page_title: Association football
section_title: Governing bodies
hierarchical_section_title: Association football / Governing bodies
caption_attribution_description: English: FIFA Headquarter in Zürich Deutsch: FIFA Hauptsitz in Zürich
context_page_description: Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played with a spherical ball between two teams of 11 players. It is played by approximately 250 million players in over 200 countries and dependencies, making it the world's most popular sport. The game is played on a rectangular field called a pitch with a goal at each end. The object of the game is to outscore the opposition by moving the ball beyond the goal line into the opposing goal. The team with the higher number of goals wins the game.
  Football is played in accordance with a set of rules known as the Laws of the Game. The ball is 68–70 cm in circumference and known as the football. The two teams each compete to get the ball into the other team's goal, thereby scoring a goal. The team that has scored more goals at the end of the game is the winner; if both teams have scored an equal number of goals then the game is a draw. Each team is led by a captain who has only one official responsibility as mandated by the Laws of the Game: to represent their team in the coin toss prior to kick-off or penalty kicks.
context_section_description: The recognised international governing body of football (and associated games, such as futsal and beach soccer) is FIFA. The FIFA headquarters are located in Zürich, Switzerland. Six regional confederations are associated with FIFA; these are:
  Asia: Asian Football Confederation (AFC)
  Africa: Confederation of African Football (CAF)
  Europe: Union of European Football Associations (UEFA)
  North/Central America & Caribbean: Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF)
  Oceania: Oceania Football Confederation (OFC)
  South America: Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (South American Football Confederation; CONMEBOL)
  National associations oversee football within individual countries. These are generally synonymous with sovereign states, (for example: the Cameroonian Football Federation in Cameroon) but also include a smaller number of associations responsible for sub-national entities or autonomous regions (for example the Scottish Football Association in Scotland). 209 national associations are affiliated both with FIFA and with their respective continental confederations.
  While FIFA is responsible for arranging competitions and most rules related to international competition, the actual Laws of the Game are set by the International Football Association Board, where each of the UK Associations has one vote, while FIFA collectively has four votes.
caption: Headquarters of FIFA, the world governing body of football
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