Football

 Football

 Football, commonly known as association football or soccer, is a sport in which two teams of 11 players attempt to move the ball into the other team's goal using any part of their body save their hands and arms. Only the goalie is allowed to touch the ball, and only within the penalty area that surrounds the goal. The squad that scores the most goals is the winner. 

Football is the most popular sport in the world in terms of both participation and spectators. The sport can be played nearly everywhere, from official football playing fields (pitches) to gymnasiums, streets, school playgrounds, parks, or beaches, thanks to its basic rules and equipment. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), football's governing body, estimated that there were approximately 250 million football players and over 1.3 billion people "interested" in the sport at the turn of the twenty-first century; in 2010, a combined television audience of more than 26 billion people watched football's premier tournament, the quadrennial month-long World Cup finals.

History

The beginnings

Football as we know it now began in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century. “Folk football” games have been played in cities and villages since before the Middle Ages, following local customs and with few regulations. From the early nineteenth century onwards, industrialization and urbanization, which reduced the amount of leisure time and space available to the working class, combined with a history of legal prohibitions against particularly violent and destructive forms of folk football, to undermine the game's status. Football, on the other hand, became popular as a winter sport at public (independent) institutions such as Winchester, Charterhouse, and Eton. Each school has its own set of regulations; some permitted very minimal ball handling while others did not. Because of the differences in regulations, it was impossible for public schoolboys entering university to continue playing with anybody other than their previous classmates. The University of Cambridge attempted to standardize and codify the rules of play as early as 1843, and by 1848, most public schools had adopted these "Cambridge regulations," which were then extended by Cambridge graduates who founded football clubs. The written regulations of football, which forbade the carrying of the ball, were produced in 1863 after a series of meetings with clubs from metropolitan London and neighboring counties. As a result, rugby's "handling" game remained outside the newly established Football Association (FA). By 1870, the FA had made it illegal for anybody other than the goalie to touch the ball.

However, the new regulations were not generally recognized in the United Kingdom, and many teams, particularly in and around Sheffield, continued to follow their own set of rules. Although this northern English city was home to the FA's first provincial club, the Sheffield Football Association, the predecessor of succeeding county organizations, was founded in 1867. In 1866, two matches were played between Sheffield and London clubs, and a year later, a match between a Middlesex club against a Kent and Surrey club was played under the new regulations. In 1871, the FA invited 15 clubs to participate in a cup tournament and contribute to the purchase of a trophy. By 1877, the British organizations had agreed on a common rule, 43 clubs were competing, and the London clubs' initial supremacy had waned.

Professionalism

In Victorian Britain, the emergence of modern football was strongly linked to trends of industry and urbanization. The majority of the new working-class residents of Britain's industrial towns and cities eventually abandoned ancient bucolic pleasures like badger-baiting in favor of new forms of communal recreation. From the 1850s onwards, more and more industrial employees had Saturday afternoons free, and many of them went to the new sport of football to watch or play. Working-class boys and men were formed into recreational football teams by key urban organizations such as churches, labor unions, and schools. Rising adult literacy boosted coverage of organized sports in the press, while transportation facilities like trains and urban trams made it possible for players and fans to get to football games. In England, average attendance grew from 4,600 in 1888 to 7,900 in 1895, 13,200 in 1905, and 23,100 at the beginning of World War I. The dominance of football has diminished public interest in other sports, particularly cricket.

Leading clubs, particularly those in Lancashire, began charging admission to spectators as early as the 1870s, allowing them to pay illegal wages to recruit highly talented working-class players, many of whom were from Scotland, despite the FA's amateurism rule. Working-class players and northern English teams yearned for a professional structure that would compensate them in part for their "broken time" (time away from other jobs) and the danger of injury. In maintaining an amateurism policy that preserved upper and upper-middle class control over the game, the FA remained firmly elitist.

In 1884, the FA banned two clubs for utilizing professional players, bringing the subject of professionalism to a head in England. However, despite early attempts to limit professionalism to compensation for lost time, the FA had little choice but to punish the practice a year later. As a result, northern clubs rose to prominence, owing to their big fan bases and ability to attract superior players. The higher classes sought shelter in other sports, particularly cricket and rugby union, as the influence of working-class players grew in football. From 1888 onwards, professionalism prompted further modernisation of the game with the formation of the Football League, which allowed the top twelve clubs from the North and Midlands to play systematically against one another. In 1893, a lower division was established, bringing the total number of teams to 28. In 1890, the Irish and Scots created leagues. The Southern League was founded in 1894 and merged with the Football League in 1920. During this time, however, football did not become a big moneymaker. Professional sports teams formed limited liability corporations (LLCs) in order to obtain property for the gradual construction of stadium amenities. The majority of English clubs were owned and managed by businesspeople, but stockholders earned very little, if any, profits; their main benefit was a boost in public standing as a result of operating the local club.

Later national leagues outside of the United Kingdom adopted the British model, which included league championships, at least one annual cup competition, and a league hierarchy that promoted clubs finishing first in the standings to the next higher division (promotion) and relegated clubs to the next lower division (relegation) (relegation). In the Netherlands, a league was founded in 1889, although professionalism did not come until 1954. Germany's first national championship season ended in 1903, but it took another 60 years for the Bundesliga, a comprehensive and completely professional national league, to emerge. In France, where the game was first played in the 1870s, a professional league did not begin until 1932, only a few years after Argentina and Brazil had accepted professionalism.

a worldwide organization

Football had expanded across Europe by the early twentieth century, but it needed international structure. The Fédération International de Football Association (FIFA) was formed in 1904 by members from the football organizations of Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland (FIFA). Despite the fact that Englishman Daniel Woolfall was elected FIFA president in 1906 and that all of the home nations (England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales) were allowed as members by 1911, British football associations remained critical of the new organization. The International Board, which had been created by the home nations in 1882, accepted British authority over the rules of football. Nonetheless, after failing to persuade other FIFA members that Germany, Austria, and Hungary should be removed following World War I, the British associations withdrew their memberships in 1920. In 1924, the British associations rejoined FIFA, but not before insisting on a very strict definition of amateurism, particularly in Olympic football. Other countries declined to follow the British lead once more, and the British quit in 1928, remaining outside FIFA until 1946. When FIFA launched the World Cup, the British attitude toward the international game remained unchanged. The British national teams were not invited to the first three competitions due to their lack of FIFA membership (1930, 1934, and 1938). The two top finishers in the British home nations tournament would qualify for World Cup participation in the next competition, held in 1950; England won, although Scotland (which finished second) opted not to partake.