Association football

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposition by moving the ball beyond the goal line into a rectangular framed goal defended by the opposing side. Traditionally, the game has been played over two 45 minute halves, for a total match time of 90 minutes. With an estimated 250 million players active in over 200 countries, it is considered the world's most popular sport.

The game of association football is played in accordance with the Laws of the Game, a set of rules that has been in effect since 1863 with the International Football Association Board (IFAB) maintaining them since 1886. The game is played with a football that is in circumference. The two teams compete to get the ball into the other team's goal (between the posts and under the bar), thereby scoring a goal. When the ball is in play, the players mainly use their feet, but may use any other part of their body to control, strike or pass the ball apart from their hands or arms. Only the goalkeepers may use their hands and arms, and only then within the penalty area. The team that has scored more goals at the end of the game is the winner. Depending on the format of the competition, an equal number of goals scored may result in a draw being declared, or the game goes into extra time or a penalty shootout.

Internationally, association football is globally governed by FIFA. The national associations are responsible for managing the game, both professionally and at an amateur level, in their own countries and coordinating competitions in accordance with the Laws of the Game. The most senior and prestigious international competitions are the men's FIFA World Cup and the FIFA Women's World Cup. The men's World Cup is the most-viewed sporting event in the world, surpassing the Olympic Games. The top five European men's leagues are the Premier League (England), La Liga (Spain), Bundesliga (Germany), Serie A (Italy), and Ligue 1 (France). Attracting most of the world's best players, each of the leagues has a total wage cost in excess of £600 million/€763 million/US$1.185 billion.

The final of the men's tournament has been, in recent years, the most-watched annual sporting event in the world. Women's association football has historically seen opposition from national associations severely curbing its development, several outlawing it completely. Restrictions started to be reduced in the 1980s and the first women's World Cup was the 1991 FIFA Women's World Cup in China with only 12 teams from the respective 6 confederations. By the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in France, this had increased to 24 national teams and a record-breaking 1.12 billion viewers watched the competition. The two most prestigious competitions in European club football are the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Women's Champions League, which attract an extensive television audience throughout the world.

Name

Football is one of a family of football codes, which emerged from various ball games played worldwide since antiquity.

Within the English-speaking world, association football is now usually called "football" in Great Britain and most of Ulster in the north of Ireland, whereas people usually call it "soccer" in regions and countries where other codes of football are prevalent, such as Australia, Canada, South Africa, most of Ireland (excluding Ulster) and the United States. A notable exception is New Zealand, where in the first two decades of the 21st century, under the influence of international television, "football" has been gaining prevalence, despite the dominance of other codes of football, namely rugby union and rugby league. In Japan, the game is also primarily called sakkā (サッカー), derived from "soccer".

The term ''soccer'' comes from Oxford "-er" slang, which was prevalent at the University of Oxford in England from about 1875, and is thought to have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School. Initially spelled ''assoccer'', it was later reduced to the modern spelling. This form of slang also gave rise to ''rugger'' for rugby football, ''fiver'' and ''tenner'' for five pound and ten pound notes, and the now-archaic ''footer'' that was also a name for association football. The word ''soccer'' arrived at its final form in 1895 and was first recorded in 1889 in the earlier form of ''socca.''

History

Kicking ball games arose independently multiple times across multiple cultures. ' and ' were Greek ball games. An image of an ' player depicted in low relief on a stele of in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens appears on the UEFA European Championship trophy. Athenaeus, writing in 228 CE, mentions the Roman ball game '. ' and ' were played involving hands and violence. They all appear to have resembled rugby football, wrestling and volleyball more than what is recognizable as modern football. As with pre-codified mob football, the antecedent of all modern football codes, these three games involved more handling the ball than kicking.

The Chinese competitive game ' (, literally "kick ball") resembles modern association football. ' players could use any part of the body apart from hands and the intent was kicking a ball through an opening into a net. During the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), ' games were standardised and rules were established.

