The football (or soccer) game was the original motivation for RoboCup. Besides being a very popular sport worldwide, therefore appropriate to attract people to the event, it brings a sgnificant set of challenges for researchers:

• collective game, for which more than one agent/robot is required to play
• individualistic (each agent/robot must identify relevant objects, self-localize, dribble) and cooperative (passes, complementary roles) elements
• dynamic and adversarial environment, with moving objects, some of them rational agents that are playing a game against your team