Mrs. Stewart
Period 5
Nov. 21, 2016
K’heira Shepler
Soccer Introduction: Soccer is the national sport of more countries--from Brazil, to North Korea, to Italy--than any other sport in the world. Yet no one knows for certain where soccer began. Early forms of the game were played in ancient China, Greece, Mexico, and Japan. The Roman legions spread a rudimentary form of soccer throughout Europe. During the Middle Ages, the sport grew enormous contests between entire towns played on mile-long fields. These contests were called melees and were so dangerous that many kings and princes tried to ban them. The rules we have today we owe largely to Cambridge University and the English Football Association (EFA), which worked to standardize them in the nineteenth century. Credit for the spread of “association football” (which is where the word soccer comes from) may be claimed by the sailors of the British Navy.
…show more content…
This organization directs soccer through the football associations of each country. FIFA has more members today, than the United Nations. In the United States, soccer’s three most important governing bodies are the United States Soccer Football Association, which is our link to FIFA, the Olympic Committee, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association Soccer Committee. The NCAA rules, which are used by colleges and universities in the U.S., used to be radically different from those used around the world. In recent years however, the NCAA has brought its code closer in line with that of FIFA, so now they only differ in a few