Soccer is one of the most popular sports in the world. It is played in practically every country in the world, which meets every four years to compete in the World Cup, and has its own regular leagues throughout the year.

It is estimated that soccer has around 250 million players worldwide, and that it mobilizes around 1,800 million interested people and fans around the globe. It is one of the Olympic sports, and its international leadership is exercised by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).

The ancient origins of the sport are uncertain, but a similar sport was played in China in the 3rd century BC. In this remote ancestor of soccer, Han Dynasty soldiers practiced an exercise called ts’uh Kúh (also called luju or tsu chu), which consisted of throwing a ball with the feet into a small net. In some variants, the player had to do it while defending himself from the physical attack of his opponents.

Centuries later there were practices more similar to modern soccer, such as the more ceremonial Japanese kemari, in which a ball had to be kept in the air for as long as possible, passing it between players without using the hands.

There were also western variants, such as the Greek episkyros and the Roman haspastrum, of which very little information is known. It is also known today that the ancient Mesoamerican peoples practiced something similar called pok ta pok, some 3,000 years ago, and that the North American aborigines did the same, although they called it pasuckuakohowog.

However, it is unlikely that these ancient sports had any direct influence on modern soccer. The closest in European history are the «ball games» played by British and French youths (the latter under the name soule). At carnivals it was common practice in the British Isles, occasions in which an entire village could participate.

The Italians had the clearest antecedent of all, the Florentine calcio, less violent than its British variants and more organized than the French, consisting of two teams of 27 players each. It was practiced from the 16th century onwards, and in 1580 Giovanni Bardi presented the first formal set of rules.

Properly speaking, the modern history of soccer begins in Great Britain in the 19th century, when the first unifying rules of carnival soccer emerged, beginning to be practiced in collegiate associations outside the festive season. In fact, in 1863 the rules of the game at Cambridge College were the basis for the current code of rules, also taking rules from Sheffield’s way of playing the game.

Thus, with just 13 rules, modern soccer was promoted by the newly created Football Association (FA). The term soccer, derived from «association» and the suffix -er, also came from there, although a few years later, and the first league competition in history, the Football League, was born in 1888. Its purpose was to raise sufficient funds to be able to professionalize the FA players.

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, English-style soccer had spread throughout Europe and then to other continents, thanks in part to the European colonial system and trade with the newly formed American republics.

The first American soccer league was Argentina, founded in 1891, and the first international match outside Europe was played between Argentina and Uruguay in 1901. On the other hand, economic conditions in Asia prevented soccer from leaving the purely university sphere until the 1980s.

In 1904, in Paris, the Fédération Internationale e Football Association (FIFA) was founded by the soccer representatives of 8 different countries: France, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany. Its objective was to manage European matches not linked to Great Britain and Ireland, who initially rejected the existence of a world soccer body.

The first soccer World Cup in history was played in 1930, which became the biggest football event in the world. This was followed by the Intercontinental Cup in 1960, the South American Copa Libertadores and the European Champions League. Women’s soccer emerged professionally after World War I, when women’s participation in society and the workplace increased.