Association football (commonly known as football or soccer) is a sport played between two teams of eleven players each, using a spherical ball. It is the world's most popular sport.[1][2][3]
The game is played on a rectangular grass, or green artificial turf, field, with a goal in the centre of each of the short ends. The object of the game is to score by driving the ball into the opposing goal. In general play, the goalkeepers are the only players allowed to touch the ball with their hands or arms, while the field players typically use their feet to kick the ball into position, occasionally using their torso or head to intercept a ball in midair. The team that scores the most goals by the end of the match wins. If the score is tied at the end of the game, either a draw is declared or the game goes into extra time and/or a penalty shootout, depending on the format of the competition.
The modern game was codified in England following the formation of The Football Association (FA), whose 1863 Laws of the Game created the foundations for the way the sport is played today. Football is governed internationally by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association ("International Federation of Association Football"), commonly known by the acronym FIFA. The most prestigious international football competition is the FIFA World Cup, held every four years.[4]
Etymology
The rules of football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863 and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other forms of football played at the time, specifically rugby football. The term soccer originated in England, first appearing in the 1880s as an Oxford "-er" abbreviation of the word "association".[5]
Today the sport is known as football in English-speaking countries in which it is the most popular football code; where other codes are more popular (the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa), the sport is more commonly referred to as soccer. Non-English-speaking countries predominantly use a variation of football, such as Spanish fútbol, Portuguese futebol or German Fußball.
