regularly play football.[22] Football has the highest global television audience in sport.[23] In many parts of the world football evokes great passions and plays an important role in the life of individual fans, loca

The laws of the game are currently determined by the International Football Association Board (IFAB).[15] The Board was formed in 1886[16] after a meeting in Manchester of The Football Association, the Scottish Football Association, the Football Association of Wales, and the Irish Football Association. The world's oldest football competition is the FA Cup, which was founded by C. W. Alcock and has been contested by English teams since 1872. The first official international football match took place in 1872 between Scotland and England in Glasgow, again at the instigation of C. W. Alcock. England is home to the world's first football league, which was founded in Birmingham in 1888 by Aston Villa director William McGregor.[17] The original format contained 12 clubs from the Midlands and Northern England. FIFA, the international football body, was formed in Paris in 1904 and declared that they would adhere to Laws of the Game of the Football Association.[18] The growing popularity of the international game led to the admittance of FIFA representatives to the International Football Association Board in 1913. The board currently consists of four representatives from FIFA and one representative from each of the four British associations.[19]

Today, football is played at a professional level all over the world. Millions of people regularly go to football stadiums to follow their favourite teams,[20] while billions more watch the game on television or on the internet.[21] 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.[22] Football has the highest global television audience in sport.[23]

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. R. Kapuscinski says that people who are polite, modest or even humble in Europe fall easily into rage with playing or watching soccer games.[24] The Côte d'Ivoire national football team helped secure a truce to the nation's civil war in 2006[25] 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.[26] 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.[27] The sport also exacerbated tensions at the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, when a match between Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star Belgrade degenerated into rioting in May 1990.[28]
Etymology and names

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