Goalkeeping

The goalkeeper is the most distinguished position in football.He is one of the most important players on the field - they are the last line of defense and the first line of attack. A goalkeeper's job is mainly defensive: to guard the team's goal from being breached. Goalkeeper is the only position defined in the Laws of the Game. Goalkeeper are the only player allowed to touch and catch the ball with his hands and arms, however he is restricted to doing so only within their penalty area; for this reason, he must wear jerseys that distinguish them from other outfield players and the referee. If a goalkeeper is sent off or injured,he is the only player allowed to remedy in the field of play and if there is no substitute goalkeeper available, an outfield player must take the goalkeeper's place and wear the appropriate identifying uniform. The discipline of goalkeeping is so specialised that it is very rare in the professional game for a goalkeeper to play in any other position. A goalkeeper with good technical skill may opt to take his team's penalties and free kicks though this is rare as the goalkeeper would be caught out of position if possession is conceded immediately after the kick. And there are a great examples we will point out them later. The goalkeeper should have special skills such as Physical strength, height, positioning,diving ,jumping ability and judgement in order to deal with aerial balls and agility, quick reactions and a good positional sense are all needed for shot stopping.The standard football skills of ball control, tackling, passing and dribbling are not usually required in a goalkeeper.

football positions

each of the eleven players on a team is assigned to a particular position on the field of play. A team is made up of one goalkeeper and ten outfield players who fill various defensive, midfield and attacking positions depending on the formation assigned for the game. These positions describe both the player's main role and their area of operation on the pitch. As the game has evolved, tactics and team formations have changed, and the names of the positions and the duties involved have evolved as well. when we look to the field of play , we will find four main positions of the players
1- goalkeeper (GK)
2- defenders
3- midfielders
4- strikers
each position except goalkeeper contain three or four related position as we will see . Defenders:
1 Sweeper/Libero (SW)
2 Centre-back (CB)
3 Full-back (FB/RB/LB)
4 Wingback (WB/RWB/LWB)
. midfielders:
1 Centre midfielder (CM)
2 Defensive midfielder (DM)
3 Attacking midfielder (AM)
4 Winger (RW/LW) or wide midfielder (LM/RM)
. strikers:
1 Centre forward (CF)
2 Striker (ST)
3 Deep-lying forward (SS)
 I'll try to explain each position in later posts.

football basics

football is a game with two teams of eleven players, played over the course of 90 minutes. This period is split into two 45-minute halves. The objective of the game is to score more ‘goals’ than the opposition. The term ‘goal’ refers to two areas either side of the pitch, each one defended by one of the teams. A ‘goal’ is scored by depositing the ball into the opponent’s goal area. in detail: Field of play
Football can be played on a natural or artificial (e.g. Astroturf) surface. However, the shape of the field must be rectangular, with the dimensions of 90-120 metres long by 45-90 metres wide. Notably, the guidelines for international matches are stricter (100-110 metres x 64-75 metres).
•Goal Area: Starts 5.5 metres from each goalpost and extends 5.5 metres out, with the two lines joining vertically
•Penalty Area: Starts 16.5 metres from each goalpost and extends 16.5 metres out, with the two lines joining vertically.
•Flagpost: Placed at each corner, with a quarter-circle on the field (1 metre in radius).
•Goals: 7.32 metre area between the posts, and 2.44 metres high. The posts cannot exceed 5 inches in width.

The ball
Naturally spherical, with a circumference of 27-28 inches.

Players, equipment players;
Each team consists of a maximum of eleven players (excluding substitutes), one of whom must be the goalkeeper. Competition rules may state a minimum number of players required to constitute a team; this is usually seven. Goalkeepers are the only one allowed to play the ball with their hands, provided they do so within the penalty area in front of their own goal. The eleven players are supplemented by the option to bring on a maximum of three substitutes from a pre-decided list of three to seven players (the number of substitutes permitted is higher for friendly matches). equipments; The basic equipment or kit players are required to wear includes a shirt, shorts, socks, footwear and adequate shin guards. Headgear is not a required piece of basic equipment, but players today may choose to wear it to protect themselves from head injury. Players are forbidden to wear or use anything that is dangerous to themselves or another player, such as jewellery or watches. The goalkeeper must wear clothing that is easily distinguishable from that worn by the other players and the match officials.

