HISTORY OF FOOTBALL

Football is a team sport in which two teams of eleven players attempt to move the ball into the goal of the other team by utilizing any part of their body other than their hands and arms. The goalie is the only one allowed to handle the ball, and even then, only in the penalty area that surrounds the goal. Whichever team scores the most goals wins.

The most popular ball game in the world, both for players and spectators, is football. The sport can be played practically anyplace, including official football fields (pitches), gymnasiums, streets, school playgrounds, parks, and beaches. Its main rules and necessary equipment are simple. Over 1.3 billion people were "interested" in football at the beginning of the twenty-first century, according to estimates made by the sport's governing body, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). In 2010, over 26 billion people watched the World Cup finals, football's premier tournament, which takes place every four years, on television.

Britain is where modern football had its start in the 1800s. "Folk football" matches have been played in cities and villages since pre-medieval times, following regional traditions and with few regulations. Folk football's standing was eroded starting in the early 19th century by industrialization, urbanization, and a history of governmental prohibitions against particularly violent and destructive varieties of the game. These factors combined to reduce working-class access to leisure time and space. Nonetheless, residence houses at public (independent) institutions like Winchester, Charterhouse, and Eton started playing football against one another throughout the winter. Every school set its own guidelines; some permitted just certain amounts of ball handling, while others did not. The public found it challenging due to the inconsistent rules.

Nonetheless, not all British clubs adopted the new regulations; many continued to operate under their own set of guidelines, particularly in and around Sheffield. In addition to producing the first provincial club to join the Football Association (FA) in 1867, this northern English city also gave rise to the Sheffield Football Association in 1867, which served as the model for subsequent county associations. In 1866, two matches were held between Sheffield and London clubs. A year later, a match was held under the new regulations, matching a Middlesex club against a Kent and Surrey club. Fifteen FA clubs agreed to participate in a cup competition and help fund the acquisition of a trophy in 1871. By 1877, the British associations had decided on a standard code,In Victorian Britain, the processes of industrialization and urbanization had a significant influence on the creation of modern football. The majority of the newly arrived working-class residents of Britain's industrial towns and cities eventually gave up their traditional idyllic hobbies, like baiting badgers, and looked for new ways to spend time with one another. Industrial workers began to get more Saturday afternoons off work starting in the 1850s, thus many of them started playing or watching football, a new sport. Key urban institutions such as churches, labor unions, and schools organized working-class boys and men into recreational football teams. Growing adult literacy encouraged organized sports coverage in the media, while transportation networks like urban trams and railroads made it possible for football players and fans to get to games.

Leading clubs, notably those in Lancashire, started charging admission to spectators as early as the 1870s and so, despite the FA’s amateurism rule, were in a position to pay illicit wages to attract highly skilled working-class players, many of them hailing from Scotland. Working-class players and northern English clubs sought a professional system that would provide, in part, some financial reward to cover their “broken time” (time lost from their other work) and the risk of injury. The FA remained staunchly elitist in sustaining a policy of amateurism that protected upper and upper-middle class influence over the game.

When the FA dismissed two clubs for utilizing professional players in 1884, the professionalism debate in England came to a head. Though early attempts to limit professionalism to compensation for lost time, player payments had become so ubiquitous by then that the FA was forced to regulate the practice a year later. As a result, northern clubs gained importance due to their enormous fan bases and ability to draw superior players. When working-class football players became more influential, the higher classes turned to other sports, particularly rugby union and cricket. The Football League, which was founded by professionalism and allowed the top 12 teams from the North and Midlands, was another example of how the game was further modernized.

worldwide association
Football had become popular throughout Europe by the early 20th century, but it still needed to be organized internationally. A solution was found in 1904 with the founding of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) by members of the football associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.