Football game biography

Medieval Football in Europe The history of football evolved significantly during the Middle Ages, particularly in Europe. Mob Footballplayed in England from the 9th century, was a chaotic village game involving large groups of people. Participants would try to carry a ball to specific goals, often across entire towns. These unregulated games were rough and occasionally banned by authorities, citing safety concerns and public order.

Modern Football History Takes Shape The transition from medieval games to organized football marked a key moment in football history. Each school developed its own version of the game, which led to the creation of standardized rules. Cambridge Rules : These were the first formal attempts to unify the sport, forming a cornerstone in the history of football.

This event is one of the most significant milestones in football history, as it established the official rules and separated football from rugby. Club Football Emerges The formation of early clubs like Sheffield FC and Notts County marked a new chapter in the football game biography of footballas club matches gained popularity.

The Global Expansion of Football The history of football saw a rapid global spread during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, driven by British influence, colonialism, and industrialization. Europe : Football became deeply embedded in European culture, with leagues forming in countries like Spain, Italy, and Germany. These leagues became a vital part of football history, showcasing different playing styles and rivalries.

South America : Football reached South America through British sailors, becoming a cultural phenomenon in nations like Brazil and Argentina. The two contentious FA rules were as follows:. A player shall be entitled to run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal if he makes a fair catch, or catches the ball on the first bound; but in case of a fair catch, if he makes his mark he shall not run.

If any player shall run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal, any player on the opposite side shall be at liberty to charge, hold, trip or hack him, or to wrest the ball from him, but no player shall be held and hacked at the same time. At the fifth meeting a motion was proposed that these two rules be removed from the FA rules. Most of the delegates supported this suggestion but F.

Campbell, the representative from Blackheath and the first FA treasurer objected strongly. He said, "hacking is the true football". The motion was carried nonetheless and — at the final meeting — Campbell withdrew his club from the FA. After the final meeting on 8 December the FA published the " Laws of Football ", the first comprehensive set of rules for the game later known as association football.

The game also came to be called "soccer" as a shortening of "Association" around the same time as Rugby football, colloquially referred to as "rugger", was developing as the main ball carrying version of English football, and "soccer" remains a common descriptor in countries with other prominent football codes today. These first FA laws contained elements that are no longer part of association football, but which are still recognisable in other games e.

Rugby Union and Australian rules football : for instance, if a player first touched the ball behind the opponents' goal line, his side was entitled to a " free kick " at goal, from that point and fifteen yards [approximately 14 metres] in front of the goal line; and a player could make a catch and claim a " mark ", which entitled him to a free kick from or behind that point see Laws 7 and 8 respectively.

The laws of the game agreed on by the FA members stipulated a maximum length and breadth for the pitch, the procedure for kicking off, and the definition of terms, including goal, throw in, and offside. Passing the ball by hand was still permitted provided the ball was caught " fairly or on the first bounce ". Despite the specifications of footwear having no " tough nails, iron plates and gutta percha " there were no specific rules on the number of players, penalties, foul play or the shape of the ball; captains of the participating teams were expected to agree on these things prior to the match.

The laws laid down by the FA had an immediate effect, with Sheffield F. As more teams joined the code in the s, the sport veered away from its origins in public schools and came to be played with round balls and by teams that had settled on 11 players each. The rule eliminating passing of the ball forwards by making all players in front of the ball " offside " much like in rugby today was dropped.

A Sheffield against London game in had allowed the FA to observe how the rules were affecting the game; subsequently handling of the ball was abolished except for one player on each team, the goalkeeper. A red tape was added between the two goalposts to indicate the top of the goal, and a national competition was proposed. On 20 JulyC. Alcocka gentleman from Sunderland and a former pupil of Harrow School proposed that " a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the [Football] Association ", [ 19 ] the idea that gave birth to the competition.

