Football is widely regarded as the most popular spectator and participation sport in the world. It is sometimes referred to as “soccer,” particularly in countries where an alternative sporting variant has traditionally proven more popular and/or is connected to national culture, notably in Australia, Ireland, and the United States. The prefix “association,” the term from which “soccer” is thought to have emerged, has been used to differentiate football from other sporting codes, such as rugby union and rugby league (Rookwood, 2014). Although often considered to be of English invention, there is a degree of uncertainty surrounding the origins of football, with preexisting versions thought to have been introduced in different localities and exported along trade routes and through military conquests—for instance, from countries such as China and Italy (Walvin, 2010). The various relatively violent folk antecedents of modern football that later emerged in Britain effectively died out under pressure from puritanism, industrialization, and urbanization (Hay, Harvey, & Smith, 2014). Indeed, there have been several attempts to ban “mob football” due to its violent nature and the damage caused to property: “As far back as 1314, legislations were used to control the football crowd and many bills have been vicariously used to prosecute the unruly football fan” (Clark, 2006, p. 495).
