Football offers so many different forms of entertainment, from betting on games to watching your kids play, and from fantasy games to enjoying the big match on TV. There are also prediction games, pools and lottery-style games and much more. You might even play football if you wanted to go really wild!
One of the newest additions to your many options is Football Bingo, which offers a fun, free daily game. Football bingo can have different meanings, but here we are talking about the online knowledge-based game, rather than one where you create a bingo card of your own that includes actions that will occur during a game (for example offside, throw-in, home goal, foul, and so on).
Football bingo remains relatively niche for now but it is a quick, simple game that football fans will love. It goes live daily with a new bingo card, meaning you can test your football knowledge and quizzing skills every day and even go up against friends.
How Does It Work?
Just head to the Football Bingo site and click on ‘Play Now’ next to Football Bingo Daily. This will automatically open a ‘bingo card’, a four by four grid. You can see an example grid below, with a mix of teams, nations/nationalities, or descriptions/categories. The latter might be something such as ‘Premier League Winner‘, or (as per the bingo card below) ‘Managed by Guardiola‘:
Once you start the game, the name of a player will appear at the top of the screen. You then have to assign this player to one of the grids on your card. For example, if Rodri came up, you would click on the Man City icon. Or would you?
Think Strategically
Whilst Rodri does, of course, play for Man City, he is also, therefore, managed by Pep Guardiola. And on top of that, he is a Euros winner. So, you could assign Rodri to at least three of the categories. In this situation, you have to think strategically. You can only pick one category per player and only place each player in one square on the grid.
The safest option here is to play your wildcard but you can only use that once. Alternatively, you have to consider which category is more likely to be open to other players down the line and then place the current pick – in this case Rodri – in the grid you think is less likely to have an alternative option later in the game.
Fill in the Card
The aim is to complete the bingo card but you have a limited number of players to sift through. If you are unsure about a player you can choose to skip and move on to the next one. However, should you misfile a player that grid will be lost, and you will not be able to complete the whole card.
Fear not though, because every day at midnight you will get a whole new game to play, with 16 new categories available and the chance to test your skill and knowledge once again. Now let’s look at an example game and see how things pan out.
Note that you can play Football Bingo with or without a timer. We suggest trying it without the added pressure of the clock first of all until you get the hang of it. Then once you fully understand how the game works, introduce the timer which limits how long you have to assign each player to a category.
Example Game
We started the game on the card above and the first screen on offer is shown below:
Josko Gvardiol plays for City, is managed by Pep and is Croatian, so as with Rodri, that is at least three options. We could opt to play our wildcard but as this is the first player, we’ll plump for Croatia and click on that square. That is, of course, correct, so the Croatia box turns green and is populated by the City defender, as in the screenshot below:
Luke Shaw then comes up as the next player and to the best of our knowledge, he is not a fit with any of the available categories, and so we opt to skip him. Duvan Zapata is our next player and whilst he may fit in other categories too, we know he played for Napoli, so click that grid to him there.
Jesus Navas is next up, and the Spaniard was certainly managed by Pep, as well as being a Euros winner. Perhaps we should have played our wildcard on Gvardiol, but will opt to play it now, because the wildcard populates all possible grids that apply to the player. So once again, using it now gives us three squares for the price of one: Euros winner, managed by Pep, and Man City, with the outcome shown in the screenshot below:
As you can see, Miralem Pjanic is our next player. We have 11 grids left to fill and 37 players to go at so we can certainly afford to skip players where we either are not sure, or plain don’t know. We are confident that the Bosnian played for Roma though, so click that and… yes, we’re right.
Marc-Andre ter Stegen is our next player and the stopper was a teammate of Lionel Messi at Barca, so that brings up Nathan Ake. He could have gone under categories that are no longer open but there is nothing left for the Dutch defender so we’ll have to skip.
Michael Owen is our next player, so again we’ll choose to skip. Maicon is next and the Brazilian definitely won Serie A with Inter so that’s a match. Our next player is Nicolo Zaniolo, which certainly sounds Italian to us – and is. Paul Scholes is an obvious skip next up, with Polish striker Arkadiusz Milik next, and also a skip as far as we’re concerned. We’ve never even heard of the next player so it is another skip, but with 29 players left that isn’t a worry for now.
Iago Aspas sees us skip once more, bringing up Miroslav Klose. The German definitely top-scored at a World Cup and that category seems harder to fill than Germany, so we stick him there. Gabriel Magalhães is next and the Gunner played for Lille, so that’s another square down. Fellow Gunner Martin Odegaard comes out next, which we’ll skip, bringing up German Thomas Muller. We knew there would be another German along before long!
With just four categories left, we have several skips, including huge players like Zlatan and Ronaldinho, and less huge ones, such as Edmond Tapsoba. Eventually we get Sylvain Wiltord to populate the France square and then Diego Godin for Uruguay. Just Leicester and Real Sociedad to go and with 14 players left we can be patient.
Youri Tielemans soon comes up meaning we have just one square to go! Several more skips – rightly or wrongly, we can’t be sure – later, we are down to two players left and Ronald Araujo comes up. We don’t think he played for Real but with two left should we chance it? We decide not to and trust in the football fates to serve us up someone kind.
Louis Saha is not that player, so we skip. Theo Hernandez comes up:
In truth, we are not convinced but what the hell, it’s our last shot so we give it a whirl! And boom, what do you know?! Turns out the French defender had a loan spell at Sociedad from Real Madrid, so we’ve completed the card!
Do You Win Anything?
Sadly, there are no prizes for playing (yet!) but you get the warm feeling of knowing that yes, you are a football geek. You also get a stats update that will be familiar to anyone who has played Wordle or similar games. This tells you how many times you have played, how many games in a row you have won, what your best streak is, your overall success rate and your “Best BINGO” – the fewest players you have needed to complete the game.
Football Bingo is fun and, when not played against the clock, relatively easy. Why not challenge your friends to a game?