Soccer Wallpaper, #14332

Association football, more commonly known as football or Soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of eleven players, and is widely considered to be the most popular sport in the world. It is a football variant played on a rectangular grass or artificial turf field, with a goal at each of the short ends. The object of the game is to score by manoeuvring the ball into the opposing goal. In general play, the goalkeepers are the only players allowed to use their hands or arms to propel the ball; the rest of the team usually use their feet to kick the ball into position, occasionally using their torso or head to intercept a ball in midair. The team that scores the most goals by the end of the match wins. If the score is tied at the end of the game, either a draw is declared or the game goes into extra time and/or a penalty shootout, depending on the format of the competition.The modern rules of football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played at the public schools of England.Competitions held over two legs (in which each team plays at home once) may use the away goals rule to determine which team progresses in the event of equal aggregate scores, in which the winner is the team that scored the most goals in the leg played away from home. If the result is still equal, kicks from the penalty mark are usually required, though some competitions may require a tied game to be replayed.Six regional confederations are associated with FIFA; these are:National associations oversee football within individual countries. These are affiliated both with FIFA and with their respective continental confederations.The rules of football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863, and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other forms of football played at the time, specifically rugby football. The term Soccer originated in England, first appearing in the 1880s as a slang abbreviation of the word "association", often credited to former England captain Charles Wreford-Brown.