  We investigate the dynamics of football matches. Our goal is to characterize
statistically the temporal sequence of ball movements in this collective sport
game, searching for traits of complex behavior. Data were collected over a
variety of matches in South American, European and World championships
throughout 2005 and 2006. We show that the statistics of ball touches presents
power-law tails and can be described by $q$-gamma distributions. To explain
such behavior we propose a model that provides information on the
characteristics of football dynamics. Furthermore, we discuss the statistics of
duration of out-of-play intervals, not directly related to the previous
scenario.
