Edwin Van Der Sar

ORIGIN OF FOOTBALL

The contemporary history of the world’s favorite game spans more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the football association in England was formed becoming the sport’s first governing body. The history of English football is a short and detailed one. England was the first country where the game was developed and codified. The modern global game of football was first codified in 1863 in London.

                                                  WORLD’S FIRST FOOTBALL

Football is also termed as soccer. Soccer is formed from two words socc and er where socc means Ball and er means association. England invented a game of running around kicking a ball in the mid-19^th century. They called it “football”, not because the ball is played with the feet, but because the game is played on football rather on horseback. There are a number of conflicting beliefs concerning the question of who invented soccer. Some suggest that the history of soccer back as far as 2500BC, during which time the Greeks, Egyptians and Chinese all appear to have partaken in feet-based games involving a ball.

Soccer is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with the round ball in most countries. It is played by 250 million players in over 200 countries, making it the world’s popular sport. The world cup is the biggest football tournament in the world. It is held every four years in a different country.

Top 32 countries of the world are qualified for the group stage. Till now out of 242 countries, 75 of them excluding Nepal have been able to take part in the world cup. The 20 world cup tournament have been won by 8 different countries. The first world cup was held in Uruguay from 13^th July to 30^th July 1930, where Uruguay was able to make themselves to the top.

                                             World cup winners from 1930 to 2010.