If you start by following other sports and eventually discover soccer, you encounter a game with more streamlined rules and more continuous action than American football, baseball or basketball. Soccer also makes more physical demands of its players, who typically run six miles in the course of a match, often sprinting or moving backward. Every four years, soccer’s strongest and most agile athletes showcase their skills in the World Cup, attracting new fans who may wonder about the sport’s background.
Size
FIFA, which stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association, serves as the governing body of international soccer. FIFA estimates that 4 percent of the world’s population, or 270 million people, participate in soccer either as players--265 million--or referees and officials--5 million. FIFA bases its figures on surveys by its 207 member associations. Each was asked to provide accurate figures on its nation’s professional footballers, registered players over the age of 18, registered youth players under the age of 18, futsal players, beach soccer players and unregistered occasional players.
Geography
At the professional level, FIFA ranked Brazil ranked No. 1 as of June 2010. National teams compete for the right to advance to the quadrennial World Cup within the regions of Africa; Asia; Europe; North and Central America and the Caribbean; South America; and Oceania. In terms of numbers, China leads the world with 26 million players, followed by the United States with 24 million, India with 21 million, Germany with 16 million, Brazil with 13 million and Mexico with 8 million.
Types
Organized soccer played by clubs, whether giants like Manchester United or amateurs in unheralded minor leagues, give another measure of which nations take soccer seriously. England, the birthplace of modern soccer, leads the world table with 42,490 clubs as of June 2010, notes FIFA.com, followed by Brazil and Germany, dominant world soccer powers, with 29,208 and 26,837 clubs respectively. The United States with 9,000 clubs follows France, Spain, Italy Russia and Canada, which fall in the range of countries with 10,000 to 20,000 clubs in total.
Features
The official “Laws of the Game” published by FIFA consists of 17 categories of rules. The size of the field of play and the ball’s size and weight must meet FIFA specifications. The maximum number of players per team is 11, and a match lasts 90 minutes in two halves plus stoppage time. FIFA rules determine what constitutes a foul and the handling of penalty kicks, free kicks, throw-ins, goal kicks and corner kicks.
History
Village ball games resembling soccer existed in China two millennia ago and in medieval England. Students at Cambridge University put together the first set of formal rules in 1863, and a consortium of English private schools came to a broader agreement on rules in 1882. The World Cup began in 1930, with Uruguay taking the competition. In 16 World Cups, only seven nations have won the cup.
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