Football started in Britain. The University of Cambridge made the first rules in 1848. In fact, many other countries played a game (1) ______ football for many centuries before that. The Chinese played tsu chu over two thousand years ago. Before the 19th century, (2)______ hundreds of people played at one time. In the 19th century the game was very popular in English schools and universities. Finally, in 1863, a group of (3)______ started the Football Association. The word “soccer” comes from the word “association” . Today football is the (4)______popular sport in the world. You can see the World Cup on television in about one hundred different countries. But Europe still has the most players—14 million. South America too is very (5)_______. Here there are far fewer players, (6)______they do very well in the World Cup. People started to watch football in the industrial town of Britain in the (7)______19th century. In 1876 a Scot, James Lang, was the first man to earn money from football— the first professional. Just over one hundred years (8)_____, in 1978, most Liverpool players earned six hundred pounds each week, but the (9)________ earned a quarter of a million pounds a year. Things (10) _______ slowly in football. Liverpool, the English champions of 1900 — 1901, was still the best team in the late 1970s. Now there are many international competitions and football is of interest worldwide.