The History of Football

Every weekend in nearly every country in the world, twenty men meet and try and out score their opponents in association football. Football is the most popular game in the world and its popularity only seems to grow and become more fanatical.

The first instances of football can be traced to Medieval Spain but the true origin is not exactly known. The modern game of football was started with the formation of The Football Association (FA) of England in 1863. At that time, football clubs played with their own rules and rules were sometimes agreed upon just before the beginning of a game.

On October 26, 1863, the first meeting of the Football Association was held and by December 8, they had formulated the “Laws of Football”. These were the first rules for the game and included such rules like a player being able to make a fair catch and make a mark. The rules still left aspects of the game to the individual captains of participating teams like the number of players in a game, the penalties etc which were decided upon before the start of the match.

With further tightening of the football rules and growing popularity of the game, the first FA Cup was played in 1872 between Wanderers and Royal Engineers in front of 2000 fans. In a few years, all clubs in England wished to participate. They however had to agree to the FA rules and soon the universal rules spread all around England.

12 football clubs noticed that as soon as the FA Cup ended, they had no more competitions for the rest of the year. The 12 clubs decided to form the Football League in 1888. In 1892 the Football League merged with the Football Alliance, a rival league, to form the Football League First Division and the Football League Second Division.

In the 1880’s clubs wanted players who could afford to play football instead of working. Most of these players were from Scotland and were known as the “professors of football” and professionalism was born. In 1882, Old Etonians became the last amateur football team to win the FA cup after beating the professionals from Blackburn Rovers.

Football soon spread to continental Europe, South America, and to the rest of the world to become what it is now. The need to form a single international body to oversee the world game led to the formation of FIFA in Paris on May 21, 1904. FIFA had a hard time trying to remain relevant until the world cup started in 1930.

The game of football has slowly become the most popular sport in the world. Women too have become more involved with the addition of the FIFA women’s world cup. It would be difficult to find anyone on earth who has not seen the game and does not know the basic rules of the game unless the person is in the USA. It is the next big frontier for football and may one day become just as popular as it is in the rest of the world.

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