Major Football Organizations

The Football Association
The English FA was established in 1863 and governs the game and all its leagues in England. the body itself is known as the Football Association, although it has been a member of FIFA since 1905 and a member of UEFA since 1954. The FA is responsible for the England national football team, and subsequently generates considerable turnover each year. The key figures in the organisation are the Chief Executive and the Chairman, who liaise with and assist in appointing the England team’s manager. The current president is Prince William

Union of European Football Associations (UEFA)
Formed at a meeting on 15th June 1954 in Basel, Switzerland, UEFA was initially consist of just 25 national associations but now has 53 members. It is one of the six FIFA continental organisations and is by far the richest due to its governance of all European-wide club and international competitions; including the Champions League, the UEFA Cup, the European Championships, the UEFA Super Cup, the European-South American Cup, the UEFA Intertoto Cup and the UEFA Women’s Cup. The current president is Michel Platini.

Confederation of African Football
CAF represents the national football associations of Africa, runs continental national and club competitions, and controls the prize money, regulations and media rights to those competitions. CAF is one of the biggest of six continental confederations of FIFA. Although it is just three years younger than the UEFA, CAF still has a long way to go in order to improve the quality of the national and local competitions, and therefore, overcome a lot of naturally occurring obstacles, or other burdens such as; limited resources and either complete or partial lack of infrastructures, besides the high cost of transportation through different sides of the continent. Nevertheless, Africa produced skilled players and teams that match, and sometimes exceed Europeans, but, these isolated cases should not be self-deceptive into believing that Africa have achieved European standards in all the domains of football.
THE ASIAN FOOTBALL CONFEDERATION (AFC)
The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) is the governing body of Asian football and one of the six Confederations making up FIFA. AFC has 46 Member Associations and these represent more than half of the world’s population. In fact, just India and China have more than 2.5 billion people. The AFC was formed in 1954. Its headquarters is in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The AFC is responsible for running football in Asia. Among its various responsibilities are: regulating the game, drafting new laws to improve the sport, implementing the law, boosting grassroots and youth football, and conducting major competitions. The current President of AFC is Mohamed Bin Hammam, who is from Qatar.
the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF)
is the continent-wide governing body for football in North America, Central America and the Caribbean. Three South American entities, the independent nations of Guyana and Suriname, and the French department of French Guiana, are also members. CONCACAF was founded in its current form on 18 December 1961 in Mexico City, Mexico, by the fusion the NAFC and the CCCF, and it became one of the six continental confederations affiliated with FIFA. Its primary administrative functions are to organize competitions for national teams and clubs, and to conduct World Cup qualifying tournaments. In recent years, the region has been dominated by the United States and Mexico, who have each qualified for the last 4 World Cup tournaments and have won all but one of the editions of the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

