The Origins of Football
Courtesy of SoccerNova 

The origin of football can be found in every corner of geography and history. The Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Egyptians, Ancient Greeks, Toltecs, Native American Indians, Persians, Central Americans, Scottish Clans, Vikings and Assyrians played a ball game long before our era. Later, the Roman harpastum, using a bull's bladder, reached the shores of the Atlantic when the legions conquered Gaul. This game led the way to soule, considered together with the Florentine calcio which emerged during the Renaissance, as the real ancestor of football.

Football and handball games reach back to the first steps of the human race. Over thousands of years, ancient communities introduced rules to their elementary play of kicking and throwing. Games also embellished religious or tribal festivals. The Chinese played "football" games at least 3000 years ago. It is suspected strongly that the shadowy Celtic nations of Europe and the Vikings had rather nasty football ceremonies. In South and Central America a game called "Tlatchi" once flourished. The Ancient Greeks and the Romans used football games to sharpen warriors for battle. Roman games such as Harpastum or Paganica, which all had elements of kicking or running with the ball, spread Europe-wide with their empire's armies.

Traditional football games played throughout Europe in centuries past are still being staged in modern times, especially in the British Isles. They usually include an element of mob battles and chases over countryside and through water. Undertones of ancient Celtic pagan ceremonies as well as the influence of old Roman Empire army "games" can be recognized. In later years football play was often linked to rural wedding-day celebrations in Western Europe. 

Playballs used in traditional games came in many different materials, colours and sizes. Rather than being light and inflated, they we're usually stuffed with hair or rags and we're heavy. This indicates the rough nature of the combat, using hands and feet, with no quarter asked or given.The rules, if there were any, varied from nation to nation, region to region, village to village but the common elements were in place an age ago – a ball, men and the desire for play and competition.

But it was in England that football began to take the shape we now recognize. The games that are now known as Rugby and Association football began in England about halfway through the present century. The crude raw material of the game was found in the fields and streets, played among farm boys and apprentices. It started as a folk game and grew more and more with with time. It belonged to the people; in the eyes of authority and the well-bred, it was a vulgar, rowdy pastime, and from the fourteenth century onwards, the respectable and the Godly observed it with distaste, and made constant efforts to suppress it. It kept men from their Christian duties, occupations and it wasted time that might be used in the practice of archery and other military skills. The English king Edward banned the game because he feared his bowmen were spending too much time away from archery practice in preparation for war against France.

But although the law-abiding mayors, sheriffs, and clerics tried to stamp it out, it had little or no effect. What the people said is not known, but they went on playing. Oliver Cromwell played football at Cambridge University in the early 1600s and said the only man he feared on the football field was one John Wheelright – who later took his family and his game to America, where his portrait now hangs in the State House looking down on Boston Common where the first football game was played in the New World. There are links between British football and Il Calcio of Italy in the Renaissance writings of an English head master in the years between 1561 and 1608. There is a legend recorded in a 17th century "Statistical Account of Scotland" that football "had its origins in the days of chivalry, when it is alleged that an Italian who came into Scotland challenged all the parishes in the neighbourhood of Scone. (…) Scone accepted, beat the foreigner and in consequence the game was instituted."

Yet this early game was not yet football, it was an extremely rowdy and dangerous "game". From the apprentices' game in Smithfields grew the street games in Cheapside, Covent Garden and the Strand, the Shrove Tuesday games at Derby, Nottingham, Kingston on Thames, and elsewhere, that came to be known as "mob football," and these were little more than violent street battles. The football field was the length of the town, the players could have been as many as 500, the conflict continued all day long; vast numbers of windows and legs were broken, and there were even some deaths. Despite this period's little or no discipline it is worth mentioning because it was upon this turmoil that order and rules were finally imposed, and from them the modern game would emerge.

By 1863 there were three main influences: public schools, universities and the clubs. All were infected with the same enthusiasm, all were aware that this was the beginning of a period of growth and change, and yet so far there was no single generally accepted set of laws as to how the game should be played.

When the London Football Association issued (1863) it's first set of rules, order was brought to the sport. It is important to understand that "football" began to be used specifically to describe Association Football in Europe some time after the Football Association was formed in London in 1863. The Football Association was not set up with the intention of creating a "new" game. The wealthy young Britons who formed the Association had all attended exclusive schools, each fanatically proud of their own traditions and each with their own football rules. Now, the Football Association - with their universally acceptable rules for one game only - came into being to provide a game overseen by gentlemen for young gentlemen. It was some years before the world game of today became faintly recognizable.

All major innovations in soccer were English, such as international matches (between England and Scotland, in 1872), the introduction of professionalism (1885), and the first full-time league (1888). Soccer was carried to continental Europe, South America, and India by British sailors and settlers, and it gained instant appeal wherever it was demonstrated. In 1908 the sport was made a regular Olympic Games event, and since 1952, Hungary has won the most gold medals (three). 

With the surge of interest created by cup competition, "the new game" was also transformed by the advent of inexpensive, mass-produced equipment. Smooth, round balls, lighter despite their thick skin of leather, demanded flat pitches and better playing technique. Quite rapidly there evolved a game radically different from any football played anywhere previously. And thus flowered the magnetic spectacle still recognizable over 100 years later.

The world's first league was formed in April 1888. The driving force was William McGregor, a Scottish shopkeeper, teetotal and deeply religious chairman of the Aston Villa club in Birmingham, which later became the world's first "super club." The league came just in time for Football, which was struggling to find its true role yet again after the legalization of professional teams in 1885. The forces of amateurism, then represented by the public schools and universities and their powerful position in British society, still saw paid play as an evil.

However, strictly organized weekly league competition proved to be the foundation stone of the professional game. And also the foundation stone for an amazing series of printed paper cards, the so called "Baines cards" - the first brilliant commercial project to spring from popular sports with mass appeal.

Soccer's international governing body FIFA, was formed in 1904 with the objective of organizing championship matches between professional teams of different nations. Professionalism arrived in continental Europe in the 1920s and in South America less than a decade later. By 1930 the interest in soccer was high enough to ensure the success of the first World Cup, even though only 13 countries entered.

No team sport approaches soccer's popularity in both Europe and South America. The professional leagues on these continents play from fall through spring in domestic competition, after which the top teams take part in international "cup," or tournament, play. The European Cup (1955) is the most prestigious on that continent. The best tournament in South America is the Liberatadores Cup (1960) and is usually won by a team from Argentina. Those two cup winners than meet for the annual World Club Championship. 

In 2000, a true world club championship was established by FIFA. The FIFA Club World Championship pitted the top clubs from every continent of the world for the first time ever. The inaugural tournament was held in one of the most soccer loving nations in the world, Brazil. Not surprisingly, the final was between two of the big Brazilian club teams: Vasco da Gama and Corinthians. Corinthians went on to capture the first championship and show the world that European clubs do not have a monopoly on club football.

The game of football began modestly enough, yet it had certain durable qualities. It inspired a particular kind of determined devotion in its followers. There is not the slightest doubt about the universal nature of football: 203 national associations are members of FIFA (International Federation of Football Association), that is more than the number of countries belonging to the United Nations, and 250 million men and women play football throughout the world. And this figure only takes into account registered football players, in other words those with permits to play in competitions. Hundreds of thousands of others, big or small, young or old, with no distinction of class or race, divide themselves into two teams with the sole aim of having fun by sending the ball into the opposite side's goal.