[custom_adv] Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word football is understood to refer to whichever form of football is the most popular in the regional context in which the word appears. [custom_adv] There are a number of references to traditional, ancient, or prehistoric ball games played by indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world. Contemporary codes of football can be traced back to the codification of these games at English public schools during the nineteenth century. [custom_adv] In 1888, The Football League was founded in England, becoming the first of many professional football competitions. During the twentieth century, several of the various kinds of football grew to become some of the most popular team sports in the world. [custom_adv] The 2019 AFC Asian Cup is the 17th edition of the AFC Asian Cup, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Asia organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). It is being held in the United Arab Emirates from 5 January to 1 February 2019. [custom_adv] The United Arab Emirates was announced as the host for the tournament on 9 March 2015, with being the only remaining bidder for the right to host the 2019 finals. It is the second time that the United Arab Emirates hosts the tournament after the 1996 finals. [custom_adv] For the first time, the Asian Cup final tournament is contested by 24 teams, having been expanded from the 16-team format that was used from 2004 to 2015. [custom_adv] Under this new format, the finalists will contest a group stage consisting of six groups of four teams, followed by a knockout stage of 16 teams. [custom_adv] The host nation automatically qualified for the final tournament, while the remaining 23 places were determined among the other 45 national teams through a qualifying competition, running from March 2015 to March 2018, in which the first two rounds also served as part of the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification process for the AFC. [custom_adv] Australia were the defending champions going into the tournament, having won the previous competition in 2015 but were eliminated by the hosts at the quarter-final stages. [custom_adv] The winner of the 2019 AFC Asian Cup will earn the right to participate in the 2021 FIFA Confederations Cup which is to be hosted by a yet to be determined AFC association after 2022 FIFA World Cup hosts, Qatar, lost the rights. [custom_adv] Given the 2021 Confederations Cup host country qualify as hosts, if the eventual host country also wins the Asian Cup, the Asian Cup runner-up will qualify. [custom_adv] The United Arab Emirates was announced as the host for the tournament on 9 March 2015, with Iran being the only remaining bidder for the right to host the 2019 finals. It is the second time that the United Arab Emirates hosts the tournament after the 1996 finals. [custom_adv] Under this new format, the finalists will contest a group stage consisting of six groups of four teams, followed by a knockout stage of 16 teams.
