Football | Live Scores

Football — known as soccer across North America — is the most watched, most played, and most beloved sport on planet Earth. With over four billion fans spanning every continent, every culture, and every language, no other human activity has united as many people across as many boundaries as the beautiful game. From the dusty pitches of Phnom Penh to the polished turf of Wembley Stadium, football is the universal language.

The roots of football extend deep into human history. Ancient civilisations across China, Greece, Rome, and Mesoamerica all played ball games involving kicking. In China, the game of "cuju" — meaning "kick ball" — was documented during the Han Dynasty around 200 BC, and is recognised by FIFA as the earliest form of football. Medieval England saw communities play violent, unruly "mob football" across entire towns with no fixed rules and hundreds of players on each side.

Modern football was born on 26 October 1863, when representatives from twelve London clubs gathered at the Freemason's Tavern on Great Queen Street and formed The Football Association. They codified 13 rules — settling the great debate of whether players could carry the ball (they could not), which would eventually cause the rugby faction to split away. This codification transformed a chaotic pastime into a structured sport that could be played identically from city to city.

The Football Association was followed by FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, founded in Paris on 21 May 1904 with seven founding member nations. FIFA grew to govern international football, and in 1930 organised the first FIFA World Cup in Uruguay, won by the host nation. The World Cup became the most-watched sporting event in history, with the 2022 Qatar final between Argentina and France drawing an estimated 1.5 billion viewers worldwide.

Club football developed in parallel with the international game. The English Football League — the world's first professional football league — kicked off in 1888. The European Cup, later renamed the UEFA Champions League, first ran in 1955-56, creating a competition to determine the finest club in Europe. By the 1990s, the Premier League (founded 1992), La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and Ligue 1 had become the five elite competitions commanding global audiences and transforming players into billionaire athletes.

Football in Southeast Asia and Cambodia has grown enormously over the past two decades. The Cambodian Football Federation (CFF) oversees the Metfone C-League, the country's top professional division. Cambodian fans passionately follow Premier League clubs — Manchester United, Liverpool, and Arsenal have enormous Cambodian supporter bases. ZakGT brings C-League results to a global English-language audience for the first time, covering local heroes alongside Premier League icons.

As of June 8, 2026, football stands 163 years old as a formally organised sport and enters the 2026 FIFA World Cup era with the tournament hosted across 16 cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico — the largest World Cup in history with 48 nations competing. The sport continues to grow, with African and Asian football federations developing rapidly and women's football experiencing record-breaking viewership worldwide.