Football Intro
Football is the most popular sport in the world and it is played by men, women and children from many different countries. Professionally, games are made up from two teams of 11 players with the usual formation being one goal keeper, four defenders, four midfielders and two strikers.
Professional games last for 90 minutes split into two halves of 45 minutes each. There is one referee and two linemen as well as a fourth official who plays a role off the actual pitch. There have been many calls for new video replay technology to come into play to assist eth officials in matches in order to ensure all decisions are correct.
The World Cup comes around every four years and is hosted in one of the footballing nations. Some of the world’s best national teams originate from Argentina, England, France, Spain, Brazil, Italy, Germany and Portugal.
Among the top leagues in the world are the Italian league known as Serie A, the Spanish league known as La Liga, the English league known as the Premiership and the German league called the Bundesliga. All of these leagues are the top tiers of their footballing nations and have many tiers below them competing for promotion.
Footballers are famous for the large amounts of money that they earn playing the sport and names such as David Beckham and Frank Lampard are synonymous with the footballing world. Betting is also popular with football matches and over the years many teams have fallen foul to illegal betting scandals with the Italian league the most notable offender.
