R.S.C Anderlecht fan here...since 1971! Have played in first division for 2 years with F.C.Liegeois in the early 80's before to screw my ankle definitively....
I still love the game. I've said on another thread that I'm still playing and I'm 50! Ok it's only 5-a-side, 40 minute matches but it's competitive and no allowance is made for our age.
Hey, that's what I play too! We circle up and count off 1-4, then play 1/2 field, 2 games - 40 minutes each. We generally don't keep track of the score, but if it seems greatly imbalanced then we'll switch some players around. It's meant to be competitive, while still keeping us older folks able to go to work the next day.
Ours is proper teams (players can only be transferred at the season end) in a league structure. We've got referees and ball boys and the score is most definitely counted. We've just changed from Monday nights when we were in the Premier division (naturally) to Wednesdays and we've had to start at the bottom in division 4. We were a bit over-confident last night and lost 7-6!
Ball boys? Even when I played leagues we didn't have ball boys. That's fancy! I think it would be fun to play leagues again. However, here in Minnesota during the winter we either play indoor (the size of a hockey rink) or on a full field in a dome. I play in a dome, but it's just recreational now. The fake grass is actually pretty nice.
We play outside on Astroturf, there's two courts with four pitches on each court . For a while the league was based at Brighton Rugby club who had a fantastic artificial grass pitch, it was almost indistinguishable from the real thing - in fact it was probably TOO good. However they changed their policy and decided they didn't want to host organised association football any more. The ball boys go and get the balls when they fly over the fence and also give you another one to be getting on with so that the game doesn't stop. Very useful but I prefer it when they take their time as booting the ball miles out of play is my way of taking a breather!