Ancient games with the ball have huge similarities to modern football and today there are many varieties of it, including yard, beach, freestyle, futsal or mini-football and even swamp football.
1. Football is considered to be originally from the United Kingdom, but there are quite a few contenders for the prototype of football. In ancient Rome and Greece, as well as in Italy in the middle ages and even the Aztecs, there were games with similar features to modern football.
2. The correct name for the area of play in soccer is not “field” but “pitch.
3. Early footballs began as animal bladders or stomachs that would easily fall apart if kicked too much. Improvements became possible in the 19th century with the introduction of rubber and discoveries of vulcanization by Charles Goodyear. The classic soccer ball now has 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons.
4. The maximum number of goals scored by one player in a single Football match was 16. It was scored by Stephan Stanis (France) playing for Racing Club de Lens in December 1942.
5. In 1314 King Edward II of England issue a proclamation banning football in London, in general, generally until the middle of the seventeenth-century football in Britain was restricted or banned.
6. Until 1875, instead of a net on the gate, they used a regular rope that stretched over the sidebars.
7. According to the latest edition of 2015-2016, there are only seventeen basic rules for playing football.
8. The FIFA World Cup is the most-watched sporting event in the world.
9. Until 1912, according to the rules, the goalkeeper had the right to take the ball throughout the half of the field of his team, so there were times when goalkeepers managed to score even with their hands.
10. Although some women’s football matches in the UK in 1920 were attended by about fifty thousand people, in 1921, the Football Association (FA) banned women from playing football on their grounds. The ban was lifted only in 1971.
11. Football fans in Italy are referred to as “Tifosi”, which translates as “typhoid” because their fanaticism is similar to fever.
12. The Vatican is one of eight internationally recognized states whose non-FIFA national team. The Vatican team includes guardsmen, librarians, bankers and museum workers.
13. By 2018, the Vatican team had played only four international matches (twice with Monaco, as well as with Palestine and San Marino).
