Custom «Soccer» Essay Paper Sample

Soccer is an out door sport and goal game that is sometimes referred to as football in some countries. The first soccer game ever played in history is believed to have taken place in Derby, England in a festive celebration of the victory earned over Roman troops. The event was known as the Shrove Tuesday and after the first match, the soccer games become an annual event. The sport then remained a popular game in England with the name football which later was referred to as soccer by the football association in England to avoid confusion with the rugby sport. After this, the sport rapidly spread in Europe especially in Australia and Ireland. Professional leagues were introduced in the eighty’s initially in England before it spread out to other nations. The Federation International Football Association (FIFA) which runs the sport all over the world, was found in the year 1904 and has been in charge of organizing the World Cup after every four years since the first world cup that was staged in 1930. The game had to wait till 1908 before it was made part of the Olympic Games. Soccer is now played in all nations in all continents with 200 participating nations and 250 million and over player’s taking part in the sport. This has left the sport being regarded as the most popular ball game in the world (Murray 67).

The game is played by eleven membera in each team with two teams facing each other. The game entails the players trying to get the ball into the goals in the opposing team. The players are allowed to play with any part of their body but not the arms and hands. It’s only the goalkeeper while is the penalty area in front of the goal he or she is guarding that is allowed to use their arms or hands. The sport is played on a field that is mostly covered with grass normally 70m and 110m. On the centre of each goal line stands a goal that is 2.4 m high and 7.3m wide and covered on the back with a net. The traditional formation of players is a goalkeeper, two defenders playing as fullbacks, the players assume the role of half backs and the remaining five players being forwards. The play of this game continues for two forty-five minutes with a 15 minutes break between the two halves. Some allowances for stoppages during the match are often awarded at the end of the game. The game traditionally allows three substitutes in every team but this varies with the type of tournaments. Incase of a tie, an overtime of 30 minutes is played and if still the overtime ends in a draw, the match has then to go into alternating penalty shoot outs (Murray 78).

Soccer as a sport is played all over the world by female and male, old and young for recreation and professional purpose. This type of game calls for varied and many physical demands from the players. In the 90 minutes played in a match, the work rate of the players can be averaged to be at 70 per cent and the Calories burned summing up to an extra of between 1000 to 1500. The movements in the pitch will expect the players to cover approximately 10 kilometers as they jump and sprint so many times denying them the chance recover from the maximum bursts of efforts. This means that the skills and talents in the sport need to be topped up with endurance, sprinting speed, muscular power and muscular strength. Training is always done before the main matches and this training includes weight training, circuit training, a mixture of running and a lot of ball work like ball control, passing, shooting, and heading. Fitness is a vital aspect in this sport and is gained through repeated jumping, kicking and sprinting to have the muscles of legs and lower back to tighten. Without such exercise, the players are likely to suffer from injuries like hamstrings and calf muscles. The sport has since then transformed to be a major industry with some of its players making their way into the list of the highest paid players in the world. The all time greatest soccer played in Pele from Brazil with other notable ones in the modern times including David Beckham, Christiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Zinadine Zidane (Markovits and Hellerman 67).