The amazing world of soccer

Whether you call it soccer or football one thing that everyone can agree on is the popularity of this sport. It is in fact the most played and watched sport in the world. Players range from young children energetically running around the field chasing after the ball right through to professional players who are at the peak of fitness and spend time undertaking Soccer training drills like those you can find at https://www.sportplan.net/drills/Soccer/drills.jsp

Here are some interesting facts about the world of soccer/football:

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• The FIFA World Cup event (as seen this year) is the most popular and most watched sporting event across the whole world. It is thought around 265 million people worldwide play the game on a regular basis in some sort of team format.
• Soccer is actually called football in every country across the world other than America. It is thought the name football was derived to depict the difference between games played on horseback and those played by foot.
• The game can be traced back as far as 1697 BC when the Chinese emperor Huang-Ti created a game where a leather ball that was filled with hair and cork was kicked around a field.
• In North Africa in the 7^th Century BC a game like soccer was played as a fertility rite.
• It goes without saying that there is money in this sport it is thought to be the most lucrative sport worldwide. Hence the money that is available to purchase players and advertise the games.

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• The best footballer ever known is, amongst professionals, unanimously considered to be Pele who was a Brazilian player whose real name is Edson Arantes Do Nascimento. He was first discovered at the age of 11 but a football scout and by the incredibly young age of 17 he appeared in his first World Cup (1958) and scored six goals and was instrumental in helping Brazil win its first World Cup. He played a total of 1,360 games during his career and scored a staggering 1,280 goals during this time.
• The World Cup was established by FIFA in 1930 and it wasn’t until 1991 that the Women’s World Cup was established.
• Puritans in England in the 1600s were very against the sport and thought it to be sinful.
• Not all football grounds are on solid ground. The Adidas Football Park in Tokyo is 130 feet above ground level and is situated on top of the Tokyu Toyoko Department Store.
• Before 1881 there were no referees in the game, they simply relied on good sportsmanship.