Soccer Zero

● Ultra-light ball (~1/8th as heavy as a normal 5). This allows zero chances of ball causing brain injury. (Hence the name, Soccer Zero.) It's also nice to do toe kicks!
● Injury-based foul system. This means that the rules apply even for same-team-side fouls, too. You can use your hands to protect yourself from the ball; hand balls are only called if you did it to gain an advantage. Yellow cards will cause the fouler to sit out for 120 seconds. Strong kicks of balls to anyone's head, called "face kicks", or nuts (for male players only), are yellow-card fouls even though the ball is so light it doesn't matter as much. This penalizes inconsiderate play, something we really do care about. Reckless players or anyone getting a red card is banned. (Before heading, you need to have an idea of where other nearby players are.) So, as an example, if you kicked the ball at high speed to your own teammate's head you have to sit out for 2 minutes.
● No out of bounds. This makes it more interesting and easier to ref.
● No offsides.
● No goalies for the senior team. (The senior team is the one that is ahead in points.) This rule is used in place of an offsides rule, since it implies you cannot win by sticking some fat player who stands in front of their relatively small Pugg goal all day long.
● Next point wins. The purpose of this rule is to prevent people from not caring at all if the score becomes very lopsided. However, it is not guaranteed any game will end this way. This keeps the incentive to try to to win using the traditional point system. At the 10-minute warning, if the scores are 2 or more different, the ref MAY ask the captain of the junior team if they want to have a next point wins ending. If the answer is yes, the captain of the senior team will be asked he they want to challenge it. If the answer is yes a coin is tossed. If the captain of the senior team correctly guesses the coin toss then there is no next point wins ending and whoever has the most points in 10 minutes wins the game. Players who cannot understand the rationale of this rule or who disrupt games by arguing about it could be de-rsvped from future games.
● Goal resizing. Sometimes a strong player comes on mid-game after teams were picked by the two captains. If someone like Ronaldo joins a team and/or both captains agree to goal resizing to make the game more balanced the game will be stopped and the goal sizes altered to make it more even.

Games are in Silver Spring, MD. They are reffed. Clean red and blue pinnies are supplied. A weekly invitation including a recap of the prior week's game is sent out to any players who want to read it. See here (https://www.meetup.com/safersoccer/boards/thread/23643732/0/).

RSVPs aren't required but players who come but don't RSVP early are questionable. The reason is that it should increase their own enjoyment. You see, the ideal number of players for a pickup soccer game is perhaps 6x6 - 8x8; some players won't attend if they think the turnout will be low, and others will just assume the game will be cancelled even though we always play. (As a practical matter, smaller games are less fun since the comics won't have the audience they need, but, they do have two hidden benefits: shorter, more intense games/workouts and fewer face kicks/yellow cards. So we play no matter how small or large.) So non-RSVPers are a little short sighted, since they don't seem to want to maximize their own enjoyment in the long run. Rational and sane players who have a good chance of attending RSVP a week early here and in the subgroup. But, not all of our players are rational, so expect more people to show up than the # of RSVPs showing here.

Location map (cut & paste url into a browser)(park on Plyers Mill):

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