games

Several codes of football. Images, from top down, left to right: Association football, Australian rules football, International rules football, rugby union scrum, women's rugby union, American football.

Football refers to a number of sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball with the foot to score a goal. The most popular of these sports worldwide is association 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 as American 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. 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 laws are typically less strict).
Common rules among the sports include:

• Two 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.
•  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. ^[7] 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 crossbar between the goalposts.^{[citation needed]}

Etymology

Main article: Football (word)

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), 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.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
According to FIFA the competitive game cuju is the earliest form of football for which there is scientific evidence. 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 as cuju (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-guk respectively. Later, another type of goal posts emerged, consisting of just one goal post in the middle of the field.^{[citation needed]}

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  Ancient Greek football player balancing the ball. Depiction on an Attic Lekythos.
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  A Song Dynasty painting by Su Hanchen, depicting Chinese children playing cuju.
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  Paint of a Mesoamerican ballgame player of the Tepantitla murals in Teotihuacan.
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  A revived version of kemari being played at the Tanzan Shrine, Japan.
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  An illustration from the 1850s of Australian Aboriginal hunter gatherers. Children in the background are playing a football game, possibly Woggabaliri.