What is football? Rules and history of team sport

In today's world there are many wide variety of sports, which take hundreds of thousands of people participate and millions watching their confrontation. And football stands out the most among all this diversity. This sport is the most popular around the world, it has the most fans, it rotated the most money, it attracts the most impressive amount of attention. But what is football? If you do not know this, then you it's time to deal with this issue. And when you know what a football, then it is likely you will want to cheer for any team, and maybe even play.

What is it?

So, the first question that should be answered - what football. And the answer is much simpler than you might think. This is a team sport in which each other two teams compete in a single match.

The aim of this game is to protect his own goal against enemy attacks as well as attacks on his goal by a ball, which you can touch any part of the body except the hands. However, as can be understood from the name of the sport (with the foot of the English translated as "foot", and ball - like "ball"), basically all actions are performed with the use of the legs.

Now it's time to look in more detail with the rules of the game to finally understand what is football.

Rules

The football played by two teams of eleven people, ten of whom are field players, and the eleventh - the goalkeeper. It protects the gates of his team. Goalkeeper, by the way - the only player who can touch the ball with his hands, and to do so he must only within his own penalty area. Match lasts ninety minutes and divided into two identical half, between which is a 15-minute break. The rules in football there are so many, so there is no need to describe them all. It is necessary to focus on the most important ones:

1. As you can easily guess, the winner is the team that scores the most goals the opponent.
2. In this case, there are a number of actions, such as a blow to the shin or play a hand in the field, leading to a free kick. In the case of serious violations of the rules of the player who committed the foul, received a yellow card, which serves as a kind of warning. If it is the player commits another such serious foul, he will receive a red card and will be removed from the field before the end of the match.
3. When it comes to the standard game, he could end up a draw - then each team will receive one point. Otherwise, the winner gets three points and the loser - 0
4. If a match takes place in step playoff, i.e. neutral result is invalid, after the normal time, a tie is an overtime, i.e. two times for 15 minutes.
5. If during this time the teams can not determine the winner, then begins a series of penalties - penalty kicks from the penalty mark, which is a duel player of one team and the other goalkeeper. The standard number of strokes - 5 on each side. If the winner during this time did not reveal the teams continue to strike until someone makes a mistake.

Football as a team sport is a very entertaining and fun, and eventually you will get used to the huge number of rules that limit the actions of the players. You will learn what is "out", "offside", what are the tactics of building and much more. But all this can not be described in detail, so you'd better start watching football on their own.

football history

However, all the rules that exist in football now, were not there originally. The history of football is quite interesting and unusual. The first semblance of football appeared in ancient China, where a group of people playing a team game with the ball, kicking his feet.

However, the approximate to the modern version, the sport has appeared in England, the country often referred to as the birthplace of football. Then an unlimited number of players gathered on the streets of London, and the rule was one thing - no rules. Often, these "matches" ended in bloodshed, injuries and sometimes deaths. That's why football for a long time banned. Only in the nineteenth century began a movement for something to make a full-fledged football sport.

Then began to emerge, organizations such as FIFA and UEFA, each country has its own appeared Football Federation and football finally became what it all used to seeing today. Of course, the history of football has a huge number of milestones and important points, which allowed this sport to become the most popular in the world.

Club Football

Now football is played at two levels: national and club. If we talk about the first, here, each country has its own championship, which takes place every year and lasts for about 9 months.

In parallel, the Cup of the country, for the playoff system, and the results of internal tournaments selected teams that represent their country at the international level.

Top clubs compete in the Champions League, and a little less good - in the Europa League. Leading national championship can send up to seven teams in European competition for the completion of the season, while the small countries usually have one or two places, and for them they still have to struggle in qualifying.

The National Football

We should also talk about the national football, that is about the confrontation between the national teams of the world. Each state has its own team, which players may be invited to any of the clubs that have the appropriate nationality. Honor of their national team defend the World Championship, which is held every four years. European teams are also involved in the European Championships, African - African Nations Cup and so on.

Russian football

And, of course, deserves special attention Soccer Russia. The Russian team is not one of the strongest in the world, in contrast to the Soviet national team, which won the first ever European Championship in 1960. Now football Russia, unfortunately, is stagnating, and the team may not have a long time to get to the stage of the playoffs of any of the major international tournaments.