About Football Sleuths

Cosy Armchair Football Hunts from Home

Cryptic Clues, Hidden Footy Secrets, Real Cash Prizes

Football Sleuths is a small UK hobby project created by two mates who’ve been obsessed with football, puzzles, and digging into obscure stats since we were kids kicking a ball around the park.

Skip the match highlights, skip the boredom — just clever cryptic clues landing in your inbox, hidden player connections, transfer sagas, iconic moments, or buried match facts to unravel from your sofa, and real cash prizes for the sharpest minds who crack them.

It’s all about pure deduction, fair play, banter… and that sweet moment when the pieces finally click and you realise you’ve nailed it.

Curious how it all started? Scroll down to read our story.

The Story Behind Football Sleuths

This small, independent UK-based project was born from one simple, stubborn question that’s nagged at us for decades: why do the best football trivia and mystery games always seem to involve endless scrolling, watching highlights reels, or leaving the house?

We’re two lifelong mates in our early 60s now, and we’ve been obsessed with football, obscure stats, transfer gossip, and piecing together hidden connections since we were kids kicking a ball around the park after school.

Back then we’d spend time after playing a game having a go at those scratch cards to reveal the team. The ones that raised a few quid for the local club, and a fiver for the winner.

We’d quiz each other in the pub after matches: “Who scored the winner in the 1973 FA Cup semi-final replay?” “What was George Best’s kit number in that European game?” “Which manager once played against his own brother?” — the loser bought the next round.

We travelled to old grounds that no longer exist — Highbury on a foggy Saturday, the old Maine Road, Ayresome Park, Roker Park — standing on crumbling terraces, soaking in the atmosphere, memorising every corner flag and floodlight pylon because we knew one day they’d be gone.

Those days weren’t about collecting stickers or watching Match of the Day reruns — they were about noticing patterns, connecting dots no one else saw, and that slow, delicious thrill when you suddenly realised the obscure fact that tied everything together… it never left either of us.

Life moved on — work, kids, responsibilities — and the years slipped by.

We still loved diving into football stories, kept shelves full of old Rothmans yearbooks, programmes, and Panini albums, but the trivia quizzes and prediction games we found online always felt passive: multiple-choice, quick videos, or endless scrolling through social media. We’d joke over a pint: “What if you could be a real football detective right here on the sofa?

No need to watch 90 minutes of highlights. No distractions — just clever cryptic clues, online research on the transfer market, or old match reports, deduction, and a real cash prize for whoever first names the hidden player, manager, match, transfer saga, or iconic moment.

A couple of years ago we finally stopped wondering and started building.

That’s how Football Sleuths came into being: two lifelong football and puzzle mates. No investors, no big company behind us — just two blokes who wanted to create the kind of armchair football mysteries we’d always wished existed.

Everything is done openly and honestly: winners announced publicly (anonymised for privacy), proof of payment shared, rules crystal clear, privacy respected.

We want this to feel personal and trustworthy — because that’s exactly how we’d want to play if we were entering.

After all these years, we still get the same quiet thrill we did back then when the last clue clicks and the mystery is revealed. We hope you do too.

Ready to Start Sleuthing Football?

Ready to put your football knowledge and deduction skills to the test?

Our cosy armchair football hunts are designed for pure fun from home — with cash prizes for the sharpest minds who crack our cryptic clues about players, managers, transfers, hidden stats, iconic moments, etc, or juicy match details.

No travel, just your wits!

See full details in our Rules page

Join fellow sleuths for hints, discussions, and community chat, in our Facebook group

Not quite ready to dive in?

Register below for email updates — be the first to hear about new celebrity hunts, prize details, and launch announcements.

Takes under a minute