Most individuals involved in grassroots football will have a FAN. FAN stands for FA Number & is the unique number used to record all football participants, including Players, Referees, Coaches & Club/League Officials.

In order to access the FA’s Whole Game System (WGS), an individual is required to have a FAN record. If an email address is recorded against the FAN, the individual can use the Reset/Retrieve Password option to login if required.

If an individual is unsure of what their FAN is, they can contact their Club Secretary or the County FA, who will be able to search for this on the system.

Because an individual’s records (playing history, discipline cases, completed qualifications, football roles etc.) are all stored on FANs, duplicate FANs can create a variety of potential issues. Every effort should therefore be made to avoid creating duplicate FANs.

If an individual has more than one FAN, please inform the County FA, who can then merge the records together. Once the merge, also known as de-duplication, has been scheduled by the County FA, it usually takes up to 48 hours to complete.

With a majority of Leagues now using WGS for registering players, & this set to become mandatory from the 2021-2022 season, most players will therefore have a FAN record in the system. This is worth bearing in mind for:

- Referees when reporting discipline cases
- Club Officials when registering players / adding officials to the Club
- Players when booking themselves onto coaching / refereeing / safeguarding courses

A new FAN should only be created if there is confidence that an existing FAN does not already exist for the individual on the system. To check if an individual already has a FAN, please contact Info@Berks-BucksFA.com, making sure to include the individual’s name, DOB & postcode.

If you'd like to find out more about creating a FAN Number, please check out The FA's handy 'how to' guide, below.

Guide: Registering for a FAN