The success of the inaugural FA Cup lead many English clubs to apply to take part. Inclusion required playing by the newly instituted FA code, which led to the quick spread of a universal set of rules. These rules are the basis of which all association football rules today stem. However, despite this, Queens Park continued to participate in the FA Cup, reaching the final twice, before the Scottish FA banned Scottish clubs from entering in Queen's Park reached the semi-finals without playing due to withdrawals, but then after a goalless draw with Wanderers, were forced to withdraw as before the advent of penalties and extra timethey could not afford to come back to London for the replay.

Wanderers won the cup outright in after what remains to this day one of only two hat tricks of wins ever. However, they returned the cup to the FA in order for the competition to continue, on the condition that no other club could win the cup outright ever again. C was the main force between meetings held in London and Manchester involving 12 football clubs, with an eye to league competition.

These 12 clubs would later become the Football League 's 12 founder members. The meetings were held in London, the main concern was that an early exit in the knockout format of the FA Cup could leave clubs with no matches for almost a year, and if that happened, not only could they suffer heavy financial losses, but fans often didn't stick around for that long without a game, and instead went to other teams.

Matters were finalised on 17 April in Manchester. The competition guaranteed fixtures and members for all of its member clubs. The clubs were split equally among North and Midlands teams. It excluded Southern teams, who were still strictly amateur. A rival English league called the Football Alliance operated from to In it was decided to formally merge the two leagues, and so the Football League Second Division was formed, consisting mostly of Football Alliance clubs.

The first international game was played in Scotland on 30 November Charles Alcock, who was elected to secretary of the FA at the age of 28, devised the idea of an international competition, inaugurating an annual Scotland - England fixture. In and he placed advertisements in Edinburgh and Glasgow newspapers, requesting players for an international between the two countries.

The only response that he received stated: "devotees of the "association" rules will find no foemen worthy of their steel in Scotland" [ 26 ] For this reason the and matches were composed entirely of Scots living in England. Notably, however, Smith of the Queen's Park football club took part in most of the and international matches. As early asAlcock was adamant that these matches were open to every Scotsman [Alcock's italics] whether his lines were cast North or South of the Tweed and that if in the face of the invitations publicly given through the columns of leading journals of Scotland the representative eleven consisted chiefly of Anglo-Scotians To call the team London Scotchmen contributes nothing.

The match was, as announced, to all intents and purposes between England and Scotland". In the challenge was eventually taken up by Queens Park FC. The 2nd game between the two sides, on 8 Marchended 4—2 in favour of England, the Scots then went on to win the next game 2—1. The fourth game ended in a 2—2 draw after which the Scots enjoyed a 3-game winning streak.

When football was gaining popularity during the s and s professionals were banned in England and Scotland. Then in the s, soon after Wanderers disbanded, in the north of England, teams started hiring players known as 'professors of football', who were often professionals from Scotland who were referred to at the time as the ' Scotch Professors '.

This was the first time a professional got into football. The clubs in working class areas, especially in Northern England and Scotland, wanted professional football in order to afford to play football besides working. Several clubs were accused of employing professionals. The northern clubs made of lower class paid players started to gain momentum over the amateur 'Gentleman Southerners'.

The first northern club to reach the FA Cup final was Blackburn Rovers inwhere they lost to Old Etonians, who were the last amateur team to win the trophy. During the summer ofthere was pressure put on the Football Association to accept professionalism in English football, culminating in a special meeting on 20 July, after which it was announced that it was " in the interests of association football, to legalise the employment of professional football players, but only under certain restrictions ".

Clubs were allowed to pay players provided that they had either been born or had lived for two years within a six-mile radius of the ground. There were also rules preventing professional players from playing for more than one club in a season, without obtaining special permission, and all professional players had to be registered with the F.

Though English clubs employed professionals, the Scottish Football Association continued to forbid the practice. Consequently, many Scottish players migrated southward. At first the FA put residential restrictions in place to prevent this, but these were abandoned by One of the teams to benefit from the move of Scottish players to England, who were nicknamed the Scotch Professorswas Sunderland A.

