Soccer is a British word
Many people assume soccer is an American word. It was actually invented in England in the 1880s. The official name of the game was association football, to separate it from rugby football. Students at Oxford liked to add -er to shortened words, so association became soccer, just as rugby became rugger. Americans kept soccer because they already had a different game called football. Our American football page covers that one.
The rules were first agreed in 1863, when clubs met at a tavern in London and formed the Football Association. Carrying the ball was banned, and the two codes, soccer and rugby, went separate ways.
A goalkeeper invented the penalty
The PENALTY kick was proposed by William McCrum, an Irish goalkeeper, and brought into the rules in 1891. Before then, a defender who deliberately handled the ball or tripped an attacker near goal could stop a certain score and suffer only a free kick from the spot of the foul.
The OFFSIDE rule, which stops an attacker waiting beside the opposing GOALKEEPER for the ball, has been changed many times to make the game more attacking. A HATTRICK — three goals by one player in a match — takes its name from cricket, where a bowler who took three wickets in three balls was once given a hat. A player may score with a HEADER, a VOLLEY or a FREEKICK, or from a CORNER.
The trophy found by a dog
The first WORLDCUP was held in Uruguay in 1930, and Uruguay won it. In March 1966, a few months before England hosted the tournament, the gold trophy was stolen from an exhibition in London. A week later a black-and-white dog called Pickles, out for a walk with his owner, sniffed out a bundle wrapped in newspaper under a hedge in south London. It was the cup.
Pickles became a national hero, was given a reward and a year's supply of dog food, and appeared in a film. England went on to win the tournament that summer. The REFEREE's WHISTLE, first used in football in the 1870s, replaced the waving of handkerchiefs.
The most-played game on Earth
Soccer is thought to be the most popular sport in the world, played and watched in almost every country. All it needs is a ball and a space, which is part of why it spread so fast. A match ball must weigh between 410 and 450 grams, and a match lasts ninety minutes on a PITCH, with eleven players a side: the STRIKER who scores, the WINGER who races down the side, the MIDFIELD players who link defence and attack, the DEFENDER and the KEEPER.
Great players become world famous: PELE, who won three World Cups with Brazil, and in later years MESSI and RONALDO. Every STADIUM fills to see a well-timed TACKLE, a skilful DRIBBLE and, above all, a GOAL. Women's football was hugely popular in Britain after the First World War: a match on Boxing Day 1920 drew around 53,000 people. The next year the Football Association banned women's teams from its members' grounds, and the ban was not lifted until 1971.