Outside the United States and Canada the game of soccer is called football. Soccer is the world's most popular game, with the best players meeting every four years to compete for the World Cup. It is bigger than baseball, American football and basketball combined. Statistics showed that a global television audience of 49 billion people tuned in to watch the 2002 World Cup. Soccer is a great game to watch and a great game to play. The objective and rules of the game are easy to learn.
Using a round ball, a soccer match is played by two teams wearing differently colored shirts. Each team consists of not more than eleven players, one of whom is the goalkeeper. A goalkeeper is the only man on the field who has the ability of possessing the ball in his hands. Keep in mind though, this does not mean he can run around the entire field handling the ball. The goalkeeper is limited to a rectangular box surrounding his goal. An official match may not start if either team consists of fewer than seven players. In most professional competition such as the MLS (Major League Soccer), a maximum of three substitutes may be used in any match. In other competitions the rules must state how many substitutes may be nominated, from three up to a maximum of seven. The duration of an official match is ninety minutes played in two halves, each half lasting forty-five minutes. .
You can play soccer for fun in the street, on the beach or on a piece of waste ground. The field of play must be rectangular. The length of the touch line must be greater than the width of the goal line. The field of play is marked with lines. These lines belong to the areas of which they are boundaries. The two longer boundary lines are called touch lines. The two shorter lines are called goal lines. The field of play is divided into two halves by a halfway line. The center mark is indicated at the midpoint of the halfway line. A circle with a radius of ten yards is marked around it.