Play Football Online: The Best Free Soccer Games for You

The NFL celebrates youth and high school football year-round. Through camps, activities, NFL FLAG and tackle leagues, the Play Football initiative provides a fun and engaging experience for players of all ages and skill levels, equipping young people with key life skills that are building blocks to success on and off the field.

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In partnership with youth camps, summer season programs, team-level initiatives and NFL Legends, the league emphasizes proper technique, teamwork and sportsmanship that support and benefit every player.

Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer,[a] is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players each who primarily use their feet to propel a ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposing team by moving the ball beyond the goal line into a rectangular-framed goal defended by the opposing team. Traditionally, the game has been played over two 45-minute halves, for a total match time of 90 minutes. With an estimated 250 million players active in over 200 countries and territories, it is the world's most popular sport.

Internationally, association football is governed by FIFA. Under FIFA, there are six continental confederations: AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, OFC and UEFA. National associations (e.g. The FA or JFA) are responsible for managing the game in their own countries both professionally and at an amateur level, and coordinating competitions in accordance with the Laws of the Game. The most senior and prestigious international competitions are the FIFA World Cup and the FIFA Women's World Cup. The men's World Cup is the most-viewed sporting event in the world, surpassing the Olympic Games.[6] The two most prestigious competitions in European club football are the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Women's Champions League, which attract an extensive television audience throughout the world. Since 2009, the final of the men's tournament has been the most-watched annual sporting event in the world.[7]

Women's association football has historically seen opposition, with national associations severely curbing its development and several outlawing it completely. Restrictions started to be reduced in the 1970s and the first official women's World Cup[b] was the 1991 FIFA Women's World Cup in China with only 12 teams from the respective six confederations. By the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in France, this had increased to 24 national teams, and a record-breaking 1.12 billion viewers watched the competition.[8]

Association football is one of a family of football codes that emerged from various ball games played worldwide since antiquity. Within the English-speaking world, the sport is now usually called "football" in Great Britain and most of Ulster in the north of Ireland, whereas people usually call it "soccer" in regions and countries where other codes of football are prevalent, such as Australia,[9] Canada, South Africa, most of Ireland (excluding Ulster),[10] and the United States; in Japan, the game is also primarily called sakkā (サッカー), derived from "soccer". A notable exception is New Zealand, where in the first two decades of the 21st century, under the influence of international television, "football" has been gaining prevalence, despite the dominance of other codes of football, namely rugby union and rugby league.[11]

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The term soccer comes from Oxford "-er" slang, which was prevalent at the University of Oxford in England from about 1875, and is thought to have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School. Initially spelled assoccer, it was later reduced to the modern spelling.[12] This form of slang also gave rise to rugger for rugby football, fiver and tenner for five pound and ten pound notes, and the now-archaic footer that was also a name for association football.[13] The word soccer arrived at its final form in 1895 and was first recorded in 1889 in the earlier form of socca.[14]

Association football in itself does not have a classical history.[18] Notwithstanding any similarities to other ball games played around the world, FIFA has described that no historical connection exists with any game played in antiquity outside Europe.[32] The history of football in England dates back to at least the eighth century.[33] The modern rules of association football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played in the public schools of England.

The Cambridge rules, first drawn up at the University of Cambridge in 1848, were particularly influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association football. The Cambridge rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury schools. They were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world to play various forms of football. Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club, formed by former public school pupils in 1857,[34] which led to the formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules.[35]

These ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association (The FA) in 1863, which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, London.[36] The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse. The Freemasons' Tavern was the setting for five more meetings of The FA between October and December 1863; the English FA eventually issued the first comprehensive set of rules named Laws of the Game, forming modern football. At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath F.C., withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting: the first allowed for running with the ball in hand; the second for obstructing such a run by hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Other English rugby clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA, and instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union. The eleven remaining clubs, under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley, went on to ratify the original thirteen laws of the game.[36] These rules included handling of the ball by "marks" and the lack of a crossbar, rules which made it remarkably similar to Victorian rules football being developed at that time in Australia. The Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s, with the FA absorbing some of its rules until there was little difference between the games.[37]

The world's oldest football competition is the FA Cup, which was founded by the footballer and cricketer Charles W. Alcock, and has been contested by English teams since 1872. The first official international football match also took place in 1872, between Scotland and England in Glasgow, again at the instigation of Alcock. England is also home to the world's first football league, which was founded in Birmingham in 1888 by Aston Villa director William McGregor.[38] The original format contained 12 clubs from the Midlands and Northern England.[39]

Laws of the Game are determined by the International Football Association Board (IFAB).[40] The board was formed in 1886[41] after a meeting in Manchester of the Football Association, the Scottish Football Association, the Football Association of Wales, and the Irish Football Association. FIFA, the international football body, was formed in Paris in 1904 and declared that they would adhere to the Laws of the Game of the Football Association.[42] The growing popularity of the international game led to the admittance of FIFA representatives to the IFAB in 1913. The board consists of four representatives from FIFA and one representative from each of the four British associations.[43]

For most of the 20th century, Europe and South America were the dominant regions in association football. The FIFA World Cup, inaugurated in 1930, became the main stage for players of both continents to show their worth and the strength of their national teams.[44] In the second half of the century, the European Cup and the Copa Libertadores were created, and the champions of these two club competitions would contest the Intercontinental Cup to prove which team was the best in the world.[45]

In the 21st century, South America has continued to produce some of the best footballers in the world,[46] but its clubs have fallen behind the still dominant European clubs, which often sign the best players from Latin America and elsewhere.[44][46] Meanwhile, football has improved in Africa, Asia and North America,[46] and nowadays, these regions are at least on equal grounds with South America in club football,[47] although countries in the Caribbean and Oceania regions (except Australia) have yet to make a mark in international football.[48][49] When it comes to national teams, however, Europeans and South Americans continue to dominate the FIFA World Cup, as no team from any other region has managed to even reach the final.[44][46]

Football is played at a professional level all over the world. Millions of people regularly go to football stadiums to follow their favourite teams,[50] while billions more watch the game on television or on the internet.[51][52] A very large number of people also play football at an amateur level. According to a survey conducted by FIFA published in 2001, over 240 million people from more than 200 countries regularly play football.[53] Football has the highest global television audience in sport.[54]

In many parts of the world, football evokes great passions and plays an important role in the life of individual fans, local communities, and even nations. Ryszard Kapuściński says that Europeans who are polite, modest, or humble fall easily into rage when playing or watching football games.[55] The Ivory Coast national football team helped secure a truce to the nation's civil war in 2006[56] and it helped further reduce tensions between government and rebel forces in 2007 by playing a match in the rebel capital of Bouaké, an occasion that brought both armies together peacefully for the first time.[57] By contrast, football is widely considered to have been the final proximate cause for the Football War in June 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras.[58] The sport also exacerbated tensions at the beginning of the Croatian War of Independence of the 1990s, when a match between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade degenerated into rioting in May 1990.[59]