The history of soccer is complex, but what do you really need to know about one of the most loved and supported sports in the world? We have detailed some of the key events in the history of football so you can understand how the sport has developed since that day.
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
The origins of football can be divided into two categories: contemporary history and classical history.
CONTEMPORARY HISTORY: WHERE AND WHEN WAS FOOTBALL INVENTED?
The modern origins of football began in England more than 100 years ago, in 1863. Rugby and association football, once the same thing, were separated and the Football Association, the first official governing body of the game, was created. sport.
BACK IN TIME
History books dictate that people have had a blast kicking a ball around for thousands of years, but not all of those games would be recognizable as what we think of as soccer today. But the different eras of soccer, or sports that involve kicking a ball in more precise terms, have been crucial to the development of the game. Without the variations suffered over the years, we might never have had football by modern standards.
The furthest we can trace the history of football is China, dating back to the 3rd century BC. C., where a game similar to soccer is mentioned in military manuals. The Han dynasty played a game called Tsu ‘Chu, which involved throwing a ball through a 30-40cm opening into what we would now see as a goal made of reeds with a net attached. The ball used in these games was made of leather and stuffed with hair and feathers.
The Greeks invented “Harpastum”, a game that used a smaller ball than the one used in soccer but had similar rules to the modern game. The game was played on a rectangular field bounded by boundaries and an intermediate line and the object was for one team to pass the ball over their competitor’s boundary line.
Based on what we know about the history of foot-dominated ball games, we can clearly see the effect that different cultures and variations have had on the game we play today.
GREAT BRITAIN AND FOOTBALL
Records show that in 1314 the mayor of London banned football in the city because it caused “chaos”. If he was caught gambling in London, he could be jailed. This was resolved during the 100 years that England and France were at war, when Kings Edward II, Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V made gambling illegal throughout the UK as it ‘hijacked’ attention to the practice of ‘military disciplines’. that were considered most useful.
Despite opposition to the game, football flourished in Britain from the 8th to the 19th centuries, however a standardized version of the game was still rare as regional versions often gained popularity. These different versions of the game were refined into association football, rugby union and Gaelic football, all of which contributed to the contemporary equivalent of the game we play today.
Thinking about the Sunday leagues we play now, the best iteration is the Village vs. Village where the Villages came together and their teams played each other, usually on unmarked turf.
THE NORMALIZATION OF THE BALL
Although the official rules of modern football were laid down in 1863, when the Football Association was founded, the specifications of the ball were not standardized for eight years. Until then, the two parties agreed on the ball to be used between them.
WHY DOES A MATCH LAST 90 MINUTES?
The standard length of a football match is 90 minutes. This duration was first established in 1866 when London and Sheffield clashed. For some reason, as of now, 90 minutes has been established as the standard length of football matches. However, modern games for minors do not use the 90-minute format.
FOOTBALL, A GLOBAL PHENOMENON
It wasn’t until the early 19th century that playing football in schools became the norm, starting with public schools. While the rules didn’t differ much from the norm, many schools offered their own variation of the game depending on the grounds they owned. For example, if a school only had a concrete playground, as many schools did, they would have to work with what they had and adjust boundaries accordingly.
Eight years after its creation, the Football Association had created 50 member clubs. That’s when the FA Cup was born in 1872, with the first championship in the works in 1888. At the time, Europe had yet to embrace the contemporary variant of football, which helped define football as a “very British sport”. . However, before that, in 1872, the first ‘international’ football match between England and Scotland drew huge crowds, just like matches today.
The spread of football outside the UK was slow at first, but it soon reached every corner of the world. The Netherlands and Denmark formed their own football associations in 1889, followed by New Zealand in 1891, Argentina in 1893, and Chile, Switzerland, and Belgium in 1895. It was followed by Italy, which formed its association in 1898. Behind it were Germany and Uruguay in 1900. Over the next decade, Hungary and Finland would also form partnerships.
THE FIFA FOUNDATION
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was established in Paris in 1904. Its founding members included Belgium, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Stanley Rous, who became president of FIFA, wrote the laws of football and simplified them in 1886. They were revised in 1997.
In the 1950s, after World War II, there were more than 73 members of FIFA.
HOW MANY FOOTBALL CLUBS ARE THERE IN THE WORLD?
At the end of the 2007 FIFA Congress, FIFA had 208 members worldwide. It is almost impossible to say how many football clubs there are in the world, but we can tell you that there are over 600 clubs in England alone. The math says that there are hundreds of thousands of clubs around the world, and that number continues to grow.
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