Football Game| Where did football start?

 Meaning of Football.

Any of various sports where the idea is to move the ball across a goal line, into a goal, or between goalposts by sprinting, passing, or kicking it between two teams on a typically rectangular field with goalposts or goals at either end.

Football, commonly known as association football or soccer, is a sport in which two teams each have 11 players, and the object of the game is to get the ball into the opposing team's goal without using hands or arms. The team with the most goals scored wins. According to the number of players and spectators, football is the most watched sport in the world.

Britain is where modern football first emerged in the 19th century. Even while "folk football" had been played with different rules since the Middle Ages, it only became standardized when it started to be played as a winter sport in public schools. The Football Association was established in 1863, and after the first cup match between regional football clubs in Britain was held there, they formalized the game's regulations.

According to estimates from FIFA, there were roughly 250 million football players in the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The World Cup is the most prestigious event in football. It is a quadrennial competition that undoubtedly attracts the most television viewers of any sporting event in the globe.

Football, commonly known as association football or soccer, is a sport in which two teams of 11 players attempt to advance the ball into the goal of the other team by using any part of their body other than their hands and arms. Only the goalie is allowed to handle the ball, and only within the area surrounding the goal that is designated as the penalty area. The team with the most goals scored wins.

When it comes to both players and viewers, football is the most watched sport in the world. The sport may be played practically anyplace thanks to its basic rules and necessary equipment, including gyms, streets, school playgrounds, parks, and beaches in addition to official football playing areas (pitches). A combined television audience of more than 26 billion people watched football's premier competition, the quadrennial month-long World Cup finals, in 2010, according to estimates from the sport's governing body, the Federation International de Football Association (FIFA), which estimated that there were roughly 250 million football players and over 1.3 billion "interested" parties worldwide at the turn of the twenty-first century.

History of Football Game.

The initial years.

The 19th century saw the birth of modern football in Britain. "Folk football" games have been played in cities and villages since before the middle Ages, following regional traditions and requiring the fewest possible rules. From the early 19th century on, the status of the game was weakened by industrialization and urbanization, which decreased the amount of free time and space available to the working class, as well as by a history of legal restrictions against particularly violent and destructive forms of folk football. But in public (independent) schools like Winchester, Charterhouse, and Eton, football was adopted as a winter sport between residence houses.

Each school had its own set of rules; some permitted very restricted ball handling, while others did not. Public schoolboys who entered universities found it challenging to continue playing, outside of with previous classmates, due to the disparity in rules. The University of Cambridge made an effort to regulate and codify the game's regulations as early as 1843. By 1848, most public schools had adopted these "Cambridge rules," which were then further popularized by Cambridge alums who founded football clubs.

The printed football rules, which forbade carrying the ball, were created in 1863 following a series of discussions with clubs from metropolitan London and neighboring counties. As a result, the rugby "handling" game was excluded from the newly established Football Association (FA). In fact, the FA forbade the handling of the ball by anyone other than the goalkeeper by 1870.

However, the new regulations were not adopted by all clubs in Britain, particularly those in and around Sheffield. While the Sheffield Football Association, the progenitor of later county organizations, was founded in this northern English city in 1867, it was also the location of the first provincial club to join the FA.

In 1866, Sheffield and London clubs faced off in two games, and the following year, a Middlesex club faced off against a Kent and Surrey club in a match played under the new set of regulations. A request for participation in a cup competition and financial support for a trophy was approved by 15 FA clubs in 1871. 43 clubs were in competition by 1877, and the London clubs' initial supremacy had lessened. The organizations of Great Britain had now decided on a unified code.

Professionalism of Football game.

In Victorian Britain, the processes of industry and urbanization were directly related to the growth of modern football. The majority of the new working-class residents of Britain's industrial towns and cities gradually stopped participating in ancient rural pleasures like badger-baiting and sought out new types of communal recreation. With an increase in the likelihood that industrial employees would have Saturdays off starting in the 1850s, many of them began to watch or participate in the new sport of football. Important urban institutions like churches, unions, and schools formed recreational football teams for working-class boys and men. Growing adult literacy encouraged the media to cover organized sports, while transportation infrastructure like railroads and urban trams made it possible for players and spectators to get to football games. In England, the average attendance increased from 4,600 in 1888 to 7,900 in 1895, 13,200 in 1905, and 23,100 at the start of World War I. The success of football lowered public interest in other sports, particularly cricket.

