Football Refers To A Number of
Football Refers To A Number of
Football Refers To A Number of
foot to score a goal. Unqualified, the word football is understood to refer to whichever form of
football is the most popular in the regional context in which the word appears: association
football (also known as soccer) in the vast majority of the world; gridiron football (specifically
American football or Canadian football) in the United States and Canada; Australian rules
football or rugby league in different areas of Australia; Gaelic football in Ireland; and rugby
football (specifically rugby union) in New Zealand.[1][2] These different 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 centuries.[3][4] 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,[5] 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.[6] 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.[7]