Guess the footballer: 6 party games using a random player

Most football quizzes fall apart for one reason: the person asking the questions picked them, so they're either too easy or stuck in the quizmaster's favourite era. Drawing the player at random fixes that. The random soccer player generator picks from 250 players, from Pele and Socrates to Pedri and Aitana Bonmati, with no weighting at all. Below are six guessing games to run with it, from a two-minute warm-up to a full pub-night round, with scoring and example draws so you can see how a round plays.

Setup that works for all six

One person is the host for the round. They hold the phone and draw. Everyone else guesses. Rotate the host each round so everybody plays.

Draw the whole night in one go if you can. The generator gives you up to 100 names in a single draw with no repeats, and Export .txt saves the list, so the host can work down it instead of drawing every round. If you draw round by round, the same player can turn up again, which is fine in some games and annoying in others.

Agree two things before the first round. First, skips: give every player one free skip per game, for names they've genuinely never heard of. Second, the women's game: the pool mixes men's and women's players, and roughly one in five names is a women's player. Either play them as normal or count them double. Don't silently skip them, or half the table loses interest.

1. Forehead cards

This is the fastest game and a good opener.

One guesser holds the phone to their forehead, screen facing out, with one name drawn. Everyone else gives clues out loud, but can't say the player's name, club or country. The guesser has 60 seconds. Then the next person goes.

Scoring: 1 point per correct guess. Play three laps and add up.

An example lap: Frenkie de Jong, Laurent Blanc, Claudio Caniggia, Dzsenifer Marozsan, Karim Benzema, Romario. De Jong and Benzema tend to go in seconds. Caniggia is the one that can take the full minute, until someone says "the hair, 1990, Argentina".

2. Twenty questions

The host draws one name and keeps it secret. The table asks yes/no questions, up to 20 in total, then gets one guess each.

Good questions narrow things fast: "Still playing?", "Played in Italy?", "Won a World Cup?", "Goalkeeper?". Ban questions that aren't really yes/no ("Is the club red?" is fine, "What colour is the club?" isn't).

Scoring: the first correct guess scores 20 minus the number of questions used. Guess Harry Kane on question 6 and you get 14 points.

3. Career path clues

The host draws a player and reads out their clubs in order, one at a time. After each club, anyone can guess. A wrong guess knocks you out for that player.

Scoring: guess after the first club and you get 5 points, after the second 4, and so on down to 1.

This one needs the host to know (or look up) the career, which is why the host can use their phone. Two example draws, checked, first three clubs only:

• Willem II, Ajax, Barcelona. That's Frenkie de Jong. Most people get it at Ajax.
• Lyon, Real Madrid, Al Ittihad. Karim Benzema. Anyone who says it after Lyon deserves the 5.

The game works best with players who moved around. If the draw gives you a one-club player like Paolo Maldini or Francesco Totti, swap to game 4 for that name.

4. Three clues, three points

The host writes three clues for the drawn player, hardest first. Guess on clue one for 3 points, clue two for 2, clue three for 1.

A round from an example draw of five: Leonardo Bonucci, Achraf Hakimi, Hugo Lloris, Marta and Pernille Harder:

Hakimi:

1. Born in Madrid, came through Real Madrid's academy.
2. Plays for Morocco.
3. Right-back at Paris Saint-Germain.

Lloris:

1. Played for Nice and Lyon before moving to London.
2. Captained his country to a World Cup in 2018.
3. Spent more than a decade in goal for Tottenham.

Marta:

1. Played club football in Sweden and the US.
2. Won FIFA's world player award six times.
3. Brazil's number 10.

Clues 1 and 2 do the real work. If clue 3 doesn't give it away, it's a bad clue.

5. Who am I, sticky-note version

Old party game, football edition. Draw one name per person in a single draw, write each on a sticky note, and stick it on someone's forehead without them seeing it. Players take turns asking one yes/no question about themselves. Get a yes, ask again. Get a no, play passes.

Scoring: first to work out who they are wins the round. Last one buys the next round.

This game is where the random draw earns its keep. People don't just get the obvious names. An example draw of five: Mark Viduka, Sergio Aguero, Abby Wambach, Hugo Sanchez and Pedri, which is three continents, two retired strikers and a US women's legend. Nobody would pick that set by hand, and it makes for a better game.

6. Six degrees

Draw two players. Connect them through teammates (club or country), using as few links as possible. Shortest valid chain wins.

Here is an example pair from two draws, Pedri and then Harry Maguire, and the chain that links them:

• Pedri played with Sergio Aguero at Barcelona in 2021.
• Aguero played with Kyle Walker at Manchester City.
• Walker played with Maguire for England.

Three links. Someone always claims they can do it in two. Make them prove it.

Scoring: 3 points for the shortest chain, 1 point for any other valid chain. A chain with a wrong link scores nothing, and the table is allowed to check.

Timings for a full night

Game	Players	Time per round	Good for
Forehead cards	3+	1 minute per guesser	Warm-up
Twenty questions	2+	3 to 5 minutes	Small groups
Career path clues	3+	2 minutes	Mixed ages
Three clues	3+	1 minute	Teams
Who am I	4 to 8	10 to 15 minutes	Drinks
Six degrees	2+	5 minutes	Proper fans

For teams, split people with the random team generator first so the two biggest fans don't end up together.

What the generator can't help with

It doesn't know clubs, careers, positions or nationalities. It gives you a name. The facts come from the host, so for career path clues and three clues, the host needs a minute and a search engine to check the details. Get one wrong and you'll hear about it.

It also has no difficulty setting. A draw might give you Ronaldinho and Fernando Redondo in the same round. That's part of the fun, but if you're playing with kids, draw 20 and let the host pick the ten best-known.

Other draws to try

For the same games with clubs, use the random soccer team generator (guess the league, the stadium or a famous player). For other sports, the random athlete generator mixes in tennis, basketball and athletics, and the random NBA player picker works for a basketball version of forehead cards.

To get started, open the random soccer player generator, set the count to 30 and press Pick. Thirty names is enough for a full night, and if Claudio Caniggia comes up, give the forehead-card player the hair clue early.