details of the party.

World Cup Party Food

Make the soccer experience more genuine by serving stadium food and then some soccer-themed goodies as well.

• Soccer Cake. The party cake is usually the central reflection of the party theme on the buffet table. A simple soccer cake design is to have your typical rectangular cake covered with a green sheet of icing. Use white piping to detail the soccer field. Place small plastic action figures on top to make it look like a real soccer field.
• Personal Pizzas. No kid can resist making any food more to his or her liking. Prepare personal pizzas, toppings and cheese. Ask your guests to choose their own toppings, pop it in an oven and voila! Personal pizzas. (Tips on how to make pasta pizza)
• Fruit Bowls. Serve healthy fruit slices in empty melon shells for a refreshing snack.

Soccer Cake

Fruice juice

Yummy pizzas

• Sandwiches. Prepare a variety of sandwiches and fillings such as tuna salad, ham, chicken salad and peanut butter and jelly. Put toothpick with different nation’s flags to hold the sandwiches together.
• Stadium Food. Kids will certainly love an array of stadium food that includes hotdog sandwiches, corn dogs, popcorn, hamburgers and sundaes.
• Drinks. Prepare different varieties of refreshing drinks like Gatorade, fruit punch or fruit juice. Your guests will surely be thirsty after all those activities.

The best of Soccer games! Check out this video.

Before the guests go home, distribute soccer themed party goodie bags containing treasures such as soccer trading cards, stickers, players’ action figures, MVP certificates and a kid’s sports magazine. Soccer passion knows no age, so get them started early.