Football
Football refers
to a number of sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ballwith
the foot to score a goal.
The most popular of these sports worldwide isassociation football, more commonly known as
just "football" or "soccer". Unqualified, the word football applies to whichever form of football
is the most popular in the regional context in which the word appears,
including association football, as well asAmerican
football, Australian rules football, Canadian
football, Gaelic football, rugby league, rugby union, and other related games. These
variations of football are known as football codes.
Various forms of football can be identified
in history, often as popular peasant games. Contemporary codes of football
can be traced back to the codification of these games at
English public schools in
the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The
influence and power of the British Empire allowed these rules of football to
spread to areas of British influence outside of the directly controlled Empire,[ though by the end of the nineteenth
century, distinct regional codes were already developing: Gaelic Football, for
example, deliberately incorporated the rules of local traditional football
games in order to maintain their heritage. In
1888, The Football League was founded in England, becoming the
first of many professional football competitions. During the
twentieth century, several of the various kinds of football grew to become
among the most popular team sports in the world.
Common
elements
The various codes of football share certain
common elements. Players in American football, rugby union and rugby league
take-up positions in a limited area of the pitch at the start of the game. [7] They
tend to use throwing and running as the main ways of moving the ball, and only
kick on certain limited occasions. Body tackling is a major skill, and games typically
involves short passages of play of 5-90 seconds. Association football, Australian
rules football and Gaelic football tend to use kicking to move the ball around
the pitch, with handling more limited. Body tackles are less central to game,
and players are more free to move around the field (offsidelaws are typically less strict).
Common rules among the sports include:[citation needed]
·
Two teams of usually between 11 and 18 players;
some variations that have fewer players (five or more per team) are also
popular.
·
A clearly defined area in which to play the game.
·
Scoring goals or points,
by moving the ball to an opposing team's end of the field and either into a
goal area, or over a line.
·
Goals or points resulting from players putting the ball between
two goalposts.
·
The goal or line being defended by the opposing team.
·
Players being required to move the ball—depending on the code—by
kicking, carrying, or hand-passing the ball.
·
Players using only their body to move the ball.
In all codes, common skills include passing, tackling, evasion of tackles, catching and kicking.In
most codes, there are rules restricting the movement of players offside,[citation needed] and players scoring a goal must put the ball
either under or over a crossbarbetween
the goalposts.
Etymolog
There are confilicting explanations of the
origin of the word "football". It is widely assumed that the word
"football" (or "foot ball") references the action of the
foot kicking a ball. There is an alternative explanation, which is that
football originally referred to a variety of games in medieval Europe, which were played on foot. There is no conclusive
evidence for either explanation.
Early
history
Ancient games
The Ancient Greeks and Romans are
known to have played many ball games, some of which involved the use of the
feet. The Roman game harpastum is believed to have been adapted from
a Greek team
game known as "ἐπίσκυρος" (Episkyros)or
"φαινίνδα" (phaininda),[10] which
is mentioned by a Greek playwright, Antiphanes (388–311 BC) and later referred
to by the Christian theologianClement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215 AD). These games
appear to have resembled rugby football.[11][12][13][14][15] The
Roman politicianCicero (106–43 BC)
describes the case of a man who was killed whilst having a shave when a ball
was kicked into a barber's shop. Roman ball games already knew the air-filled
ball, the follis.[16][17]
According to FIFA the competitive game cuju is the earliest form of football for
which there is scientific evidence.[18] This
is despite the Ancient Greek game of Episkyros recognised as a form of football
by FIFA being recorded earlier.[19] It
occurs namely as an exercise in a military manual from the third and second
centuries BC.[18] Documented
evidence of an activity resembling football can be found in the Chinese military manual Zhan Guo Ce compiled
between the 3rd century and 1st century BC.[20] It
describes a practice known ascuju (蹴鞠, literally "kick ball"),
which originally involved kicking a leather ball through a small hole in a
piece of silk cloth which was fixed on bamboo canes
and hung about 9 m above ground. During the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD),
cuju games were standardized and rules were established.[citation needed] Variations of this game later spread
to Japan and Korea,
known as kemari and chuk-gukrespectively. Later,
another type of goal posts emerged, consisting of just one goal post in the
middle of the field.[citation needed]
The Japanese version of cuju is kemari (蹴鞠),
and was developed during the Asuka period.[citation needed]This
is known to have been played within the Japanese imperial court in Kyoto from about 600 AD. In kemari several people stand in a circle and
kick a ball to each other, trying not to let the ball drop to the ground (much
like keepie uppie). The game appears to have died
out sometime before the mid-19th century. It was revived in 1903 and is now
played at a number of festivals.[citation needed]
There are a number of references to traditional, ancient, or prehistoric ball
games, played by indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world.
For example, in 1586, men from a ship commanded by an English explorer named John Davis,
went ashore to play a form of football with Inuit (Eskimo) people in Greenland.] There are later accounts of an Inuit
game played on ice, called Aqsaqtuk.
Each match began with two teams facing each other in parallel lines, before
attempting to kick the ball through each other team's line and then at a goal.
In 1610, William Strachey, a colonist at Jamestown, Virginia recorded a game played by Native
Americans, calledPahsaheman.[citation needed] On the Australian continent several tribes of indigenous people played kicking and catching games with
stuffed balls which have been generalised by historians as Marn Grook (Djab Wurrung for
"game ball"). The earliest historical account is an anecdote from
the 1878 book by Robert Brough-Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, in
which a man called Richard Thomas is quoted as saying, in about 1841 in Victoria, Australia,
that he had witnessed Aboriginal people playing the game: "Mr Thomas
describes how the foremost player will drop kick a ball made from the skin of a possum and
how other players leap into the air in order to catch it." Some historians
have theorised that Marn Grook was one of the origins of Australian rules
football.
The Māori in New Zealand played
a game called Ki-o-rahi consisting
of teams of seven players play on a circular field divided into zones, and
score points by touching the 'pou' (boundary markers) and hitting a central
'tupu' or target.[citation needed]
Games played in
Mesoamerica with
rubber balls by indigenous
peoples are also
well-documented as existing since before this time, but these had more
similarities to basketball or volleyball, and since their influence on
modern football games is minimal, most do not class them as football.[citation needed]Northeastern
American Indians, especially the Iroquois Confederation,
played a game which made use of net racquets to throw and catch a small ball;
however, although a ball-goal foot game, lacrosse (as
its modern descendant is called) is likewise not usually classed as a form of
"football."[citation needed]
These games and others may well go far back into
antiquity. However, the main sources of modern football codes appear to lie in
western Europe, especially England.
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