Popularity of Soccer Around the World

Popularity of Soccer Around the World

I am going to talk about the most popular sport in the world: football. Now, you may be having visions of huge quarterbacks, dressed up in their padding and helmets, parading down the field during the Super Bowl. But the other kind of football, the football the rest of the world knows, has no padding or helmets. This other football is known in America as soccer. In more than 175 countries across the globe, football, or soccer, rates as the number 1 national sport.

Football dates back as far as thousands of years ago. There are records that show that ancient civilizations of Greece, Egypt, and China (among others) played an age-old form of football with a stuffed leather ball. Early games in Old England were like mob riots. There were no rules; it was anything goes! The games were so rowdy and violent that many English rulers tried to outlaw them. But it didn’t work. In fact, English travelers took the game with them, spreading it all around the globe. But there needed to be rules. In 1863 the Football Association was formed, or FA, in England. They developed the first real set of rules for modern soccer, or football, as we know it. And actually, the word “soccer” came from their name, specifically from the word “assoc”.

By 1900 football teams from all different countries were playing against each other, and there was a need for a common set of rules. In 1904 the Federation Internationale de Football Association, or more commonly...