Calories Burned Playing Soccer

A 155 lb (70 kg) person playing recreational soccer for 30 minutes burns approximately 258 calories — and that number climbs steeply with body weight, intensity, and match length.

Soccer is one of the more demanding team sports from a calorie-burn standpoint. It combines sustained aerobic effort with repeated sprints, changes of direction, and short recovery periods. Unlike steady-state jogging, where pace and heart rate stay relatively flat, soccer creates natural interval patterns — light jogging, sudden acceleration, a sliding tackle, a dead stop. That variability keeps metabolic demand high throughout.

The Numbers: Calorie Table by Weight and Duration

We use MET 7.0, the value assigned to recreational soccer in the Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al., 2011). The formula is: calories = MET x body weight in kg x 0.0175 x minutes.

Duration	125 lb (57 kg)	155 lb (70 kg)	185 lb (84 kg)
15 min	104 kcal	129 kcal	154 kcal
30 min	208 kcal	258 kcal	308 kcal
45 min	313 kcal	388 kcal	463 kcal
60 min	417 kcal	517 kcal	617 kcal

For a full 90-minute match, a 155 lb player would be looking at roughly 775 kcal gross — though substitutes and halftime reduce effective playing time considerably.

You can plug your own weight and activity into our calories burned calculator to refine the estimate.

What Changes the Number

Intensity level. The Compendium lists competitive soccer at MET 10.0, compared to MET 7.0 for recreational play. That gap — roughly 43% more calories — reflects how much more running a competitive match demands. Casual kickabouts with friends sit closer to 5.0-6.0 MET.

Body weight. The table above makes this concrete: at 60 minutes, the difference between a 125 lb and a 185 lb player is 200 kcal. Heavier individuals move more mass, which costs more energy, at the same MET.

Fitness level. Well-trained players can sustain higher-intensity play for longer, but calorie burn per minute at a given heart rate may be marginally lower than a deconditioned player at the same absolute workload. Net result: fit players often burn more over a full match because their intensity floor is higher.

Position and role. Central midfielders and wide players cover the most ground — GPS tracking studies put match distance at 10-13 km. Goalkeepers cover roughly 5-6 km and burn proportionally fewer calories, closer to MET 4.5-5.0 for their playing time.

Environmental conditions. Heat forces the body to maintain core temperature, increasing calorie expenditure by up to 5-10% in hot humid conditions. Altitude adds a similar tax.

How to Actually Track It

Wearable heart rate monitors give the most accurate picture of individual calorie burn during soccer. Because the sport alternates between rest, jogging, and sprinting, a flat MET estimate can undercount or overcount depending on your specific match. A chest strap or optical wrist HR monitor captures that variability directly.

If you do not have a wearable, the MET table above is a solid baseline. Use your actual playing time (subtract the bench time, halftime, injury stoppages) rather than the full clock duration.

The other side of the equation matters just as much: what you eat after the match. Refuelling with the right amount of protein and carbohydrate determines whether your post-game hunger turns into a surplus. Our guide to counting calories to lose weight covers how to build that simple habit without obsessing over every gram.

For daily pattern tracking, knowing your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) gives soccer sessions their proper weight in your overall budget. You can estimate yours at our TDEE calculator.

After the match, photograph your plate with CalEye to log your post-game meal in seconds — no database searching, no manual entry, just a photo.