Leading clubs, particularly those in Lancashire, began charging admission to fans as early as the 1870s and were therefore able to pay illegal wages to entice highly skilled working-class players, many of whom were from Scotland, despite the FA's amateurism regulation. Working-class athletes and clubs in northern England looked for a professional structure that would, in part, offer financial compensation to cover their "broken time" (time away from other jobs) and the danger of injury. The FA maintained an amateurism policy that protected upper and upper-middle class influence over the game while being steadfastly elitist.

When the FA dismissed two clubs for using professional players in 1884, the professionalism debate reached a crisis point in England. Despite early attempts to limit professionalism to compensation for lost time, player remuneration had already grown so ubiquitous by that point that the FA had no choice but to regulate the practice a year later. As a result, northern clubs rose to prominence thanks to their sizable fan bases and ability to draw superior players.

As working-class players' impact in football increased, the higher classes turned to other sports, particularly cricket and rugby union. Through the founding of the Football League, which allowed the top dozen clubs from the North and Midlands to compete against each other on a regular basis starting in 1888, professionalism also inspired further modernization of the game. In 1893, a second, lower level was added, bringing the total number of teams to 28. In 1890, leagues were founded by the Irish and Scots. The Southern League was founded in 1894, but the Football League took it over in 1920. However, throughout this time football did not develop into a significant money-making industry.

The main reason professional sports teams formed limited liability organizations was to acquire property for the sluggish construction of stadium infrastructure. The majority of clubs in England were owned and managed by businesses, but owners got little to no returns; instead, their greatest benefit came from gaining more respect from the community by managing the local club.

Later national leagues outside of Britain adopted the British model, which included league championships, at least one annual cup competition, and a league hierarchy that promoted clubs that finished first in the standings to the next higher division and demoted clubs that finished last to the division below them (relegation). In the Netherlands, a league was established in 1889, but professionalism didn't come until 1954. Germany's first season of a national championship was finished in 1903, but it took another 60 years for the Bundesliga, the countries comprehensive and fully professional national league, to emerge. A professional league did not start in France, where the game was first played in the 1870s, until 1932, just after Argentina and Brazil had legalized professionalism.

A global organization of Football Game.

Early in the 20th century, football had become popular throughout Europe, but it still lacked an international governing body. The Federation International de Football Association was established in 1904 by representatives from the football organizations of Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland (FIFA).

Although Daniel Wool fall, an Englishman, was chosen as FIFA's president in 1906 and all of the home countries—England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales—were allowed to join by 1911, British football associations had little respect for the fledgling organization. The International Board, which was created in 1882 by the home countries, was used by FIFA members to accept British authority over the game's rules.

However, the British associations left FIFA in 1920 after failing to persuade other members to expel Germany, Austria, and Hungary in the wake of World War I. In 1924, the British associations re-joined FIFA. However, they immediately insisted on a very strict definition of amateurism, particularly for Olympic football. The British again left in 1928 and would not rejoin FIFA until 1946 when other countries once more failed to follow their example. British casualness toward international competition persisted after FIFA established the World Cup tournament. The first three competitions did not include the British national teams because they were not FIFA members (1930, 1934, and 1938). For the following competition, which was held in 1950, FIFA decided that the top two finishers in the British home nation’s tournament would be eligible to play in the World Cup. England won, however Scotland (who finished second) opted not to participate in the World Cup.

Football remained popular despite occasionally tense relations between nations. It was played in each of the Summer Games since its formal Olympic debut at the London Games in 1908 (except for the 1932 Games in Los Angeles). FIFA saw consistent growth as well, particularly in the second half of the 20th century, when it consolidated its position as the sport's global authority and regulator of competition. In 1961, Guinea became FIFA's 100th member; at the start of the twenty-first century, there were more registered FIFA members than there were United Nations members (more than 200).

Football's most prestigious competition is still the World Cup finals, but under FIFA's leadership, other significant competitions have grown in prominence. The World Youth Championship (for those 20 years of age and younger) and the Under-17 World Championship were two separate championships for young players that debuted in 1977 and 1985, respectively. The inaugural Futsal World Indoor Five-Aside Championship took place in 1989. The first Women's World Cup was held in China two years later. Four years after the first women's Olympic football tournament was conducted, FIFA allowed players under the age of 23 to compete in the 1992 Olympic football event. Brazil hosted the inaugural World Club Championship in 2000. In 2002, the Under-19 Women's World Championship debuted.

