Soccer

Association football, commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel a ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective is to score more goals than the opposing team. Traditionally, the game has been plated over two 45 minute halves, for a total match time of 1.5 hours.

Soccer is considered one of the most popular sports of all time, played all across Terra and one of the few sports played across all worlds of the Terran Alliance.

FIFA is the governing body overseeing the sport of soccer. Multiple high profile events in the event, including the FIFA World Cup, and its larger counterpart, the Galactic Cup.

### Terran Alliance

During the time of the Terran Alliance, soccer became one of the first parts of Earth culture spread to new member worlds of the Alliance, after music and Terran cuisine.

Given the sport did not allow certain species unusual advantages based upon biology and physical characteristics, soccer became wildly popular across many worlds of the Terran Alliance. By the time of the Second Galactic Civil War, it was estimated that about 70 percent of the member worlds of the Alliance had adopted the sport.

## International Competitions

### World Cup:

Main Article: World Cup

The FIFA World Cup is the most high profile tournament of soccer on Earth. Played every 4 years, the World Cup pits the national men's teams of the nations of Earth against each other to determine the world champions.

The format involves a qualification phase, which takes place over the three years prior to the Cup, determines which teams will take place in the main tournament. In the tournament, the chosen teams compete for the title over the course of a month. The hosts of the Cup automatically qualify for the group stage. The tournament initially saw 32 teams compete, but it expanded to 48 in 2026.

Initially, the World Cup was only for nations of Earth. After the Terran Alliance began, this continued until 2010, when the planetary team of Torfa was allowed to compete. This continued in the 2022 Cup after the Galactic Civil War, and continued for the 2030 and 2034 Cups before the Galactic Cup began, at which point the World Cup returned to being only for teams from Earth.

### Galactic Cup

The FIFA Galactic Cup was a galaxy wide version of the World Cup first played in 2036. The Galactic Cup was conceived as the answer to the expansion of the Alliance and the popularity of soccer that made it impractical for the World Cup to remain open to other teams.

The Galactic Cup was designed similarly to the World Cup. In the three years before each Cup, a qualification phase was held, during which planetary teams competed against other teams to determine which teams would move on to the tournament. The teams were divided into 12 different divisions, with four teams being selected from each division to move on to the tournament.

The tournament was played by 48 planetary teams. The teams were divided into eight groups of six teams each. During this group stage, each team competes against the other teams in their group. After this, the top two teams from each group move on to the knockout stage, where the 16 remaining teams compete in a standard tournament bracket style competition until a winner is declared.

The first Galactic Cup was held in the summer of 2036 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Terran team, drawing players from six major soccer playing nations, won the title by defeating Torfa in the final. The Terrans also won the 2040 cup. The current reigning champions are the Elves of Alfenon, who defeated Naboo 3-1 in the final of the 2048 Cup.