Chapter 1

Introducing Planet Soccer

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding why soccer is the simplest game

Learning how to play: The basic aims and rules

Playing and watching

Explaining why people love soccer so much

Association Football — soccer, as it’s known in the United States — is the most popular sport in the world. It’s referred to by many different names around the world: football, footy, soccer, fitba, fútbol, calcio, futebol, voetbol, le foot, foci, sakka, or bong da. Whatever it’s called, the game remains the same: two teams of 11 players, each team trying to kick a spherical ball into a goal more times than the other.

Soccer is fiendishly addictive, whether you watch, compete, or do both. Across the planet more supporters and spectators follow the professional game than any other sport, and at grassroots level more amateur participants enjoy the game than any other athletic pastime. Though its growth has been slower in America than elsewhere, it’s become one of the most popular participation sports in the United States. As a spectator sport, millions now attend games and tune in to international soccer games via television or online, and the top professional leagues in North America — Major League Soccer (MLS) for men and the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) for women — are both growing fast and thriving.

Soccer arouses passion in spectators and players like no other game in the world — and perhaps like nothing else known to humankind. It has done so ever since some British rule-makers formalized the pastime of kicking a ball around into a sport during the late 1850s and early 1860s. (That’s 150 years and counting, and it’s still getting more popular by the day.) But why have billions of men and women, boys and girls, adults and children been enthralled by this simplest of sports for such a long time? What makes soccer so special? Read on for some ideas.

Nothing as Simple as Soccer

John Charles Thring was spot on the money when, in 1862 in Uppingham, England, he wrote a set of draft rules for the game that later became known as Association Football. With the sport yet to be christened, Thring decided to entitle his rules “The Simplest Game.”

Thring’s rules were tweaked before being ratified by the newly founded Football Association in England the following year, but the new sport of Association Football remained the simplest game. Because no game (with the possible exception of running in a straight line, and that’s not really a game, is it?) is less complicated than soccer.

The basic aim: It really is that simple!

The object of the game is simple: for a team of 11 players to guide a ball into a goal and do it more times than the opposition team can manage.

That’s it!

So why is soccer so popular around the world?

Pop psychologists have written more words attempting to explain why soccer is so popular than on any other subject (except organized religion, maybe, although some soccer fans will tell you that’s pretty much the same thing).

The truth is, nobody’s ever been able to quite put their finger on why the game is so popular, so I’m not going to pretend to give you a definitive answer. There simply isn’t one. The best I can do is offer you the following three suggestions:

• Its simplicity makes it readily accessible. You only have to watch a couple of minutes of action to work out what the teams are trying to do.
• Goals have a rarity value and are at a premium. Basketball involves scoring tons of points and a tennis player may win a point every 30 seconds. But you can watch 90 minutes of soccer and not see a single goal scored by either team. Some skeptics say this makes the game boring, but its massive popularity around the world suggests that the rarity value of goals only increases the excitement of soccer for many, many people.
• The teams belong to the people. Despite its origins in British private schools, organized soccer quickly became a working-class sport, a release from the tedium of everyday life all around the world. Results really began to matter. Following a team became tribal, with a sense of belonging and a commitment to a cause.

Having said that, thousands of other, better reasons may exist. After you’ve watched a few games, or played soccer yourself, you no doubt have a few theories of your own. Actually, that’s another great thing about soccer: Everyone’s got an opinion about it — often a strong one!

Where do people play soccer?

Everywhere, basically. The game, in a very basic form, is thought to have started out in China over 2,000 years ago, with the ancient Greeks, the Romans, and indigenous Australians playing variations on a theme over the centuries.

It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that the game as you know it today developed in Britain, but by 1900 it had spread all over Europe and to South America. Fast-forward another 110 years and every country and continent in the world is now playing the game. That includes the United States, a country that has long favored other sports such as baseball and its own version of football, but now has well-established professional leagues, the most successful women’s national team in the world, and a huge level of participation in youth soccer.

Explaining a Few Rules

So how does this team of 11 players actually go about playing the game and scoring these elusive goals? I go into further detail about the laws of the game in Chapter 4, but first here’s a brief overview of how you play a soccer game.

The field

You usually play soccer on grass, occasionally on artificial surfaces, but always on a field no bigger than 80 yards wide and 120 yards long. You might also hear it called the “pitch.” Figure 1-1 shows you how the field looks.

Each end of the field has a goal, composed of two upright posts 24 feet apart and 8 feet high, topped with a horizontal crossbar. One team tries to score in one goal, and the other team tries to score in the other goal. While both teams are trying to score, they are also trying to stop the other team from scoring.

Play stops if the ball leaves the marked field. If a player in one team kicks the ball off the field, then a player in the opposing team must throw or kick the ball back in.

The players

Each team has 11 players. Ten of these players aren’t allowed to touch the ball with their arms or hands. They’re called outfield players. The other member of the team is called the goalkeeper; this player can use their hands and arms in the penalty area around the goal they’re tending.

Four basic positions exist:

• Defender: A defender’s job is primarily to defend their team’s goal and stop players from the opposing team scoring.
• Forward: A forward’s role is to score goals or create them for other players.
• Goalkeeper: The goalkeeper’s job is to stop the ball going in the net at all costs, thus ensuring the opposing team doesn’t score a goal. The goalkeeper can do so by using any part of their body.
• Midfielder: Midfielders — usually the team’s most adaptable players — cover a lot of ground and help the defenders defend and the forwards attack.

These players are arranged in different places around the field, and the variations on ways to do this are known as formations. The most common is 4-4-2: four defenders, four midfielders, and two forwards. An alternative is 4-3-3: four defenders, three midfielders, and three attackers, a more offensive lineup than a 4-4-2. You may notice both of those formations only add up to 10 players, not 11: That’s because the...