Football Tactics Board

Plan formations, move player groups, draw passing and running routes, and share your board as JSON or PNG. Board data stays on your device.

Features

• Two teams and formations
• Player groups and drawing tools
• Configurable passing model
• Saved zoom regions
• Local JSON and PNG export

Football Tactics Board

Build and explain a football setup with two teams, formations, groups, shapes, passing routes and saved zoom regions. Processing takes place locally in your browser. Passing chances are model estimates, not measured match statistics.

Requirements

Use a current browser with JavaScript and SVG support. Mouse, keyboard and touch are supported. A wide desktop or tablet offers more pitch space; resize or collapse the team sidebars as needed. No account or tracking dataset is required. Download JSON backups before clearing site data or changing devices or profiles.

Steps

1. Open Pitch in the toolbar. Choose an age group and profile or enter custom dimensions. The pitch is shared by both teams. Profiles are editable planning presets; check the rules for your own competition.
2. In each Formations panel, apply a formation with its check button. Width, depth, offset and attacking direction affect that team only.
3. Open Team to name the teams and Squad to name the 20 players on each side.
4. Drag magnets from the top edge onto the pitch. Drag them outside its lines to bench them. Numbers 1 and 12 are goalkeepers. A formation uses an active keeper, otherwise number 1. To use number 12, bench 1, place 12 and reapply the formation.
5. Select a player and choose Assign ball. The ball follows its owner. Release ball leaves it beside the player for independent movement.
6. Add shapes, routes and zoom regions. Undo and Redo restore complete edits, including pitch changes and formations.
7. Open Board files to download editable JSON or export a clean PNG.

Players, groups and measurements

A click selects up to four magnets. Toggle connection explicitly connects two selections. Select three or four players and choose Create player shape to bind a polygon to them. Its corners follow the players; dragging its interior moves them together. Properties identifies lengths and angles by player number.

For larger selections use Select player group, draw a rectangle and drag a selected player or the group frame. Goalkeepers and opponents are included; the ball follows its owner but is not selected itself. Movement stops at the pitch boundary. Click empty pitch space to clear the selection. Groups over four players cannot become polygons. Show lengths displays metres on connections and selected shapes, or circle diameter; it does not show square-metre areas.

Shapes and routes

Choose Draw Rectangle, Draw Circle or Draw Triangle and drag on the pitch. The most recently selected team owns the new shape. The shared Shapes panel on the left lists both teams: select, rename, colour, hide and delete there. Hidden shapes remain saved. Drag inside a shape to move it. Corner handles resize rectangles and individual triangle corners. Click a circle outline for its radius handle. Player-shape handles move the associated player. Escape cancels an active resize; Delete removes the selected shape.

Choose Draw Arrow. A selected player becomes the start; otherwise click a player or a free point. Further clicks add points. Finish route or Enter ends the route. Escape or switching drawing tools also retains a route with at least two points. Undo last arrow point removes the last draft point. Routes support up to 100 points; the board supports up to 200 shapes.

Choose Pass for a solid route or Run for a dashed route. Labels allow 60 characters and commit on Enter or leaving the field. Click a segment and move its curve handle to bend it. Bound endpoints follow their players. Moving the whole arrow by keyboard detaches its endpoints. If adjacent bound points coincide, separate their players before translating the entire route.

Passing display

Select a player to inspect target number, model chance and distance in Passing. Show passing arrows draws the same estimates to teammates. Other overlays are temporarily hidden and return when it is disabled. Assign the ball and enable Passing heatmap for a spatial view from its owner.

Ball speed, running speed, reaction, control and uncertainty determine the result. The model compares ball travel time with opponent interception time at static positions. It is not empirically calibrated and does not simulate real intentions or a match. Few or no opponents can produce very high chances. Use it for tactical discussion, not as a prediction of actual pass success.

Zoom regions

Choose Select zoom and draw a rectangle. Editing this view changes the same board. Save zoom stores bounds, name and a small PNG preview of the current view; save again to refresh it. The left Zoom regions panel opens, renames and deletes saved views. Close zoom returns to the whole pitch. Up to 100 regions are stored. Pitch resizing scales positions, shapes and zoom bounds together.

Keyboard and touch

Enter places a focused bench player. Arrow keys move focused players or groups by 0.25 m; Shift increases the step to 1 m. Delete benches a player. Ctrl/Cmd+Z undoes; Ctrl/Cmd+Y or Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Z redoes. Text fields keep their editing shortcuts. Enter accepts number and name edits. Pointer and touch dragging work on magnets and geometry. Handles also allow tapping a handle and then its target; Cancel or Escape abandons that placement.

Parameters

Setting	Range or behavior
Pitch length / width	10–120 / 10–90 m; full markings require 90–120 × 45–90 m, length greater than width
Players per team	2–11 in the profile; 20 named squad slots
Goals	Two or four; width 0.5–7.32 m within pitch limits; height 0.5–2.44 m
Formation width / depth / offset	10–95% / 10–75% / −30–30%
Ball / running speed	3–35 / 1–10 m/s
Reaction / control / uncertainty	0–2 / 0–2 / 0.1–1.5 s
Board file	Valid UTF-8 JSON, at most 1 MiB

Result

Save board downloads taktiktafel.json. Load board validates a document and replaces the current board; Undo restores the previous state. Invalid input leaves the board unchanged. Downloads do not overwrite the original file. Pitch as PNG exports the whole pitch even while zoomed; Zoom as PNG exports the active region. The longest edge is 2000 px. Handles, selection marks, temporary measurements and bench players are omitted; full exports keep team names. PNG is for presentation; use JSON to continue editing. Browser draft storage is separate from these downloads and is not an online backup.

Common errors

• Invalid dimensions: follow the ranges above. A profile change does not silently remove surplus players; the pitch dialog reports team counts.
• Invalid or oversized JSON: use a real board export; remove unnecessary saved zoom previews if the document exceeds 1 MiB.
• Disabled passing controls: select a placed player or assign the ball.
• Missing shape: check visibility, zoom bounds and whether its players are benched.
• Reset board requires confirmation and clears the board and undo/redo history. Save a backup first if you need the current setup.

Troubleshooting

Collapse a sidebar to enlarge the pitch. Close zoom to find off-screen players. Finish drawing before selecting normally. If local saving fails, download JSON immediately and check site-storage permissions. Files, player names and images are processed locally; the tool does not upload them or import tracking datasets. Switching UI language changes controls, not saved names or the document format.