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 “The various codes of football share certain common elements. Players in American football, Canadian football, rugby union and rugby league take-up positions in a limited area of the field 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 involve short passages of play of 5–90 seconds.

^{Some rules of football are as follows:-}

• 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.

• There is also an account in Latin from the end of the 15th century of football being played at caws ton Nottingham shire. This is the first description of a "kicking game" and the first description of dribbling: "[t]he game at which they had met for common recreation is called by some the foot-ball game. It is one in which young men, in country sport, propel a huge ball not by throwing it into the air but by striking it and rolling it along the ground, and that not with their hands but with their feet... kicking in opposite directions" The chronicler gives the earliest reference to a football pitch, stating that: "[t]he boundaries have been marked and the game had started. Oath "a football", in the sense of a ball rather than a game, was first mentioned in 1486.This reference is in Dame Juliana berner Book of St Albans. It states: "a certain rounded instrument to play with ...it is an instrument for the foot and then it is called in Latin pile pedal’s, a football
• A pair of football boots was ordered by King Henry VIII of England in 1526
• Women playing a form of football were first described in 1580 by Sir Philip Sidney in one of his poems: "[a] time there is for all, my mother often says, When she, with skirts tucks very hay, with girls at football plays."
• the first references to goals are in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In 1584 and 1602 respectively, John Norden and Richard Carew referred to "goals" in Cornish hurling. Carew described how goals were made: "they pitch two bushes in the ground, some eight or ten Foote asunder; and directly against them, ten or twelve score off, other twain in like distance, which they termed their Goals". He is also the first to describe goalkeepers and passing of the ball between players.