Real Begin of Football

On October 1963, eleven London clubs and schools sent their representatives to the Freemason's Tavern. These representatives were intent on clarifying the muddle by establishing a set of fundamental rules, acceptable to all parties, to govern the matches played amongst them. This meeting marked the birth of The Football Association. The eternal dispute concerning shin-kicking, tripping and carrying the ball was discussed thoroughly at this and consecutive meetings until eventually on 8 December the die-hard exponents of the Rugby style took their final leave. They were in the minority anyway. They wanted no part in a game that forbade tripping, shin-kicking and carrying the ball. A stage had been reached where the ideals were no longer compatible. On 8 December 1863, football and rugby finally split. Their separation became totally irreconcilable six years hence when a provision was included in the football rules forbidding any handling of the ball (not only carrying it). Only eight years after its foundation, The Football Association already had 50 member clubs. The first football competition in the world was started in the same year - the FA Cup, which preceded the League Championship by 17 years. International matches were being staged in Great Britain before football had hardly been heard of in Europe. The first was played in 1872 and was contested by England and Scotland. This sudden boom of organized football accompanied by staggering crowds of spectators brought with it certain problems with which other countries were not confronted until much later on. Professionalism was one of them. The first moves in this direction came in 1879, when Darwin, a small Lancashire club, twice managed to draw against the supposedly invincible Old Etonians in the FA Cup, before the famous team of London amateurs finally scraped through to win at the third attempt. Two Darwin players, the Scots John Love and Fergus Suter, are reported as being the first players ever to receive remuneration for their football talent. This practice grew rapidly and the Football Association found itself obliged to legalise professionalism as early as 1885. This development predated the formation of any national association outside of Great Britain (namely, in the Netherlands and Denmark) by exactly four years. After the English Football Association, the next oldest are the Scottish FA (1873), the FA of Wales (1875) and the Irish FA (1880). Strictly speaking, at the time of the first international match, England had no other partner association against which to play. When Scotland played England in Glasgow on 30 November 1872, the Scottish FA did not even exist - it was not founded for another three months. The team England played that day was actually the oldest Scottish club team, Queen's Park. The spread of football outside of England, mainly due to the British influence abroad, started slow, but it soon gathered momentum and spread rapidly to all parts of the world. The next countries to form football associations after the Netherlands and Denmark in 1889 were New Zealand (1891), Argentina (1893), Chile (1895), Switzerland, Belgium (1895), Italy (1898), Germany, Uruguay (both in 1900), Hungary (1901) and Finland (1907). When FIFA was founded in Paris in May 1904 it had seven founder members: France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain (represented by the Madrid FC), Sweden and Switzerland. The German Football Federation cabled its intention to join on the same day. This international football community grew steadily, although it sometimes met with obstacles and setbacks. In 1912, 21 national associations were already affiliated to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). By 1925, the number had increased to 36, in 1930 - the year of the first World Cup - it was 41, in 1938, 51 and in 1950, after the interval caused by the Second World War, the number had reached 73. At present, after the 2000 Ordinary FIFA Congress, FIFA has 204 members in every part of the world.

the origin of football

Although it may be hard to determine when and where the game of soccer created, history has a game similar to our present day being played for over 3000 years. Around the 2nd or 3rd Century BC, it was approved that the Chinese military during the Han Dynasty played a game involving kicking a ball into a small net. A game similar to soccer was played by the ancient Greeks and Romans but their game could include up to 27 players on a side compared to the modern day game of 11 players to a side. Football Soccer became one of the most popular sports of the masses due to its popularity as a war game. A game of "football" which the British called it, was played in the east of England during the 8th Century where the head of a defeated Danish Prince was used as the ball. During medieval times, villages and towns were puted against each other in game battles that could take all day. There were no structured rules to abide by and kicking, biting, gouging and punching turned the game into a virtual battle of survival. These matches became so violent that the English authorities made many attempts to have soccer banned. King Edward III from England passed laws in 1331 to abolish the game and Queen Elizabeth I had a law passed that provided a one week jail sentence for anyone caught playing soccer. Despite these efforts, the game of soccer became so popular in England over the next few centuries that it evolved as the most popular sport of its time. here, the only shortcoming of the sport was its lack of rules or standards. In 1815, Eton College, a famous English school, established a set of rules to be implemented by other schools, colleges and universities. A standardized rules were later adopted in 1848 by most of England's colleges and universities that were known as the Cambridge Rules. Unfortunately, at this point, there were still two different sets of rules being used. Some colleges favored the Rugby Rules which allowed carrying the ball with your hands, tripping and kicking to the shins. which were contrary to the Cambridge Rules. In 1863, The Football Association was created by eleven English soccer clubs and schools to establish a single set of rules to be enforced when they played against each other. The supporters of the Rugby School rules objected to the changes and the two groups split apart. The Football Association later changed the rules in 1869 where they prohibit the use of hands, except by the GK, which led us to the game of soccer as we know it today. The English still called it a game of "football" because the ball was played primarily with the feet but in the late 18th Century, the word, "soccer", was first used by a student of Oxford University by the name of Charles Wreford Brown. The students at Oxford were known for using slang where they added "er" to the end of words that they intentionally shortened. The game of Rugby was called "rugger". Brown shortened the word "association" and added "er" and the term "soccer" was born. Since the 19th Century the game has evolved to where it is today. It is the World's Game that is played by more people than any other sport and is universally recognized as the most popular game in sports history.