Association Football

Association Football: A Summary

• Association football is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players each who primarily use their feet to propel a ball around a rectangular field called a pitch.

• The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposing team by moving the ball beyond the goal line into a rectangular-framed goal defended by the opposing team.

• The game is played with a football that is 68–70 cm (27–28 in) in circumference.

• The most senior and prestigious international competitions are the FIFA World Cup and the FIFA Women's World Cup.

• Women's association football has historically seen opposition, with national associations severely curbing its development and several outlawing it completely. However, by the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in France, a record-breaking 1.12 billion viewers watched the competition.

• The sport is 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.

• The history of football in England dates back to at least the eighth century. 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 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.

• Laws of the Game are determined by the International Football Association Board (IFAB).

• Football is played at a professional level all over the world, and according to a survey conducted by FIFA published in 2001, over 240 million people from more than 200 countries regularly play football.

• Women's football has traditionally been associated with charity games and physical exercise, particularly in the United Kingdom.

• Women's football became popular on a large scale at the time of the First World War, when female employment in heavy industry spurred the growth of the game.Overview of Association Football

• Women's football in England suffered a ban in 1921, which led to the formation of the short-lived English Ladies Football Association and play moved to rugby grounds.

• Women's football was recognised by UEFA in 1971 and The Football Association rescinded the ban on women playing on association members' pitches.

• Women's football has faced bans in several other countries including Brazil, France, and Germany.

• The FIFA Women's World Cup was inaugurated in 1991 and has been held every four years since, while women's football has been an Olympic event since 1996.

• Association football is played by two teams of eleven players each who compete to get the ball into the other team's goal.

• Players may not deliberately handle the ball with their hands or arms during play, but may use any other part of their body.

• There are three main categories of player positions: strikers, defenders, and midfielders, which are further subdivided according to the area of the field in which the player spends the most time.

• There are 17 laws in the official Laws of the Game, which apply to all levels of football for both sexes.

• Each team consists of a maximum of eleven players, one of whom must be the goalkeeper.

• A number of players may be replaced by substitutes during the course of the game, with the maximum number of substitutions permitted being five in 90 minutes.

• A standard adult football match consists of two halves of 45 minutes each, with a 15-minute half-time break between halves.

• In knockout competitions where a winner is required, various methods may be employed to break a tie, including extra time and penalty shootouts.Summary Title: The Laws, Sanctions, and Competitions of Football

• Football has two basic states of play: ball in play and ball out of play.

• When the ball becomes out of play, play is restarted by one of eight restart methods depending on how it went out of play.

• A foul occurs when a player commits an offence listed in the Laws of the Game while the ball is in play.

• The referee may punish a player's or substitute's misconduct by a caution (yellow card) or dismissal (red card).

• Along with the general administration of the sport, football associations and competition organisers also enforce good conduct in wider aspects of the game.

• The recognised international governing body of football is FIFA.

• National associations (or national federations) oversee football within individual countries.

• The actual Laws of the Game are set by the IFAB, where each of the UK Associations has one vote, while FIFA collectively has four votes.

• The major international competition in football is the World Cup, organised by FIFA.

• After the World Cup, the most important international football competitions are the continental championships.

• The governing bodies in each country operate league systems in a domestic season.

• The top few teams may be promoted to a higher division, and one or more of the teams finishing at the bottom are relegated to a lower division.