The club went professional inand the club recruited a number of Scotsmen the same year, their first internationally capped players. The wealthy miner Samuel Tyzack, who alongside and shipbuilder Robert Turnbull funded the now professional "team of all talents," often pretended to be a priest while scouting for players in Scotland, as Sunderland's recruitment policy in Scotland enraged many Scottish fans.

In fact, the whole Sunderland lineup in the World Championship was made from entirely Scottish players. Another team to benefit from the Scotch Professors was Preston North Endthe first English team to win the Championship and Cup " double ", which did so with a majority of their team being made up of Scottish players. The Scottish FA lifted its ban on professionalism inwhereupon players were registered as professionals.

Early English women's teams, such as the Dick, Kerr's Ladies from Preston, were so popular that their matches raised money for charities. The first recorded women's football match, on 23 Marchwas held in England between a northern and southern team. The fundraising matches continued, in spite of objections. A maximum wage was placed on players, players challenged this and came close to strike action inbut it was not to be for another fifty years before the maximum wage was abolished.

Inwomen were banned from playing on FA league grounds. FA history states that this ban "effectively destroyed the game" in England for the next 40 years. They could only dribble with their feet, or advance the ball in a scrum or similar formation. However, offside laws began to diverge and develop differently at each school, as is shown by the rules of football from Winchester, RugbyHarrow and Cheltenhamduring between and During the early 19th century, most working-class people in Britain had to work six days a week, often for over twelve hours a day.

They had neither the time nor the inclination to engage in sport for recreation and, at the time, many footballs game biography were part of the labour force. Feast day football played on the streets was in decline. Public school boys, who enjoyed some freedom from work, became the inventors of organised football games with formal codes of rules.

Football was adopted by a number of public schools as a way of encouraging competitiveness and keeping youths fit. Each school drafted its own rules, which varied widely between different schools and were changed over time with each new intake of pupils. Two schools of thought developed regarding rules. Some schools favoured a game in which the ball could be carried as at Rugby, Marlborough and Cheltenhamwhile others preferred a game where kicking and dribbling the ball was promoted as at Eton, Harrow, Westminster and Charterhouse.

The division into these two camps was partly the result of circumstances in which the games were played. For example, Charterhouse and Westminster at the time had restricted playing areas; the boys were confined to playing their ball game within the school cloistersmaking it difficult for them to adopt rough and tumble running games. William Webb Ellisa pupil at Rugby School, is said to have "with a fine disregard for the rules of football, as played in his time [emphasis added], first took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus creating the distinctive feature of the rugby game.

This act is usually said to be the beginning of Rugby football, but there is little evidence that it occurred, and most sports historians believe the story to be apocryphal. The act of 'taking the ball in his arms' is often misinterpreted as 'picking the ball up' as it is widely believed that Webb Ellis' 'crime' was handling the ball, as in modern association football, however handling the ball at the time was often permitted and in some cases compulsory, [ 63 ] the rule for which Webb Ellis showed disregard was running forward with it as the rules of his time only allowed a player to retreat backwards or kick forwards.

The boom in rail transport in Britain during the s meant that people were able to travel farther and with less inconvenience than they ever had before. Inter-school sporting competitions became possible. However, it was difficult for schools to play each other at football, as each school played by its own rules. The solution to this problem was usually that the match be divided into two-halves, one half played by the rules of the host "home" school, and the other half by the visiting "away" school.

The modern rules of many football codes were formulated during the mid- or late- 19th century. This also applies to other sports such as lawn bowls, lawn tennis, etc. The major impetus for this was the patenting of the world's first lawnmower in This allowed for the preparation of modern ovals, playing fields, pitches, grass courts, etc.

Apart from Rugby football, the public school codes have barely been played beyond the confines of each school's playing fields. Public schools' dominance of sports in the UK began to wane after the Factory Actwhich significantly increased the recreation time available to working class children. Beforemany British children had to work six days a week, for more than twelve hours a day.