All national associations are eligible to join FIFA. They must recognize FIFA's authority, adhere to football's rules, and have a suitable infrastructure for the sport (i.e., facilities and internal organization). The creation of continental confederations is mandated under FIFA statutes. The Confederation of South American Football, or CONMEBOL, was the first of them and was established in South America in 1916. In 1954, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) were founded. The Confederation Africanis de Football (CAF) was established in 1957 as the continent's governing organization. Four years later, CONCACAF, the current football federation for North, Central America, and the Caribbean, was established. Founded in 1966, the OFC stands for Oceania Football Confederation. These confederations are free to plan their own club, international, and youth competitions, select candidates for FIFA's Executive Committee, and advertise football in the manner that they deem fit in their own continents. The FIFA Arbitration Tribunal for Football, which serves as the game's highest court in major cases, must also be respected by all football players, agents, leagues, national associations, and confederations.

Up until the early 1970s, northern Europeans held tight influence over FIFA and, by extension, world football. FIFA adopted a fairly conventional aristocratic relationship with the national and continental organizations during the presidencies of the Englishmen Arthur Dreary (1955–61) and Stanley Rous (1961–74). The World Cup finals were its main source of revenue, and nothing was done to promote football in underdeveloped nations or to examine the game's commercial potential during the postwar economic boom in the West. The FIFA executive committee was primarily focused on issues of regulation, like certifying amateur status for Olympic competition or prohibiting those involved in unauthorized transfers of players with current contracts. For instance, after allowing clubs to hire players who had breached contracts elsewhere in the world, Colombia (1951–54) and Australia (1960–63) were temporarily suspended from FIFA.

Growing FIFA membership from Asia and Africa threatened European dominance. Brazil's Joo Have Lange won the presidency in 1974 with a sizable amount of support from underdeveloped countries. During the 1980s and 1990s, Have Lange developed billion-dollar broadcast deals and collaborations with significant transnational corporations, transforming FIFA from an international gentlemen's club into a global company. The main political benefit for developing nations has been the extension of the World Cup finals to include additional nations outside of Europe and South America, even though some earnings were reinvested through FIFA development programs, primarily in Asia, Africa, and Central America.

FIFA was compelled to act as a governing organization and competition regulator in new arenas due to the increased professionalization of sports. Since at least the 1930s, teams and individual players have been suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs. FIFA instituted drug testing in 1966, and occasionally drug users have been identified, as Willie Johnston of Scotland at the 1978 World Cup finals. However, FIFA rules were strengthened in the 1980s as a result of a dramatic increase in Olympic competitors breaking the law, the introduction of new substances like the steroid nandrolone, and the usage of drugs by celebrities like Diego Maradona of Argentina in 1994. While FIFA has approved lengthy global bans for players who test positive for drugs, there are still differences between countries and confederations about the rigor of testing and the legitimacy of particular medicines.

FIFA was under pressure to address some of the biggest effects of globalization on international football as the game entered the twenty-first century. The media and general public paid more attention to the political haggling and squabbling among officials of the world of football during the corrupt presidency of Switzerland's Sepp Blather from 1998 to 2015. Direct conflicts of interest between the various parties involved in football have also developed. Players, agents, television networks, competition sponsors, clubs, national organizations, continental associations, and FIFA all have different opinions on how football competitions should be staged and how money should be distributed. Another issue is the regulation of player agents and transfers. Players who are not on a contract are free to roam around in UEFA nations. Players are typically bound to lengthy contracts with clubs that have control over their whole careers on other continents, particularly Africa and Central and South America. FIFA now mandates that all agents obtain licenses and pass written tests administered by national organizations, however there is little global uniformity in the regulation of agent authority. Agents have been instrumental in fostering salary inflation and increased player mobility in Europe. Agents who frequently "possess" a portion of a player's ownership in Latin America have the power to approve or reject trades. Some European agents have been compared to slave traffickers in some regions of Africa because of the totalitarian control they exert over players and the enormous profits they make from transfer fees to Western leagues with little regard for the welfare of their clients. In this way, the uneven development and inconsistent rules of world football mirror the growing disparities between developed and developing countries.