AMERICAN WOMEN'S FOOTBALL !!

UNDERSTANDING AMERICAN FOOTBALL: THE RULES OF THE GAME EXPLAINED HERE! 

For those who didn't know, there is much more to the Super Bowl than the advertisements, athletes and all that food!  There's an actual game going on, and if you know what's happening, it can be an entertaining way to experience the biggest American sporting event of the year.

ALL THE AMERICAN NOMINEES FOR THE BEST FIFA FOOTBALL AWARDS IN HISTORY 

Meat or fish? Beer or wine? Pepsi or Coca-Cola? Ballon d’Or or The Best? Opinion will largely be split on the first three of those questions, although few will probably be able to reel off a list of The Best winners in the same way as they can Ballon d’Or victors.

 At this stage, I think we can safely say that FIFA’s The Best is the second biggest individual prize in world soccer. First introduced in 2017 with the aim of reviving the FIFA World Player Gala, which soccer’s governing body created as competition for the Ballon d’Or after the 1990 World Cup but discontinued in 2009, the 2023 event, which takes place on Monday 27 February, will be the seventh edition and will see some star names – both old and new – rewarded for their fine displays over the last year or so. 

The wait for an American men’s player to be considered amongst the world’s elite soccer players goes on but The Best Awards have shown – as if we didn’t already know – that a whole host of American women are at the very elite level in the sport . Let’s take a look at those who have been nominated since the awards were created. There might even be a winner or two in there.

Carli Lloyd won the first The Best FIFA Women's Player Award. Getty ImagesThe Best FIFA Football Awards 2016 The now-retired Carli Lloyd , then playing for Houston Dash, won the inaugural The Best FIFA Women’s Playe r ahead of Marta and Melanie Behringer. 17 of her 134 international goals came in 2016, although the USWNT missed out on winning the Olympic Games, which was their main objective. 

The Best FIFA Football Awards 2017 

Lloyd was again a finalist in the Best Women’s Player category but failed to pick up the award for a second successive year, despite moving to Manchester City on loan and scoring for her ‘new’ club in the FA Cup final, which they won. Her time in England, however, finished disappointingly as she was sent off for elbowing an opponent in the face and was suspended for the last three games of her time with City. Lloyd finished second in the voting behind Dutchwoman Lieke Martens of Barcelona.

The Best FIFA Football Awards 2018 

No nomination for Lloyd this time but Megan Rapinoe of Seattle Reign, as they were still called back then, attempted to pick up the Best Women’s Player baton. Rapinoe was initially nominated for the award but narrowly missed out on making the final , with winner Marta, Dzsenifer Marozsán and Ada Hegerberg finishing just ahead of the American in the voting. 

Megan Rapinoe was the top scorer and voted the best player at the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2019. The Best FIFA Football Awards 2019.

The most successful year for Americans at The Best FIFA Football Awards to date, and with good reason. The USWNT won their fourth World Cup in France in July and were handsomely rewarded for it in the voting. Runner-up the previous year Rapinoe , who won both the Golden Ball and Golden Boot at the tournament, was voted The Best Women’s Player , just ahead of international teammate Alex Morgan , who won the Silver Boot at the World Cup. Rose Lavelle , who won the Bronze Ball in France, and Julie Ertz were also nominated and finished sixth and seventh respectively. 

English-American coach Jill Ellis, who stepped down from her role as USWNT boss after the World Cup, won The Best Women’s Coach after leading the US to victory in France. 

The Best FIFA Football Awards 2020 

Chicago Red Stars and USWNT goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher was the only American nominee in The Best Women’s Goalkeeper category. She made the final three but finished well behind eventual winner Sarah Bouhaddi of France, who just pipped Chilean Christiane Endler. 

The Best FIFA Football Awards 2021 

Once again, Naeher was the only American listed in any category (The Best Women’s Goalkeeper). On this occasion, however, she finished down in fifth place with, well adrift of winner Endler, Stephanie Labbé and Berger, who completed the top three.

FACT-CHECK: IS CANADA TO THANK FOR AMERICAN FOOTBALL? 

Dave Grohl: Canada is to thank for American football. 

PolitiFact's ruling: Mostly True 

Here's why: Super Bowl LVII had some remarkable moments. Rihanna performed the halftime show in a red jumpsuit and debuted a new baby bump, and the Kansas City Chiefs came back with a game-winning drive to beat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35. 

