Football higher or lower

How to play football higher or lower

1. Choose a category: International goals (men's goals for their country, retired players only) or Year founded (well-known clubs from England, Scotland and Europe).
2. The left card shows a player or club with its number. The right card hides its number.
3. Press Higher (more goals, or founded later) or Lower (fewer goals, or founded earlier).
4. If you are right, the hidden card becomes the new left card and a new one appears. One wrong answer ends the run.
5. Your best streak for each category is saved on this device.

Worked example

The left card says Gary Lineker, England, 48 goals. The right card is Thierry Henry, France. Henry scored 51 for France, so Higher is right and your streak is 1. Next: Henry (51) against Ian Rush, Wales. Rush scored 28, so press Lower. In the founding-year game the same idea applies: Liverpool (1892) against Everton (1878)? Everton is older, so the answer is Lower.

The numbers in the game

The goals category runs from Ali Daei's 108 for Iran, which was the world record until 2021, down to David Beckham's 17 for England and Mark Hughes's 16 for Wales. Pelé's 77 for Brazil and Gerd Müller's 68 for West Germany sit in the middle with Robbie Keane's 68 for Ireland. England's list goes Rooney 53, Bobby Charlton 49, Lineker 48, Greaves 44, Owen 40, then Shearer, Finney and Lofthouse all on 30. Wales has Gareth Bale on 41 and Rush on 28; Scotland's joint record is 30, shared by Kenny Dalglish and Denis Law.

The club category starts with Notts County (1862), the oldest professional club in the world, and Nottingham Forest (1865), and ends with Paris Saint-Germain (1970). A large group of famous clubs was formed between 1874 and 1910, so the close calls are where streaks end. Open “See every figure in the game” under the cards to check any number.

Tips for a long streak

• Think in bands. 100+ is only Daei. 60–85 is the old greats and a few modern strikers (Puskás, Pelé, Klose, Müller, Keane, Drogba, Ibrahimović, Ronaldo). 40–59 is most of the big names. Below 30 is midfielders and wingers.
• When the left card is extreme, the answer is easy. Against 108 everything is lower; against 16 everything is higher. Use those turns to relax.
• For founding years, remember anchors: Sheffield Wednesday 1867, Aston Villa 1874, Arsenal 1886, Celtic 1887, Barcelona and AC Milan both 1899, Real Madrid 1902, Chelsea 1905, Leeds 1919.
• Midfielders score fewer than you expect. Gerrard got 21 for England in 114 games and Lampard 29 in 106.

Ideas for pubs and classrooms

Play as a team game on a big screen: each table takes a turn and keeps the streak going, and the team that breaks it buys the crisps. In a maths lesson it is a quick way to practise comparing and ordering numbers, and the founding years make a natural timeline. Ask pupils to work out how many years separate two clubs before they press the button.

How we tested it

Every goal figure was checked in October 2026 against Wikipedia's list of men's footballers with 50 or more international goals and the England, Wales and Scotland records pages. We dropped Luis Suárez because the list still marks him as active, and we did not include anyone still playing international football. Founding years for 14 of the 46 clubs were checked against each club's Wikipedia page; the rest are well-known dates we were sure of. We did not use World Cup goal totals because the source we fetched did not give a clean, consistent table.

Automated Node tests check that names in each category are unique, that the picker never puts two equal values side by side (30 random draws from every card in both categories), that “higher” and “lower” are judged correctly between the smallest and largest values, and that a tie, if one ever happened, would count as correct. All tests pass.