It’s a little-known fact that football referees were not necessary in the early beginnings of the sport back in 1846. Players and technical directors trusted in the chivalry and honesty of the rival team (looks like things have changed quite a bit, huh?). At the time, all disputes were resolved between the captains as true “gentlemen”.

The penalty, maximum penalty or penalty kick is a technical sanction contemplated in the football’s rulebook (rule 14). It consists of a free kick from the penalty spot located 11 meters from the goal line, and only with the goalkeeper of the defending team between the penalty shooter and the goal.

To the surprise of many, the stadium holding the greatest capacity of seated spectators in the world is not Camp Nou, Maracana or the Azteca stadium. Moreover, it’s not even found in Europe or in America. That’s right, the stadium with the highest capacity in the world is the Rungrado May Day Stadium. Built in North Korea, an Asian country with little football tradition (if any).

In a match, a soccer player easily can run a race of 30 or 40 meters at full speed, then stop and change directions in a matter of seconds. These constant and intense changes of rhythms are very aggressive on the body, even a highly trained one. These intense changes can produce a sprain, a very common injury in football players.

Being football one of the most intense and tough sports that exist, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to know that injuries are the order of the day. Although it is rough, perhaps not so much at the level of resistance as there are other sports such as marathon and cycling that are much more demanding in this regard. However, in terms of the structure of the human body, football is much more aggressive. These are the most common injuries in footballers:

Football is different than the Americans version of the name and game. In the United States, Football is a contact sport with one ball, two teams and a whole lot of tackling. The rest of the world has a different focus when it comes to the field. Association Football aka Soccer, is a competitive and driven sport. There are many similarities between the two and several debates on the claim to fame when it comes to the sporty name.

There’s a pretty large field, a ball that’s going from one end to the other throughout the game, and only 3 substitution for 11 players. From this mix, it is easy to deduce that football players need to travel long distances for more than 90 minutes. A truly avid fan may have also noticed that in almost all the matches the average number of kilometers that some players go during a football match is shown. And what about referees? How much does the referee run? Let’s talk about how much players and referees can run during a game.