Futsal is played five-a-side, goalkeeper included, with no offside rule at all, a ball that's heavier and bounces less than a regular football, and restarts taken with the foot rather than the hand everywhere 11-a-side football would use a throw-in or a goal kick. What follows is FIFA's own "Futsal Laws of the Game," based on IFAB's Laws of the Game for the outdoor sport but applied to a court a fraction of the size.
Five players a side, one of them the goalkeeper
Each team puts five players on the court — four outfield players and a goalkeeper — with up to nine substitutes on the bench. Unlike 11-a-side football, substitutions in futsal are unlimited and happen on the fly: the player coming off has to leave the court first, but after that the swap happens in real time, with the ball still in play, not only at a stoppage.
If a team drops below three players on the court, the match is abandoned and counted as a loss for the short-handed side.
The goalkeeper gets an unusual freedom too: they can leave their own goal entirely and play as an extra outfield player on the opponent's half, a move known as a "flying goalkeeper" — most common in the closing minutes, when a trailing team gambles everything for an equaliser.
No offside — the sideline restart is a kick, not a throw
Futsal has no offside rule whatsoever. You can stand anywhere on the court and wait for a long ball, no matter how many defenders are between you and goal — combined with the small court, that's part of why futsal matches tend to produce more goals on average than football played on grass.
When the ball goes out over the sideline, it isn't thrown in by hand — it's restarted with a kick-in: the ball is placed on the line or up to 25 centimetres outside it, has to be stationary, and must be played with the foot within four seconds of the player being ready. Run out the clock or take it incorrectly, and the kick-in passes to the other team. You cannot score directly from a kick-in — the goal only counts if another player touches the ball first.
The goal clearance works on the same foot-first logic in reverse: the goalkeeper puts the ball back into play by hand from inside the penalty area, also within four seconds, and a goal cannot be scored directly from it either.
The ball is heavier and bounces about half as high
The ball used from age 13 up has a circumference of 62–64 cm and weighs 400–440 g — heavier than a standard football. The real difference is in the bounce: dropped from 2 metres, it must rebound to between 50 and 65 cm, a little over half the drop height. That keeps the ball on the ground more, makes heading rare, and rewards tight technical control over a long ball played in the air.
The sixth accumulated foul removes the wall
Direct fouls — kicking, pushing, holding, tripping an opponent — are counted cumulatively, by team, per period. Up to the fifth foul, the free kick is taken normally, from the spot of the infringement. From the sixth accumulated foul onward, every further foul is punished with a direct free kick taken from the second penalty mark, 10 metres from goal. The goalkeeper must stand at least 5 metres from the ball, and every other opponent has to stay behind it — there's no defensive wall in front of the kick, unlike in 11-a-side football.
An ordinary penalty is awarded for a foul inside the penalty area and taken from just 6 metres out — both the penalty area and the kick distance are considerably smaller than in outdoor football.
A four-second clock on almost every restart
Futsal puts a time limit on nearly everything: four seconds for a kick-in, four seconds for the goalkeeper's restart from the penalty area, four seconds for a corner kick. Take too long and the ball goes to the other side. The goalkeeper has one more rule of their own — once they release the ball by hand or foot, they cannot touch it with their hands again until it goes out of play or is touched by an opponent. The exception: on the opponent's half, the goalkeeper can play freely, like any other outfield player.
Rubber soles, not studded boots
Kit is regulated too: a sleeved shirt, shorts, socks, shin guards made of metal, plastic or foam, and shoes with rubber soles — metal-studded boots, standard on grass, are banned indoors because they'd tear up the floor. Goalkeepers may wear long trousers but must wear a kit colour different from both teams and the referees. Jewellery isn't allowed, nor is any other equipment that could injure the player wearing it or anyone else on the court.
A small pitch doesn't automatically mean official futsal
An international futsal court is 40 x 20 metres — the size of a handball court — with goals measuring 3 x 2 metres. The surface is wood, synthetic parquet or a similar smooth material, indoors.
In Chișinău, only four of the ten football pitches Sporta MD tracks support full 11-a-side football — the other six are limited to smaller formats. But almost all of them, large or small, are outdoor, on synthetic turf rather than an indoor hardcourt. The football played there is technically closer to what's informally called five-a-side than to FIFA's official futsal: no federation-appointed referee, with the rules negotiated by the two teams before kickoff — whether offside applies, what counts as handball, whether the goalkeeper can pick the ball up outside the box. If you need the exact rules for a friendly on one of these pitches, it's simpler to agree them with the other side before kickoff than to assume the rulebook above applies word for word.
Sporta MD covers football, basketball, volleyball and tennis in Chișinău — including booking the small pitches where the city's small-sided football gets played.