My hobby is soccer. Soccer is one of the most popular sports in the world. There is even a world tournament for soccer which occurs every 4 years which is the soccer World Cup. I have been playing soccer since I was 8 years old. After school, I would play with my friends on the field which is located near my house. Sometimes, we even organized some matches to improve in our skills and make some new friends.
My parents are very supportive in my hobby. They bought me a pair of soccer shoes for my eleventh birthday; before that I used to play with my bare foot and I ended with lots of scratches on my feet. When I'm young, I used to suffer from asthma but after picking up soccer, my asthma gradually disappeared and I was as healthy as ever.
The rules are rather simple and obvious. You just kick the ball around and try to score by kicking the ball into the opponents' goal, and you cannot touch the soccer ball with your hands. There are total of 11 players per team plus the goalie. Kicking a soccer ball can be something very addicting and you can spend hours just kicking the ball and refining your ball control skills. There are a number of skills that you must learn to be a good soccer player, such as dribbling and bicycle kicks. By running straight into an opponent is useless as the opponent can easily tackle the ball from you. Thus, you must have a certain level of skills. Soccer can definitely keeps you in shape with all of that running you have to do, and you must be in pretty good shape to do well at soccer.
Playing soccer is not like jogging where you can just take it easy all the time. You have to run a lot to keep in pace with your opponent or outrun your opponent for the ball. Soccer doesn't make you feel like exercising, but you will feel like playing a game instead.
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