There were a lot of bigtime commercials, too. One that caught our attention featured Foo Fighters founder and frontman Dave Grohl in a one-minute Super Bowl commercial for Canadian whisky company Crown Royal. 

Grohl was seen sitting in a recording studio in the ad before he turned to the camera and said, "Today, let’s thank Canada." He then listed a number of things that the Great White North has contributed to society, including the rock band Rush, peanut butter, batteries, "Schitt’s Creek" stars Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, and, of course, the fan-favorite whoopie cushion. 

But it was one of the last things that Grohl credited Canada for inventing that made heads turn: "And thank you … for football," Grohl said. 

A sound engineer seated beside him looked up and said, "What? No way." 

"Yeah, look it up!" Grohl replied. 

Well, we’re PolitiFact. So we looked it up. 

Turns out, Grohl is no pretender. 

Modern, American-style football has gone through several iterations over its history. American universities were playing something they called "foot ball" in 1869, but the game resembled soccer more than anything else.

 The first version of the game to use an oblong ball in the U.S. and somewhat resemble the sport’s current structure took place in 1874, when Montreal’s McGill University took its rules to the states to play Harvard. 

NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy told PolitiFact that he fact-checked the claim with the Pro Football Hall of Fame before Crown Royal’s ad ran. 

"It is accurate," McCarthy said.

 How the American football sausage was made 

The game Americans now call football is closely related to two old English sports — rugby and soccer (which gets its name from a shortening of "association football"). It emerged at North American universities in the late 19th century, according to History.com, which highlights a Nov. 6, 1869, game between Princeton and Rutgers as "the first intercollegiate football contest." 

Story continues 

But this was a soccer-style match, with rules adapted from the London Football Association, and it bore little resemblance to modern American football. 

Other colleges took up the sport in the 1870s, but Harvard University stuck to a rugby-soccer hybrid it called "the Boston Game." 

In 1874, Harvard and McGill University in Montreal, agreed to play a couple of "Foot-ball" games in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The two universities had different rules, and the plan for this match was to play two different games — one by Harvard’s rules and one by McGill’s. 

The teams met on May 13 and 14, 1874. The first game used Harvard’s rules: 11 men per side and a round ball that players kicked but were also able to pick up and run with at certain times. For the second game, they played McGill’s version: 13 players and an oblong ball that could be kicked, thrown or carried.

 "There were downs, there were ‘tries’ in the rugby sense (which quickly came to be known as touchdowns) and there was tackling," one 2017 Canadian Broadcasting Corp. story said. 

History.com said the McGill-Harvard game helped inspire modern football. 

"In May 1874, after a match against McGill University of Montreal, the Harvard players decided they preferred McGill’s rugby-style rules to their own," the website said. "In 1875, Harvard and Yale played their first intercollegiate match, and Yale players and spectators (including Princeton students) embraced the rugby style as well.

" McGill also stands by this origin story, saying on its website that "the very first modern football games" were played in Cambridge between the two schools.

 "In fact, the Harvard squad so enjoyed the Canadian innovations (running with the ball, downs and tackling) that they introduced them into a match with Yale the following year — and thus, college football took root in America," the university’s account reads.

 But some sports historians noted the fluctuating nature of the game, and that different schools incorporated different rules. 

"I would also add the game was constantly changing," said Louis Moore, a sports historian at Grand Valley State University. "Even after that 1874 game, rules changed. What was the same, however, was that it was called foot ball, and recognized as such in 1869 when Rutgers and Princeton played."

 Football has become known for the way it’s constantly changing, experts said. 

"It’s part of what makes the game and its history unique and special," said Rich Desrosiers, a spokesperson for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. 

And although football may have originated in Canada, one American figure factors greatly in the way it’s played today: Walter Camp. 

Camp, who has been called the "father of American football," was a Yale student from 1876 to 1881 and played halfback and served as team captain. He eventually became the guiding force on the rules board of the Intercollegiate Football Association, which made two key changes to the game. It did away with the opening rugbylike "scrummage" and introduced the requirement that a team give up the ball after failing to move a specified yardage down the field in a certain number of "downs." 

Camp is also credited with introducing other innovations, including the quarterback position, the line of scrimmage and the current scoring scale. 

Our ruling 

Grohl said in a Super Bowl ad that Canada invented football. This is largely accurate. 

American football has gone through several changes over its history, but historians note that it was first introduced in the U.S. by Montreal-based McGill University in 1874. The NFL also confirmed the ad’s claim before it ran. 

We rate this claim Mostly True. 

========================================================================