The Football Association

The Football Association is the governing body of association football in England. Founded in 1863, it codified the sport’s early rules and oversees national competitions and teams.

Laws of the Game: The rules that define how association football is played and officiated. The FA helped establish the original code that became football’s international laws.
Freemasons' Tavern meeting: The 1863 London meeting at which representatives formed the Football Association. Delegates met here to establish a body capable of agreeing common football rules.
Arthur Pember: An English footballer and journalist who became the FA’s second president in 1867. Pember led the association during its early efforts to establish authority.
Association football: The global team sport in which players use their feet to move a ball and score goals. The FA’s code helped define the sport now known internationally as association football.
English Football League: The professional league system founded in England in 1888, initially comprising twelve clubs. The FA’s authority and the league’s club competitions developed alongside each other.
Ebenezer Cobb Morley: An English sportsman and lawyer who helped found the FA and served as its first secretary and president. Morley organized the meetings and drafted the association’s early rules.
Charles W. Alcock: An English sportsman and administrator who promoted organized football and helped establish the FA Cup. Alcock turned the FA’s rules into a national club competition.
International Football Association Board: The body responsible for maintaining and amending the Laws of the Game. The FA is one of the four British associations with permanent representation on the IFAB.
FA Cup: An annual knockout football competition for English men’s clubs, established in 1871. This is the FA’s flagship domestic cup competition.
Cambridge Rules: A set of football rules formulated at Cambridge in 1848 and influential in later codes. They supplied precedents during the FA’s effort to unify competing rules.

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