Name Them All — Timed Football Listing Game
How Name Them All works
One category, 90 seconds, and you have to produce the names yourself. Every other game here is a choice, a sort or a tap. This is the only one that asks you to recall rather than recognise — which is why it is the only one that reliably shows you how much less you knew than you thought.
49 categories are in rotation, drawn from the 113-task library shared with Futbol Bingo and answered from a 766-player database.
Not all of them qualify, because Bingo and this game ask different questions of a category. Bingo needs to know whether a cell has an answer and passes at three. A listing round needs enough answers that 90 seconds cannot exhaust it, and few enough that the fraction means something — "200+ league appearances" has 578 valid answers and would turn the score into noise. The band is 12 to 60 answers, median 26, which is about seven weeks before a category repeats.
Maintained by the PlayFutbol Data Team · First puzzle published September 2026 · Last audited September 14, 2026.
How to play in 3 steps
- 1
Read the category
A club, a country, a statistical threshold, or a combination.
- 2
Start typing
90 seconds. Surnames count; accents and capitals do not matter.
- 3
Beat the clock
Every correct name adds 2 seconds. At the end you see the best-known names you missed.
How to name more
- 1. Dump the obvious ones first. The first five names buy you ten extra seconds. Spend those on the hard ones, not the other way round.
- 2. Work by position. Sweep a club or country goalkeeper first, then defence, midfield, attack — it is a far better index than free recall.
- 3. Type surnames. They count, they are shorter, and under a clock every keystroke is real.
- 4. Do not fight a rejection. If a name is not in the category, it is not there. Move on and come back if the clock allows.
- 5. Think eras, not squads. Most categories span decades, so the current side is only ever part of the answer.
A worked example
The category is "French forward", and there are 22 of them. The first four come instantly and buy eight seconds. Then the well runs dry — and this is where the game is won: instead of straining for another famous name, walk the clubs. Who plays up front for the Premier League sides? For the Serie A ones? Two or three more surface that way, each one adding time, and a round that felt finished at six ends on eleven.
About the authors
Name Them All is maintained by the PlayFutbol Data Team. Answer matching strips accents through the same substitution table our slug pipeline uses — ø, å, ł and đ are distinct letters rather than decorated ones, and stripping non-ASCII without substituting them first is what once turned Ødegaard's id into "degaard". A surname shared by two players in a category is queried rather than resolved arbitrarily.
A name you are sure about was rejected? Email data@playfutbol.app
Frequently asked questions
What is Name Them All?
A timed listing game. You get one football category and 90 seconds to type as many players as you can who fit it. Every correct name adds 2 seconds, so a good run extends itself.
Do I have to type the full name?
No. A surname on its own counts, and accents, punctuation and capitals are all ignored — "mbappe" is the same as "Mbappé". Under a clock, demanding exact spelling would be testing typing rather than knowledge.
What happens if two players share a surname?
You are asked which one you meant rather than being marked wrong. Awarding "Silva" to whichever row happened to sort first would mark a correct answer wrong half the time.
How is it scored?
10 points per name, plus whatever is left on the clock. But the number that matters is the fraction — "9 of 41" says more about a round than a point total does.
Which categories can come up?
49 of them, from 113 in our shared task library — clubs, nationalities, positions, statistical thresholds and combinations of those.
Why not all of them?
A category has to be big enough that 90 seconds cannot clear it, and small enough that the total means something. "200+ league appearances" has 578 valid answers; a fraction out of that is noise. The band is 12–60 answers, median 26.
Does it show me what I missed?
Yes — the ten best-known players you did not name, ranked by how obscure they are. That gap is usually more interesting than the score.
Can I pause?
No, and a half-played round is not resumed if you leave. The clock kept running while the tab was closed, so restoring it would be dishonest; the round starts fresh.
Is this the only game where I type answers?
Yes. Every other PlayFutbol game is a choice, a sort or a tap. This is the only one that asks you to produce names from memory, which is why it is the hardest of them.
Does everyone get the same category?
Yes. A seeded generator gives every player worldwide the same category for a given date.
Is there an archive?
Yes. Past categories are replayable and do not affect your daily streak.
Is it free?
Yes. No signup, no paywall, no ads inside the game.
Related daily football games
- Futbol Bingo — the same category library, one answer per cell instead of as many as you can.
- Deep Cut — same idea inverted: the rarer your answer, the better.
- Football Swipe — the other timed game: true or false against the clock.
Name Them All is maintained by the PlayFutbol Data Team · 49 categories · 766-player database · Last audited September 14, 2026 · Report corrections at support@playfutbol.app.