Fromthey could not work before 6 a. These changes meant that working class children had more time for games, including various forms of football. Sports clubs dedicated to playing football began in the 18th century, for example London's Gymnastic Society which was founded in the midth century and ceased playing matches in The first documented club to bear in the title a reference to being a 'football club' were called "The Foot-Ball Club" who were located in EdinburghScotland, during the period — Inthree boys at Rugby school were tasked with codifying the rules then being used at the school.

These were the first set of written rules or code for any form of football. One of the longest running football fixture is the Cordner-Eggleston Cupcontested between Melbourne Grammar School and Scotch College, Melbourne every year since It is believed by many to also be the first match of Australian rules footballalthough it was played under experimental rules in its first year.

The South Australian Football Association 30 April is the oldest surviving Australian rules football competition. The oldest surviving soccer trophy is the Youdan Cup and the oldest national football competition is the English FA Cup The Football League is recognised as the longest running association football league. The first international Association football match officially took place between sides representing England and Scotland on 30 November at Hamilton Crescentthe West of Scotland Cricket Club 's ground in PartickGlasgow under the authority of the FA.

In Europe, early footballs were made out of animal bladdersmore specifically pig's bladderswhich were inflated. Later leather coverings were introduced to allow the balls to keep their shape. Richard Lindon's wife is said to have died of lung disease caused by blowing up pig's bladders. Inthe U. The ball was to prove popular in early forms of football in the U.

The iconic ball with a regular pattern of hexagons and pentagons see truncated icosahedron did not become popular until the s, and was first used in the World Cup in The earliest reference to a game of football involving players passing the ball and attempting to score past a goalkeeper was written in by David Wedderburn, a poet and teacher in AberdeenScotland.

Creswell, who having brought the ball up the side then kicked it into the middle to another of his side, who kicked it through the posts the minute before time was called". Rugby football was thought to have been started about at Rugby School in Rugby, WarwickshireEngland although forms of football in which the ball was carried and tossed date to medieval times.

In Britainbythere were 49 clubs playing variations of the Rugby school game. However, there was no generally accepted set of rules for rugby untilwhen 21 clubs from London came together to form the Rugby Football Union RFU. The first official RFU rules were adopted in June They also included the trywhere touching the ball over the line allowed an attempt at goal, though drop-goals from marks and general play, and penalty conversions were still the main form of contest.

Regardless of any form of football, the first international match between the national team of England and Scotland took place at Raeburn Place on 27 March Rugby football split into Rugby unionRugby leagueAmerican footballand Canadian football. Tom Wills played Rugby football in England before founding Australian rules football. During the nineteenth century, several codifications of the rules of football were made at the University of Cambridgein order to enable students from different public schools to play each other.

The Cambridge Rules of influenced the decision of the Football Association to ban Rugby-style carrying of the ball in its own first set of laws. By the late s, many football clubs had been formed throughout the English-speaking football game biography, to play various codes of football. Sheffield Football Clubfounded in in the English city of Sheffield by Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest, was later recognised as the world's oldest club playing association football.

The code was largely independent of the public school rules, the most significant difference being the lack of an offside rule. The code was responsible for many innovations that later spread to association football. These included free kickscorner kickshandball, throw-ins and the crossbar. At this time, a series of rule changes by both the London and Sheffield FAs gradually eroded the differences between the two games until the adoption of a common code in There is archival evidence of "foot-ball" games being played in various parts of Australia throughout the first half of the 19th century.

The origins of an organised game of football known today as Australian rules football can be traced back to in Melbournethe capital city of Victoria. Through publicity and personal contacts Wills was able to co-ordinate football matches in Melbourne that experimented with various rules, [ ] the first of which was played on 31 July Following these matches, organised football in Melbourne rapidly increased in popularity.