' and ' were Greek ball games. An image of an ' player depicted in low relief on a stele of in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens appears on the UEFA European Championship trophy. Athenaeus, writing in 228 CE, mentions the Roman ball game '. ' and ' were played involving hands and violence. They all appear to have resembled rugby football, wrestling and volleyball more than what is recognizable as modern football.Nigel Wilson, ''Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece'', Routledge, 2005, p. 310Nigel M. Kennell, ''The Gymnasium of Virtue: Education and Culture in Ancient Sparta (Studies in the History of Greece and Rome)'', The University of North Carolina Press, 1995, o
Google Books
Steve Craig, ''Sports and Games of the Ancients: (Sports and Games Through History)'', Greenwood, 2002, o
Google Books
Don Nardo, ''Greek and Roman Sport'', Greenhaven Press, 1999, p. 83Sally E. D. Wilkins, ''Sports and games of medieval cultures'', Greenwood, 2002, o
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As with pre-codified mob football, the antecedent of all modern football codes, these three games involved more handling the ball than kicking.

Other games included ' in Japan and ' in Korea. In North America, was a ball game played by the Algonquians; it was described as "almost identical to the kind of folk football being played in Europe at the same time, in which the ball was kicked through goals".

Association football in itself does not have a classical history. Notwithstanding any similarities to other ball games played around the world, FIFA has recognised that no historical connection exists with any game played in antiquity outside Europe. The modern rules of association football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played in the public schools of England. The history of football in England dates back to at least the eighth century.

The Cambridge rules, first drawn up at the University of Cambridge in 1848, were particularly influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association football. The Cambridge rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury schools. They were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various forms of football. Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club, formed by former public school pupils in 1857, which led to the formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules.

These ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association (The FA) in 1863, which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, London. The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse. The Freemasons' Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between October and December, which eventually produced the first comprehensive set of rules. At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath F.C., withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting: the first allowed for running with the ball in hand; the second for obstructing such a run by hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Other English rugby clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA, and instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union. The eleven remaining clubs, under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley, went on to ratify the original thirteen laws of the game. These rules included handling of the ball by "marks" and the lack of a crossbar, rules which made it remarkably similar to Victorian rules football being developed at that time in Australia. The Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s, with the FA absorbing some of its rules until there was little difference between the games.

The world's oldest football competition is the FA Cup, which was founded by the footballer and cricketer Charles W. Alcock, and has been contested by English teams since 1872. The first official international football match also took place in 1872, between Scotland and England in Glasgow, again at the instigation of Alcock. England is also home to the world's first football league, which was founded in Birmingham in 1888 by Aston Villa director William McGregor. The original format contained 12 clubs from the Midlands and Northern England.

The Laws of the Game are determined by the International Football Association Board (IFAB). The board was formed in 1886 after a meeting in Manchester of the Football Association, the Scottish Football Association, the Football Association of Wales, and the Irish Football Association. FIFA, the international football body, was formed in Paris in 1904 and declared that they would adhere to the Laws of the Game of the Football Association. The growing popularity of the international game led to the admittance of FIFA representatives to the IFAB in 1913. The board consists of four representatives from FIFA and one representative from each of the four British associations.

Football is played at a professional level all over the world. Millions of people regularly go to football stadiums to follow their favourite teams, while billions more watch the game on television or on the internet. A very large number of people also play football at an amateur level. According to a survey conducted by FIFA published in 2001, over 240 million people from more than 200 countries regularly play football. Football has the highest global television audience in sport.

In many parts of the world, football evokes great passions and plays an important role in the life of individual fans, local communities, and even nations. Ryszard Kapuściński says that Europeans who are polite, modest, or humble fall easily into rage when playing or watching football games. The Ivory Coast national football team helped secure a truce to the nation's civil war in 2006 and it helped further reduce tensions between government and rebel forces in 2007 by playing a match in the rebel capital of Bouaké, an occasion that brought both armies together peacefully for the first time. By contrast, football is widely considered to have been the final proximate cause for the Football War in June 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras. The sport also exacerbated tensions at the beginning of the Croatian War of Independence of the 1990s, when a match between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade degenerated into rioting in May 1990.

Women's association football

Early women's football

Women may have been playing "football" for as long as the game has existed. Evidence shows that an ancient version of the game ( Tsu Chu) was played by women during the Han dynasty (25–220 CE). Two female figures are depicted in Han dynasty (25–220 CE) frescoes, playing Tsu Chu. There are, however, a number of opinions about the accuracy of dates, the earliest estimates at 5000 BCE.

Association football, the modern game, also has documented early involvement of women. An annual competition in Mid-Lothian, Scotland during the 1790s is reported, too. In 1863, football governing bodies introduced standardised rules to prohibit violence on the pitch, making it more socially acceptable for women to play. The first match recorded by the Scottish Football Association<