Football

                                                                                                                                                                    

Football, also called association football or soccer. 

Football is the world’s most popular ball game in numbers of participants and spectators. 

Football (Soccer) is one of the oldest sports in the world and with that; it’s also one of the most recognised.                 

The pinnacle of the international game comes in the form the Football World Cup.Football is the world’s most popular ball game in numbers of participants.

 Scotland had the first leagues, but clubs sprang up in most European nations in the 1890s and 1900s, enabling these nations to found their own leagues.

 Many Scottish professional players migrated south to join English clubs, introducing English players and audiences to more-advanced ball-playing skills and to the benefits of teamwork and passing. 

Up to World war ll, the British continued to influence football’s development through regular club tours overseas and the Continental coaching careers of former players.

 Itinerant Scots were particularly prominent in central Europe. The interwar Danubian school of football emerged from the coaching legacies and expertise of John Madden in Prague and Jimmy Hogan in Austria. Before World War II, Italian, Austrian, Swiss, and Hungarian teams emerged as particularly strong challengers to the British.

During the 1930s, Italian clubs and the Italian national team recruited high - caliber players from South America (mainly Argentina and Uruguay), often claiming that these repatriate were essentially Italian in nationality; the great Argentinians Raimondo Orsi and Enrique Guaita were particularly useful acquisitions. 

But only after World War II was the preeminence of the home nations (notably England) unquestionably usurped by overseas teams. In 1950 England lost to the United States at the World Cup finals in Brazil. 

Most devastating were later, crushing losses to Hungary: 6–3 in 1953 at London’s Wembley Stadium, then 7–1 in Budapest a year later. 

The “Magical Magyars” opened English eyes to the dynamic attacking and tactically advanced football played on the Continent and to the technical superiority of players such as Ferenc Puskas, József Bozsik, and Nándor Hidegkuti. During the 1950s and ’60s, Italian and Spanish clubs were the most active in the recruitment of top foreign players. 

For example, the Welshman John Charles, known as “the Gentle Giant,” remains a hero for supporters of the Juventus club of Turin, Italy, while the later success of Real Madrid was built largely on the play of Argentinian Alfredo D Stefano and the Hungarian Puskás.