We have masculine, feminine and objective nouns. Fußball is masculine.

Examples:
- Fußball (the football) = masculine, der Fußball
- Brücke (the bridge) = feminine, die Brücke
- Sieb (the sieve) = objective, das Sieb

Btw. he/she/it is not der/die/das. Der/die/das is "the". English has 1 word for this 3 words.

He/she/it is er/sie/es.

(French is way harder in such things )

The gender system of German is a formal system, it does not follow the natural gender. That results already out of the fact, that all nouns have a grammatical gender, althought only living beeings can have a natural gedner anyway. In addition, the natural gender and the grammatical gender do nt agree/fit eachother: Although the natural gender is feminie, the grammatical gender is neuter: "das" Mädchen (the girl).

In the moropholy and in the syntax of German the grammatical gender is important. The correspondence iwth the other elements always oocurs due to the grammatical gender:

- "Das Mädchen und seine Eltern"

The natural sex of girls is feminie, but the grammatical gender is neuter. The article and the possessive pronoun follow the gender from girl.

- neuter "das", not feminine "die"
- neuter "seine", not feminie "ihre"

Well, i know, this is really confusing, but this is how it works. There is now special way to learn that, except learning th words with their grammatical gender.

In english it would look like that:
- the ball
- the girl
- the boy
- the chocolate

In german:
- der Ball
- das Mädchen
- der Junge
- die Schokolade

Confusing than if u use plural:
Englisch:
- the balls
- the girls
- the boys
- ...

German:
- die Bälle (in singualr it was "der" Ball)
- die Mädchen
- die Jungs
...

However, it is very hard to explain in english german grammar, lol, my head is smoking, it is 12 years ago when i had to know such things the last time, since i dont "think" in grammar, i just write and speak german how i feel it.