Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball with a foot to score a goal. Unqualified, the word football is understood to refer to whichever form of football is the most popular in the regional context in which the word appears. Sports commonly called football in certain places include association football (known as soccer in some countries); gridiron football (specifically American football or Canadian football); Australian rules football; rugby football (either rugby league or rugby union); and Gaelic football.[1][2] These different variations of football are known as football codes.

There are a number of references to traditional, ancient, or prehistoric ball games played by indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world.[3][4][5] Contemporary codes of football can be traced back to the codification of these games at English public schools during the nineteenth century.[6][7] The expansion of the British Empire allowed these rules of football to spread to areas of British influence outside the directly controlled Empire.[8] 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.[9] 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 some of the most popular team sports in the world.

COMMON ELEMENTS

The various codes of football share certain common elements and can be grouped into two main classes of football: carrying codes like American football, Canadian football, rugby union and rugby league, where the ball is moved about the field while being held in the hands or thrown, and kicking codes such as Association football and Gaelic football, where the ball is moved primarily with the feet, and where handling is strictly limited. [11]

Common rules among the sports include:[12]

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.[11] In most codes, there are rules restricting the movement of players offside, and players scoring a goal must put the ball either under or over a crossbar between the goalposts.

Early history

A Chinese game called cuju (蹴鞠) has been recognised by FIFA as the first version of the game with regular rules.[14] It existed during the Han dynasty and possibly the Qin dynasty, in the second and third centuries BC.[15] The Japanese version of cuju is kemari (蹴鞠), and was developed during the Asuka period.[16] 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 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)[17][18] or “φαινίνδα” (phaininda),[19] which is mentioned by a Greek playwright, Antiphanes (388–311 BC) and later referred to by the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215 AD). These games appear to have resembled rugby football.[20][21][22][23][24] The Roman politician Cicero (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.[25][26] Episkyros is recognised as an early form of football by FIFA.[27]

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.[28] 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, called Pahsaheman.[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.