Association football, commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who mostly use their feet to kick an inflated ball around a pitch (playing field).
The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposing team by moving the ball into the rectangular-framed goal which that team defends. 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 and territories, it is the world's most popular sport.
Association football is played in accordance with the Laws of the Game, a set of rules that has been in effect since 1863 and maintained by the International Football Association Board (IFAB) since 1886. The game is played with a football that is in circumference. When the ball is in play, the players mainly use their feet, but may also use any other part of their body, except for their hands or arms, to control, strike, or pass the ball; the head, chest, and thighs are commonly used. Only the goalkeepers may use their hands and arms, but only within their own penalty area. Depending on the format of the competition, an equal number of goals scored may result in a draw being declared with 1 point awarded to each team, or the game may go into extra time or a penalty shoot-out.
Internationally, association football is governed by FIFA. Under FIFA, there are six continental confederations: AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, OFC, and UEFA. National associations (e.g. the FA in England, U.S. Soccer in the United States, etc.) are responsible for managing the game in their own countries both professionally and at an amateur level, and coordinating competitions in accordance with the Laws of the Game. The most prestigious senior international competition is the FIFA World Cup. The men's World Cup is the most-viewed sporting event in the world, surpassing the Olympic Games. The most prestigious competition in European club football is the UEFA Champions League, which attracts an extensive television audience worldwide. The final of the men's Champions League is the most-watched annual sporting event in the world.
Injuries sustained while playing association football are common, with an estimated more than 2 million football-related injuries requiring emergency department visits in the United States between 2005 and 2014, and an average of 6.9 injuries per 1,000 player-participations in games. However, regular neuromuscular training programs, such as FIFA 11+ and NWP, have been found to reduce injury rates, particularly severe injuries, by several tens of percent among both adult and youth players.
Name
Association football is part of a family of football games that emerged from various ball games played worldwide since antiquity. The word "association" in this term refers to the Football Association (the FA), founded in London in 1863, which published the first set of rules for the sport that same year. The term was coined to distinguish the type of football played in accordance with the FA rules from other types that were gaining popularity at the time, particularly rugby football.
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 spelt assoccer (a shortening of "association"), it was later reduced to the modern spelling. Early alternative spellings included socca and socker. 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.
Within the English-speaking world, association football is now usually called simply "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 versions 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 types of football, namely rugby union and rugby league.
History
FIFA has stated that soccer originated in Britain, starting around the eighth century, and 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.
Ancient precursors
Kicking ball games arose independently multiple times across multiple cultures. The Chinese competitive game (, literally "kickball"; also known as tsu chu) resembles modern association football as well as a mix of basketball and volleyball. This is the earliest form of a kicking game for which there is historical evidence. The game was first recorded as an exercise in the Zhan Guo Ce, a military history from the Han dynasty. players would pass the ball around, having to avoid it touching the ground at any point. It was then passed to a designated player, who attempted to kick it through the fengliu yan, a circular goal atop 10–11-metre poles. During the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), games were standardised and rules were established. The Silk Road facilitated the transmission of cuju outside of China, especially the form of the game popular in the Tang dynasty, the period when the inflatable ball was invented and replaced the stuffed ball. Other East Asian games include in Japan and in Korea, both influenced by cuju. originated after the year 600 during the Asuka period. It was a ceremonial rather than a competitive game, and involved the kicking of a mari, a ball made of animal skin. 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".
Mediaeval precursors
In the Middle Ages, one notable game with similarities to modern football was calcio storico fiorentino, which originated in Florence, Italy. Another mediaeval sport that can be considered a form of early football is la soule (or choule), played in France from the 12th century, in which the ball was propelled by hands, feet, and sticks. As with pre-codified mob football, the antecedent of all modern football codes, these mediaeval games involved more handling of the ball than kicking it.
Modern era 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 of the FA between October and December 1863; the English FA eventually issued the first comprehensive set of rules named Laws of the Game, forming modern football. The laws included bans on running with the ball in hand and hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Eleven clubs, under the charge of FA secretary Ebenezer Cobb Morley, ratified the original thirteen laws of the game. The sticking point was hacking, which a twelfth club at the meeting, Blackheath FC, had wanted to keep, resulting in their withdrawal from the FA. Other English rugby clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA, and instead in 1871, along with Blackheath, formed the Rugby Football Union. The 1863 FA rules included handling of the ball by "marks" and the lack of a crossbar, making the game remarkably similar to Victorian rules football, which was being developed around the same 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.
Contemporary era For most of the 20th century, Europe and South America were the dominant regions in association football. The FIFA World Cup, inaugurated in 1930, became the main stage for players of both continents to show their worth and the strength of their national teams. In the second half of the century, the European Cup and the Copa Libertadores were created, and the champions of these two club competitions would contest the Intercontinental Cup to prove which team was the best in the world.
In the 21st century, South America has continued to produce some of the best footballers in the world, but its clubs have fallen behind the still dominant European clubs, which often sign the best players from Latin America and elsewhere. Meanwhile, football has improved in Africa, Asia, and North America, and nowadays, these regions are at least on equal grounds with South America in club football. When it comes to national teams, countries in the Caribbean and Oceania regions (excluding Australia) have yet to make a mark in international football, whilst Europeans and South Americans continue to dominate the men's FIFA World Cup, as no team from any other region has managed to even reach the final.
Football is played at a professional level all over the world. Millions of people regularly go to football stadiums to follow their favourite teams, whilst 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.