Kill some time between matches with entertaining trivia!

Posted on | June 21, 2018 | No Comments

Interesting Facts About Football

As the World Cup unfolds in Russia, there are many people around the world who have started carefully planning their days around the various match timetables. Football is, as well all know, the single most popular sport on earth, so this should come as no surprise.

While the players thrill you with goals, kicks, upsets, and more, this article will help you pass the time between games, and fill you in on some lesser-known facts about The Beautiful Game.

● Football is a very old game. It originated in China, around 476 B.C.

● It the most played, and the most watched, sport on the planet.

● It is the world’s most popular sport, with more than a billion people tuning in to view the matches on TV.

Quite a few of these will be punters enjoying a little added action thanks to the
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● The largest football tournament ever saw a grand total of 5 098 teams take place. They all competed in 1999, in the second Bangkok League Seven-a-Side Contest. There were over 35 000 players on the field at one point or another!

● The most goals ever scored by a single player in one game was 16. Stephan Stanis, of France, was the man responsible, and he accomplished this feat in December of 1942, when he appeared for Racing Club de Lens.

● Video evidence has proven that the fastest-ever goal scored was a 2.8 second shot by Uruguay’s Ricardo Olivera, in a game in December of 1998.

● Goalkeepers did not have to wear shirts coloured differently to that of their teammates until 1913.

● The average distance players cover during a game is 9.65 kilometers, or 5.9 miles.

● The first basketball game to ever be played used a soccer ball!

● The first Football Club in the World was the English Sheffield Football Club. It was established in 1857 by Colonel Nathaniel Creswick and Major William Priest, two officers in the British Army.

● Teams from Europe have managed to reach every World Cup Final, with the exception of those which took place in 1930 and 1950.

● The highest-ever scoring game was clocked in at 149 – 0. Stade Olympique de L’emyrne, a Malagasy squad, were scoring own goals as protest for an unfair decision that a ref had made in the game preceding it.

● Nigerian-born Chelsea player Celestine Babayaro injured his legs as he celebrated his first goal in a pre-season game, and Luigi Riva, of Italy, made a shot so powerful that he actually broke a spectator’s arm.

● The first-ever black football player was a Mr Arthur Wharton, back in the 1800s.

● Pele coined the the phrase The Beautiful Game.

● Only Canadians and Americans call it soccer, and football is a different form of the game.

● England came up with the word soccer. It is a shortening of the phrase Association Football, which became Assoc Football, and then, finally Soccer. In the England of the 19th century it was common to add an -er sound to words that were shortened, Assoc became Assoc-er.

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