Football

Football refers to a family of team sports that are played to varied degrees with the objective of scoring goals by kicking a ball. Unqualified, the term "football" often refers to the kind of football that is played in the sport's most popular locations across the world. Football refers to a number of different sports, including association football (also known as soccer in North America and Oceania), gridiron football (specifically American football or Canadian football), Australian rules football, rugby union and rugby league, and Gaelic football. In North America and Oceania, football is referred to as soccer. These several variations of football, which are together referred to as football codes, all have some degree of shared ancestry.

There are a lot of references to traditional, ancient, or even prehistoric ball games that were played in a variety of different regions around the globe. The coding of football and its related sports in English public schools throughout the 19th century is considered to be the ancestor of today's football codes. These football regulations were able to expand to parts of the world under British cultural influence that were not directly under British authority as a result of the growth and cultural impact of the British Empire. At the end of the 19th century, unique regional codes were already evolving. For example, Gaelic football purposefully included the rules of local traditional football games in order to preserve their legacy. This was done in order to make the game more competitive. The Football League was the first of several professional football organisations to be established in England in 1888, when it was originally established. Throughout the course of the 20th century, some of the several variations of football emerged as some of the most well-liked team sports played all over the globe.