Football, or soccer, is the world’s most popular sport.
Historical depictions of ball games as a sporting practice stretch back thousands of years,
from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, to a game of catch ball in Homer’s The Odyssey.
The Romans had Harpastum, a game similar to rugby with physical contact, kicking and catching.
FIFA, football’s governing body, sees the originators of football as being the ancient Chinese.
During the Han dynasty between 206 BC and 221 AD
a game known as cuju was played by
The translation of cuju is simply kick ball.
In Japan, the game of Kemari was played by the nobility in the 12th and 13th centuries.
The objective was to keep the ball in the air for as long as possible.
In Mesoamerica, the history of ball games spans 3,000 years, and archaeologists have
found over 1,500 specifically built ball courts across the region.
The game was taken very seriously – many games were part of ritual events
that often involved human sacrifice.
The game was brutal and serious injuries were inflicted by the solid, heavy rubber ball.
Medieval period football in Britain wasn’t much nicer.
Cities and towns were hotbeds for mass, folk, or mob football.
Shrovetide football is a variety of this style that is still played today in Derbyshire,
Teams consist of hundreds if not thousands of people, the playing field is the town itself,
there is no referee, and very few rules apply.
The objective is to get the ball from the centre of town to one of the two goals at
either end of the town by any means necessary.
A number of monarchs tried to ban [mob] football seeing it as far too unruly, and distracting
from supposedly more worthy pursuits like archery.
King Edward II banned football from the streets of London, while Henry V,
Edward IV, and Henry VII all sought to curb football’s excesses.
Henry VIII owned the first recorded example of football boots, but he too once
However, none of these attempts were successful.
The rise of football could not be stopped.
The first formal rules began to appear in the mid-19th century in British public schools.
But the problem was that each school had its own set of rules,
making matches between them very difficult.
On the one hand, you had schools who preferred a game with more carrying of the ball, which
And then there were other schools who preferred kicking
Obviously, that would go on to become football.
The first Football Association was established in London in 1863,
in a pub called the Freemasons Tavern.
Here, they wrote down the first rulebook of football,
which banned things like tripping, holding, pushing and carrying the ball
The reduction in violence meant that the game was now more socially acceptable for women to play.
This lead to an explosion of women's teams.
Women’s matches often drew in bigger crowds than men’s matches,
that was, until the 20th century, when the women's part of the game was banned, halting its growth.
Scotland’s proximity to England set the scene for the world’s first men’s international
The match took place on 13 November 1872 at the West of Scotland Cricket Ground in Glasgow.
A crowd of around 4,000 spectators watched the game and were kept off the pitch by a
Scotland played a conservative 2-2-6 formation compared to England’s more cavalier 1-2-7, and
despite these lopsided tactics, the match ended 0-0.
The rules may have been written in the UK, but the game spread around the world very quickly.
Wherever the British Empire or British industrial interests were, football was close behind.
It is no coincidence that there is an Arsenal in Argentina, an Everton in Chile, or that
Athletic Bilbao have an anglicised name and take their kit inspiration from Sunderland AFC.
The first international match played outside of Britain was between Uruguay and Argentina
in 1901.
However, the world governing body FIFA wasn’t established until 1904, when Belgium, Denmark,
France, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland met in Paris.
Britain joined them in 1906, soon followed by South Africa, Argentina, Canada and others.
After the popularity of their football tournament at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, FIFA began
making plans for their own event.
The first ever men’s World Cup was hosted in 1930 in Uruguay, and was open to all nations
However, due to the huge costs and time of international travel, many associations declined
No African or Asian nations took part, and Germany, Switzerland, and the four countries
The French and Belgian teams faced two-week long boat journeys across the Atlantic Ocean
In the end, thirteen teams participated across three weeks of matches.
The final was played out between hosts Uruguay and neighbouring Argentina.
The stadium in Montevideo was bursting at the seams with tens of thousands left outside to listen to
the roars of the crowd inside.
Uruguay were 2-1 down at half time but came back in the second half to score three goals
to eventually win the game 4-2.
Football today is the most popular sport in the world, with teams playing in every
country from Vatican City to China.
It makes us laugh, it makes us cry,
but most importantly, what football does best is it brings us all together.