Football is the national sport of England, and as such has an important place within English national life. The sport is almost always referred to simply as football; it is unusual for it to be called soccer and it is only referred to as "association football" in very limited circumstances. Any unqualified reference to football in an English context should be read as a reference to association football rather than to any other member of the football family of sports. The only other members of this family played to any great extent in England belong to the rugby football sub-family, and are usually referred to as rugby. The title and remainder of this article refers to football in its English sense.

Kicking ball games are described in England since at least 1280. England can boast the earliest ever documented use of the English word "football" (1409) and the earliest reference to football in French (1314). A description of an exclusively kicking ball game from Nottinghamshire in the fifteenth century bears similarity to football. There is good evidence for refereed, team "foteball" games being played in English public schools since at least 1581. The modern global game of football was first codified in 1863 in London by the English Football Association, the oldest football association in the world. The modern passing game is believed to have been innovated in London in the early 1870s. England is home to the oldest association football clubs in the world (dating from at least 1857), the world's oldest competition (the FA Cup founded in 1871) and the first ever football league (1888). For these reasons England is considered the home of the game of football.