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Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players each, who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposing team by moving the ball beyond the goal line into a rectangular-framed goal defended by the opposing team. Traditionally, the game has been played over two 45-minute halves, for a total match time of 90 minutes. With an estimated 250 million players active in over 200 countries and territories, it is the world's most popular sport.
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association, more commonly known by its acronym FIFA, is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded in 1904 to oversee international competition among the national associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, its membership now comprises 211 national associations. These national associations must also be members of one of the six regional confederations: CAF (Africa), AFC, UEFA (Europe), CONCACAF, OFC (Oceania), and CONMEBOL.
The Union of European Football Associations is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs football, futsal and beach football in Europe and the transcontinental countries of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan, as well as the West Asian countries of Cyprus, Armenia and Israel. UEFA consists of 55 national association members. Since 2022, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, FIFA and UEFA suspended all Russian national teams and clubs from any FIFA and UEFA competitions.
The FIFA Women's World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's international governing body. The competition has been held every four years and one year after the men's FIFA World Cup since 1991, when the inaugural tournament, then called the FIFA Women's World Championship, was held in China. Under the tournament's current format, national teams vie for the remaining 31 slots in a three-year qualification phase. The host nation's team is automatically entered as the first slot. The tournament, called the World Cup Finals, is contested at venues within the host nation(s) over about one month.
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) is the administrative and controlling body for association football, beach soccer, and futsal in Africa. It was established on 8 February 1957 at the Grand Hotel in Khartoum, Sudan by the national football associations of: Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Africa. following formal discussions between the aforementioned associations at the FIFA Congress held on 7 June 1956 at Avenida Hotel in Lisbon, Portugal.
The FIFA Men's World Ranking is a ranking system for men's national teams in association football, led by Argentina as of December 2024. The men's teams of the member nations of FIFA, football's world governing body, are ranked based on their game results with the most successful teams being ranked highest. The rankings were introduced in December 1992, and eight teams have held the top position, of which Brazil have spent the longest time ranked first.
Association football has been included in every Summer Olympic Games as a men's competition sport, except 1896 and 1932. Women's football was added to the official program at the Atlanta 1996 Games.
In European football, the UEFA coefficients are statistics based in weighted arithmetic means used for ranking and seeding teams in club and international competitions. Introduced in 1979 for men's football tournaments, and after applied in women's football and futsal, the coefficients are calculated by UEFA, who administer football within Europe, and the Asian parts of some transcontinental countries.
The Brazil women's national football team represents Brazil in international women's football and is run by the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF). It has participated in all nine editions of the FIFA Women's World Cup, finishing as runner-up in 2007, and nine editions of the Copa América Femenina.
The AFC Women's Asian Cup is a quadrennial competition in women's football for national teams which belong to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). It is the oldest women's international football competition and premier women's football competition in the AFC region for national teams. The competition is also known as the Asian Women's Football Championship and the Asian Women's Championship. 20 tournaments have been held, with the current champions being China PR. The competitions until 2026 also serve as Asian qualifying tournament for the FIFA Women's World Cup.
A transfer window is the period during the year in which a football club can add players to their squad who were previously under contract with another club. Such a transfer is completed by registering the player into the new club through FIFA. "Transfer window" is the unofficial term commonly used by the media for the concept of "registration period" as described in the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players. According to the rules, each national football association decides on the time of the 'window' but it may not exceed 12 weeks. The second registration period occurs during the season and may not exceed four weeks.
The Finalissima, formerly known as European/South American Nations Cup and also called Artemio Franchi Cup, is an intercontinental football match organised by CONMEBOL and UEFA and contested by the winners of the Copa América and UEFA European Championship. Organised as an occasional one-off match, it is a national team equivalent to the defunct Intercontinental Cup between the club champions of Europe and South America. The competition was held twice, in 1985 and 1993, before being discontinued. It was relaunched in 2022, after the signing of a memorandum of understanding between CONMEBOL and UEFA.
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The Tahiti national beach soccer team represents Tahiti or French Polynesia in international beach soccer competitions and is controlled by the FTF and the FFF, the governing body for football in Tahiti. In contrast to the fortunes of the association football team, Tahiti's beach soccer has, since 2011, been one of the strongest teams in world beach soccer. The team made history at the 2013 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup by becoming the first Pacific nation to qualify for the knockout stages of an international FIFA tournament. At the 2015 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup Tahiti beat Italy in a penalty shootout to become the first Pacific nation to ever make it to a final in a FIFA tournament. They followed this up with another appearance in the 2017 final.
The UEFA Nations League is an international football competition played by the senior men's national teams of the member associations of UEFA, the sport's European governing body.
The FIFA Women's Club World Cup is an international women's association football competition that is proposed by the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The inaugural edition is scheduled to take place in early 2026.
The CONCACAF Nations League is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the member associations of CONCACAF, the regional governing body of North America. It determines the continental champions of North America. The tournament takes place on dates allocated for international friendlies on the FIFA International Match Calendar. A one-time qualifying tournament took place from September 2018 to March 2019 and the inaugural tournament began in September 2019.
The Asian section of the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification acted as qualifiers for the 2022 FIFA World Cup held in Qatar for national teams who are members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Apart from Qatar, a total of 4.5 slots in the final tournament were available for AFC teams.
The 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup qualification process determined 30 of the 32 teams which will play in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup, with the co-hosts Australia and New Zealand qualifying automatically. It is the ninth FIFA Women's World Cup, the quadrennial international women's football world championship tournament. The tournament is the first Women's World Cup to be hosted in multiple countries, the third by an AFC member association after the 1991 and 2007 Women's World Cups in China, the first to be held in the Southern Hemisphere, the first senior FIFA tournament in Oceania, and also the first FIFA tournament to be hosted across multiple confederations.
The 2025 FIFA Club World Cup is the planned 21st edition of the FIFA Club World Cup, an international club soccer competition organized by FIFA. The tournament is scheduled to be played in the United States from June 14 to July 13, 2025. It is planned to be the first under an expanded format with 32 teams, including the winners of the four previous continental championships.
References
- ↑ "International match calendar – major step made towards final agreement". FIFA.com. 5 March 2012. Archived from the original on 9 March 2012. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
- 1 2 "Release of players for national association representative matches in accordance with the Coordinated International Match Calendar" (PDF). FIFA.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 September 2007. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
- ↑ "Men's International Match Calendar 2023-2030" (PDF). FIFA. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
- 1 2 "Women's International Match Calendar 2024-2025" (PDF). FIFA. 18 January 2024. Retrieved 27 July 2024.
- ↑ "Women's International Match Calendar 2026-2029" (PDF). FIFA. 18 July 2024. Retrieved 27 July 2024.
