A popular sport

Football is the most popular team sport in the world. Indeed, everybody has already heard about the World Cup in 1998. This sport event gathered a lot of people around “ les Champs Elysées” in Paris to celebrate the victory! Thanks to that, France is sometimes associated with the football image like the United States with the baseball one.

A football match lasts for ninety minutes divided into two half-times. This sport requires not less than eleven players divided most of the time into four attackers, two players at the middle, four defenders and a goalkeeper. Moreover, the rules permit the coach to make three replacements per matches.

In this game, it’s absolutely forbidden to touch the ball with the hands except for the goalkeeper. The footballers have to play only with their heads and obviously with their foots hence the name. This sport also requires two referees to pay better attention. They get cards to characterize each fault: the yellow card indicates a fault, the red one an expulsion from the pitch and the green one calls the medical staff.

The first match attempt occurred at Cambridge University in 1846 to try to invent rules hence “the Cambridge rules”. Then, the first official international match was played in 1872. This same year, the first French club of football was created and called “Le Havre Athletic Club”. This sport was introduced in Africa by the British colonists but it wasn’t really appreciated. Moreover, the Cup of the World occurs every four years and the first one took place in Uruguay in 1930.

In my opinion, football creates a fairly large feeling of unity when millions of people gather to share the same hobby. Thanks to the World Cup, this sport is able to gather various nationalities. However, I feel disappointed when a match is cancelled because of a terrorist attack.

DE ABREU Lucie 1S2

Source of information: Encyclopédie Microsoft Encarta 2000