Football

Football is a family of team sports in which the object is to get either a ball or a person with a unique score-making status over a goal line, into a goal, or between goalposts using merely the body (by carrying, throwing, kicking, or running).

Unqualified, the word football generally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly called football on EarthMC include association football (known predominately as soccer in North America); Rosey football, also known as Cascadian football or Cascadian rugby; and Gridiron football, also known as American or Earth football. These various forms of football share, to varying degrees, similar origins in IRL sports and are known as "football codes".

There are a number of references to traditional, ancient, or prehistoric ball games played in many different parts of the world IRL. Contemporary codes of football can be traced back to the codification of these games at English public schools during the 19th century, itself an outgrowth of medieval football. The expansion and cultural power of the British Empire allowed these rules of football to spread to areas of British influence outside the directly controlled empire. During the 20th century, several of the various kinds of football grew to become some of the most popular team sports in the world

EarthMC has a long sporting history, but has had trouble adapting real-life games such as football (and the various real-life football codes) to Vanilla minecraft. Association football is widely considered the first football code to be adapted to EarthMC, with the first EarthMC World Cup being organized by FIFA in 2021. Association football utilizes a non-active player as a ball, and has since grown to be the largest football code on EarthMC.

Gridiron football has long also had influence due to its presence in the real-life United States, however a formal code and organization of the sport only began with the creation of the Earth Football League, or EFL, in 2022. It is based off of the rules of real-life American football, but instead of using a player as a ball as EMC association football does, having the spectral arrow effect is used to indicate possession of the ball, with players being equipped with a bow and spectral arrows to complete a forward pass.

Rosey football, also known as Cascadian football, Cascadian rugby, or simply Rosey, is the most recently developed code of football on EarthMC. It is not a direct representation of a real-life football code, and instead is a unique Minecraft football code. Out of real-life football codes, it most closely resembles rugby league. Rosey rejects the concept of the ball entirely, with all players on a side being considered in "possession" (known as "right of attempt") when their team is attempting to score a try.

Types of football codes played on EarthMC

Football code	Developed	Governing body	Active players	Pro clubs	Avg. attendance
Association	2021	FIFA	~100	19	~30/game
Gridiron	2022	EFL	~50	8	~20/game
Rosey	2026	Rosey Federation	~35	8	~40/game