Theme : Football About the Football History of football Football in England

Football in England

The England national team playing at Wembley.
Country	England
Governing body	The Football Association(FA)
National team(s)	England
First played	1863
Clubs	40,000
National competitions
FIFA World Cup UEFA European Championship UEFA Nations League
Club competitions

Association football is the most popular sport in England,^[1] where the first modern set of rules for the code were established in 1863, which were a major influence on the development of the modern Laws of the Game. With over 40,000 association football clubs, England has more clubs involved in the code than any other country. England hosts the world's first club, Sheffield F.C.; the world's oldest professional association football club, Notts County; the oldest national governing body, the Football Association; the joint-oldest national team; the oldest national knockout competition, the FA Cup; and the oldest national league, the English Football League. Today England's top domestic league, the Premier League, is one of the most popular and richest sports leagues in the world, with six of the ten richest football clubs in the world as of 2019.^[2]

The England national football team is one of only eight teams to win the World Cup, having done so once, in 1966. A total of five English club teams have won the UEFA Champions League, also known as European Cup.

Football was played in England as far back as medieval times. The first written evidence of a football match came in about 1170, when William Fitzstephen wrote of his visit to London, "After dinner all the youths of the city goes out into the fields for the very popular game of ball." He also went on to mention that each trade had their own team, "The elders, the fathers, and the men of wealth come on horseback to view the contests of their juniors, and in their fashion sport with the young men; and there seems to be aroused in these elders a stirring of natural heat by viewing so much activity and by participation in the joys of unrestrained youth." Kicking ball games are described in England from 1280.^[3]

In 1314, Edward II, then the King of England, said about a sport of football and the use of footballs, "certain tumults arising from great footballs in the fields of the public, from which many evils may arise."^[3] An account of an exclusively kicking "football" game from Nottinghamshire in the fifteenth century bears similarity to association football.^[4] By the 16th centuries references to organised teams and goals had appeared. There is evidence for refereed, team football games being played in English schools since at least 1581.^[3] The eighteenth-century Gymnastic Society of London is, arguably, the world's first football club.