UEFA is the body that runs football (soccer) in Europe — the Union of European Football Associations. Its members are the national football associations of the European countries, and a few countries at the edge of Europe, such as Israel and Kazakhstan, belong to it too. It does three main things: it makes the rules and decisions for European football, it runs the big competitions, and it hands out and takes away money and punishments. The competitions are the ones you see its name attached to: the UEFA Champions League for the best clubs, the Europa League below that, and the European Championship — the 'Euros' — for national teams every four years. UEFA sits under FIFA, which runs football for the whole world. In everyday talk the name is used loosely as a stand-in for the organisation's decisions, so people say 'UEFA fined the club' or 'UEFA changed the format' the way they might say a government did something. It is said as a word, roughly 'you-AY-fa', not letter by letter.