Turkish soccer legend Hakan Sukur scored a goal against South Korea in the 2002 World Cup Bronze medal match just 10.8 seconds after the opening whistle was blown.

On October 1, 1977, Pele played his last game as a footballer as Santos played New York Cosmos at the Giants Stadium. He played the first half of the game for the American club, and the second half for Santos.

The inaugural tournament, took place in Guangdong, China from 16 to 30 November 1991. It was won by the United States, whose captain April Heinrichs formed a forward line dubbed the "triple-edged sword" with Carin Jennings and Michelle Akers-Stahl.

According to FIFA, the Chinese competitive game cuju (literally "kick ball") was popular during the Han Dynasty (206 BC -- 220 AD). Cuju players could use any part of the body except for hands, and the goal was to kick a ball through an opening into a net.

Existing tensions between El Salvador & Honduras coincided with rioting during a 1970 FIFA World Cup qualifier. The ensuing conflict came to be known as the "Football War" or "Soccer War", although the actual causes of the war went much deeper.

Cross Farm Park Celtic striker Lee Todd was sent off just two seconds after the start of a game in October 2000. Apparently Todd uttered a profanity about how loud the referee's whistle was, which provoked the official to send him off and helped Todd achieve this weird, seemingly unbreakable record.

After the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and restored heavy economic sanctions on the country, Nike issued a statement saying, "The sanctions mean that, as a U.S. company, we cannot provide shoes to players in the Iran national team at this time." If they had violated the sanctions, Nike execs could have been subject to criminal penalties of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison.

Red has been the main Liverpool F.C. shirt colour since 1896.

The first global superstar of her sport, Mia Hamm was the face of the 1999 World-Cup-winning squad that transformed women's soccer from niche activity to a sport with staying power in the U.S. In 2004, she joined Michelle Akers as the only women to earn entry on Pelé's list of the sport's greatest living players.

The name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other forms of football played at the time, specifically rugby football. The term soccer comes from a slang or jocular abbreviation of the word "association", with the suffix "-er" appended to it.