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How to make training teams that are actually balanced

By the coach who built Team Selector. Updated 7 September 2026.

Balanced training teams are the difference between a session that flows and twenty minutes of one side scoring and the other side sulking. Here's what balanced actually means and how to get there in fifteen seconds.

Why the usual way doesn't work

The classic is to line them up and go one, two, one, two. It feels fair and it isn't, because it ignores everything you know. Sometimes you get lucky. Usually one side gets both keepers, or three of your best players, or every defender, and you spend the session refereeing a mismatch. The other classic is "captains pick", which teaches the two worst lessons in football in under a minute.

What balanced means

Two things at once, and coaches usually only do the first.

Ability. The average of each team should be close. Not the total, the average, because a team of six shouldn't be compared to a team of seven on totals. If you rate players 1 to 99 like the app does, within three points is balanced and within six is fine for a session.

Positions. Each side needs a keeper if you're playing with keepers, and something like the same number of defenders, midfielders and attackers. Six defenders across two teams means three each, not five and one. Two teams with the same average but one with all the strikers is not a balanced session, it's a shooting drill for one side.

A method that takes fifteen seconds

Do the keepers first: one per team, strongest keeper to the team that gets the weaker outfield. Then go through your players position by position, best first, and drop each one onto whichever team is weakest so far. Defenders, then midfielders, then wide players, then strikers. When you're done, check the averages and swap one pair if the gap is more than a few points. That's it. That's the method, and it's roughly what the app's optimiser does, except the app then tries a few hundred swaps and keeps the ones that make it closer.

If you'd rather not do the arithmetic, the free Team Balancer on this site does exactly that. Paste your names and ratings, pick two, three or four teams, tap once. Reshuffle gives you a different split that's just as fair, which is handy when two mates need separating.

Three sessions a coach will recognise

Thirteen turn up, you want two teams. Six against seven is fine. Give the weaker side the extra player, not the stronger one, and put your rotating keeper on the side of seven so both play with a keeper.

No keepers tonight. Don't force anyone in goal for the whole session. Say "everyone does five minutes in goal" and balance the outfield only. The app has a mode for exactly this and so does the free tool.

A coach wants to play. Lovely, but a grown adult on one side changes everything. Treat them as an optional extra: add them if they make the split fairer, sit them out if they don't. The app does this automatically. You can do it by asking yourself whether the session is better with them on the pitch or with the whistle.

What to do with the ratings

You'll get them wrong at first. That's fine. After a session where one side ran away with it, nudge two or three ratings and the next split will be better. Over a month they settle. They're a tool for making fair teams, not a judgement on anyone, and nobody but you ever sees them.