Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-2108497-20130508053915/@comment-2108497-20130510081450

It's not "in season 3", soccer teams have sixteen players (five substitutes) in real life, it's the rules of soccer in Japan (other countries have other numbers of allowed substitutes).

If fact in the first episode they did emphasize that only players were chosen (not really a spoiler since it's been known for quite some time now how many new characters there were).