Football is the name given to a number of different, but related, team sports. The most popular of these worldwide is Association football, which also goes by the name of soccer. The English language word football is also applied to Rugby football (Rugby union and Rugby league), North American football (American and Canadian), Australian rules football, and Gaelic football.

While it is widely believed that the word football, or "foot ball", originated in reference to the action of a foot kicking a ball, there is a rival explanation, which has it that football originally referred to a variety of games in medieval Europe, which were played on foot.Professional Football Researchers Association Origins of Football These games were usually played by peasants, as opposed to the horse-riding sports often played by aristocrats. While there is no conclusive evidence for this explanation, the word football has always implied a variety of games played on foot, not just those that involved kicking a ball. In some cases, the word football has been applied to games which have specifically outlawed kicking the ball. (See football (word) for more details.)

All football games involve scoring with a spherical or ellipsoidal ball (itself called a football), by moving the ball into, onto, or over a goal area or line defended by the opposing team. Many of the modern games have their origins in England, but many peoples around the world have played games which involved kicking and/or carrying a ball since ancient times.

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BBC News | UK | World Edition

Fatal flats blaze inquiry starts
Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:27:28 -0000
Investigations begin into the cause of a tower block fire which left six people, including three children, dead.
UK seeks Iran trial clarification
Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:42:55 -0000
British diplomats are trying to establish if Iran intends to act on its threat to prosecute staff from the UK's Tehran embassy.
BT offers holidays for pay cuts
Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:48:45 -0000
BT offers staff the chance of long holidays in return for a big pay cut in a bid to reduce costs during the economic downturn.
UK forces 'encounter few Taliban'
Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:18:25 -0000
British forces on a major operation in Afghanistan say they have encountered little resistance from the Taliban.
Fears over student place shortage
Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:58:30 -0000
Ministers must fund more university places in England, or risk forcing tens of thousands of teenagers onto the dole, an MP warns.
Bankruptcy in over-65s 'triples'
Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:03:20 -0000
The number of pensioners filing for bankruptcy has increased threefold over the past five years, research shows.

The Economist: Britain

New plans for schools: Never-ending story
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:54:22 -0000
The next instalment in an epic adventure in educationTO HEAR Ed Balls, the schools secretary, tell it, the saga of British education since the Labour Party came to power in 1997 is a rousing one of derring-do. The government set targets for literacy and numeracy—and lo, literacy and numeracy rocketed. It prescribed teaching methods in these basics (and much else)—and teaching standards soared too. The next chapter in this absorbing drama was foretold on June 30th, in the latest education white paper. Parents will be able to demand catch-up tuition for their darling dullards, or challenging lessons for their gifted lads and lasses. They will be enlightened by new school “report cards” that set out matters academic (exam and inspection results), social (sport and healthy eating) and sundry (“partnership working” with other schools), both separately and in an overall grade. Naughty children will finally be tamed by forcing parents to sign agreements to make them behave. Teaching will be transformed (again) by re-licensing teachers every five years. ...
ID cards for farm animals: Shepherd's warning
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:54:22 -0000
Britain digs in its hooves over EU rules on electronic taggingMODERN food-production methods move animals about a lot before they wind up on dinner tables. So, as the British government found out in the 2001 outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) among cattle, tracing the origins of an epidemic can be tough. To make disease control easier, the European Union decided that all sheep, which also get FMD, should have identity cards in the form of electronic ear tags. That way they can be monitored, just as supermarkets use radio-frequency identification microchips in packaging to track their stock. Tracing infected animals back to their home farms is crucial for disease control. It seems a good idea. It should also make controlling scrapie, a nasty sheep disease that can remain undetected for years before symptoms show, much easier. America started using the same technology in 2001 and stepped up an animal-testing programme to wipe out scrapie. The disease turned out to be more widespread than was first thought but, since 2005, the number of flocks testing positive has fallen by about 77%. ...
Economic prospects: After the fall
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:54:22 -0000
Any revival will be from a terrible starting point, and may prove anaemicFEW politicians have more acute antennae than Peter Mandelson, now in effect the deputy to Gordon Brown. In January the business secretary slapped down a junior minister when she spotted some premature green shoots of economic recovery. But this week Lord Mandelson felt confident enough to say that the worst of the recession was over, and that the economy was on course to return to growth later this year.That is certainly the story being told by business surveys that measure the pulse of activity. After detecting a nascent recovery in private services in May, purchasing managers sensed a further improvement in manufacturing in June. They reported on July 1st the first increase in output in this hard-hit sector since March 2008. ...
Gordon Brown's latest relaunch: The election starts here
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:54:22 -0000
The policies that will pave the way for next spring’s contestTHERE are few trustier gambits in the Brownite playbook than the set-piece parliamentary announcement. As chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown supplemented the annual budget with a pre-budget report and a biennial spending review. These opportunities to set the terms of debate, and to stage carefully prepared appearances rather than have to think and communicate on his feet, continue to enthuse him as prime minister.The latest example, a preview of the government’s legislative agenda on June 29th, doubled up as the unofficial start of the general-election campaign. Mr Brown’s bills will be fully itemised later this year in the Queen’s Speech, another government-managed exhibition in Parliament. But most of the policies he plans to pursue before going to the polls, most likely next spring, are now apparent. ...
Renationalising the railways: End of the line
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:54:22 -0000
Another retreat from the East Coast line shows confusion in railway policyTHE history of Britain’s railways is a baroque and convoluted 150-year tale in which dozens of companies have merged, split, gone bankrupt, been nationalised, been reprivatised and so on. The latest twist came on July 1st, when the government announced that it was taking back the London-to-Edinburgh East Coast Main Line (ECML) because National Express, the transport conglomerate responsible for running trains on it, was no longer able to make its contracted payments. This comes just two years after the previous operator on the line, GNER, lost its contract. The proximate cause is the recession. A smaller economy means fewer passengers. The drop in numbers was particularly sharp for profitable first-class travellers, as firms cut back on their travel budgets. ...
Private prisons: Criminal enterprises
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:54:22 -0000
How PFIs have worked in the justice sector“IT IS not appropriate for people to profit out of incarceration,” said Jack Straw, then an opposition MP, in 1995. Mr Straw is now the justice secretary, and he has changed his mind. There are 11 privately run prisons in England and Wales, holding about a tenth of the total jail population, a bigger chunk than in America or anywhere in Europe. Mr Straw now wants to commission five more. Like most existing private jails, they are likely to be built and run through a Private Finance Initiative, or PFI.Getting the private sector to build and run prisons has brought tangible benefits. One is speed: private jails are built in as little as two years, rather than the seven that they used to take when the government did the building. Running costs are lower too, mainly because staff are paid a quarter less than in the public sector (though senior managers are paid more) and get fewer benefits. ...

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