Essay on “Soccer: The Most Popular Sport” Complete Essay for Class 9, Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Soccer: The Most Popular Sport

Soccer is the world’s most popular sport and is the national sport of most European and Latin-American countries, and many other nations. A field game played by two teams with a ball of various types, usually an inflated bladder or rubber bag in a leather or rubber cover (an increasing number of balls are plastic), which is spherical or ellipsoidal in shape. The object of the game is to score points by kicking the ball through, into, or over the opponents’ goal, or by carrying the ball across the opponents’ goal line and grounding it. The World Cup is held every four years. Soccer is one of the most famous international sports. Soccer is known worldwide and is played in the Olympics.

Soccer is an ancient game. Some 2,500 years ago the Chinese played a form of it called Tsu chu, in which they kicked a ball of stuffed leather. Natives of Polynesia are known to have played a variation of the game with a ball made of bamboo fibres, while the  Inuit had another form using a leather ball filled with moss. However, much of the game’s development came about in England where it was first known in the 12th century. It became so popular that kings, including Edward II and Henry VI, tried to ban it on the grounds that it distracted men from the necessary military duty of regular archery practice. Such edicts had little effect.Varieties developed in England and in Europe. A traditional version in England was known as Shrovetide football, common in the Midlands and the north of England for centuries. Such games might involve hundreds of men on each side and were usually a free-for-all between sections of a town, villages, or adjoining parishes that would often develop into a brawl.. Many schools played soccer and some, notably Eton, Harrow, Winchester, and Rugby, evolved codes of their own, particularly Rugby, which established a code from which others (American football, for example) developed. During the 19th century there were concerted efforts to organise and structure the different forms and provide acceptable rules.

In 1848 came the first serious attempt to establish a code. This was instigated at Cambridge University by H. de Winton and J. C. Thring who met representatives from the major public schools with a view to creating a standardized set of rules. They agreed on and drew up ten, known as the Cambridge Rules. These were and are of vital importance in the history of what was later to be named association football, and which Thring described as the “Simplest Game”. In 1855 Sheffield Football Club (FC), the world’s oldest club, was founded, and in 1862 Notts County, the world’s oldest league club, came into existence.

In October 1863, the Football Association (FA) was founded at the Freemasons’ Tavern, Great Queen Street, London. The idea for the Football Association Challenge Cup (the FA Cup) came from the secretary of the FA, Charles Alcock, who proposed his plans at a meeting of the FA Committee in July 1871. Fifteen teams entered the first competition in 1872, which was won by Wanderers against Royal Engineers Until 1893 nearly all the finals were held at Kennington Oval. London, which is better known for cricket. Up to 1882 all the winners were amateur clubs. Wanderers won five times; Old Etonians won twice and were four times runners-up. In 1.872 also there was the first official international match (between England and Scotland), and in 1878 the first match under floodlights was held. In the late 1870s there began a long and sometimes acrimonious dispute over the rights and wrongs of professionalism and whether or not players should be paid money over and above compensation for expenses and wages lost by taking part in a match. In 1885 professionalism was finally legalized, but the dispute was to drift on for years and affect other countries. Another major event was the foundation of the Football League in 1888; this was to become a model for all countries that subsequently adopted the game. The first World Cup for the Jules Rimet trophy (Rimet was president of FIFA) was held in Uruguay in 1930 and contested by 13 nations. Only four European teams made the journey to Uruguay, with the home nation winning the tournament. A qualifying competition was introduced in 1950 and the competition has been staged every four years since. Brazil won the trophy outright in 1970 after the side’s third win and teams now compete for the FIFA World Cup.

In Brazil, and other Latin American countries, dancing by the spectators to the sound of drums is a common sight. The terms “Samba soccer” and “Mexican Wave” have now been adopted in many other sports.