Wills and others involved in these early matches formed the Melbourne Football Club the oldest surviving Australian football club on 14 May Club members Wills, William HammersleyJ. Thompson and Thomas H. Smith met with the intention of forming a set of rules that would be widely adopted by other clubs. The committee debated rules used in English public school games; Wills pushed for various rugby football rules he learnt during his schooling.

The first rules share similarities with these games, and were shaped to suit to Australian conditions. Harrisona seminal figure in Australian football, recalled that his cousin Wills wanted "a game of our own". The Melbourne football rules were widely distributed and gradually adopted by the other Victorian clubs. The rules were updated several times during the s to accommodate the rules of other influential Victorian football clubs.

A significant redraft in by H. Harrison's committee accommodated the Geelong Football Club 's rules, making the game then known as "Victorian Rules" increasingly distinct from other codes. It soon adopted cricket fields and an oval ball, used specialised goal and behind posts, and featured bouncing the ball while running and spectacular high marking.

The game spread quickly to other Australian colonies. Outside its heartland in southern Australia, the code experienced a significant period of decline following World War I but has since grown throughout Australia and in other parts of the worldand the Australian Football League emerged as the dominant professional competition. During the early s, there were increasing attempts in England to unify and reconcile the various public school games.

InJ. Thring, who had been one of the driving forces behind the original Cambridge Rules, was a master at Uppingham Schooland he issued his own rules of what he called "The Simplest Game" these are also known as the Uppingham Rules. In early Octoberanother new revised version of the Cambridge Rules was drawn up by a seven member committee representing former pupils from Harrow, Shrewsbury, Eton, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster.

The aim of the association was to establish a single unifying code and regulate the playing of the game among its members. Following the first meeting, the public schools were invited to join the association. All of them declined, except Charterhouse and Uppingham. In total, six meetings of the FA were held between October and December After the third meeting, a draft set of rules were published.

However, at the beginning of the fourth meeting, attention was drawn to the recently published Cambridge Rules of The Cambridge rules differed from the draft FA rules in two significant areas; namely running with carrying the ball and hacking kicking opposing players in the shins. The two contentious FA rules were as follows:. A player shall be entitled to run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal if he makes a fair catch, or catches the ball on the first bound; but in case of a fair catch, if he makes his mark he shall not run.

If any player shall run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal, any player on the opposite side shall be at liberty to charge, hold, trip or hack him, or to wrest the ball from him, but no player shall be held and hacked at the same time. At the fifth meeting it was proposed that these two rules be removed. Most of the delegates supported this, but F.

Campbellthe representative from Blackheath and the first FA treasurer, objected. He said: "hacking is the true football". However, the motion to ban running with the ball in hand and hacking was carried and Blackheath withdrew from the FA. After the final meeting on 8 December, the FA published the " Laws of the Game ", the first comprehensive set of rules for the game later known as association football.

The term "soccer", in use since the late 19th century, derives from an Oxford University abbreviation of "association". The first FA rules still contained elements that are no longer part of association football, but which are still recognisable in other games such as Australian football and rugby football : for instance, a player could make a fair catch and claim a markwhich entitled him to a free kick; and if a player touched the ball behind the opponents' goal line, his side was entitled to a free kick at goal, from 15 yards As was the case in Britain, by the early 19th century, North American schools and universities played their own local games, between sides made up of students.

For example, students at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire played a game called Old division footballa variant of the association football codes, as early as the s. Rules were simple, violence and injury were common.

Football game biography

Yale Universityunder pressure from the city of New Havenbanned the play of all forms of football inwhile Harvard University followed suit in A hybrid of the two, known as the " Boston game ", was played by a group known as the Oneida Football Club. The club, considered by some historians as the first formal football club in the United States, was formed in by schoolboys who played the Boston game on Boston Common.

The universities of Yale, Princeton then known as the College of New JerseyRutgersand Brown all began playing "kicking" games during this time. InPrinceton used rules based on those of the English Football Association. In Canada, the first documented football match was a practice game played on 9 Novemberat University College, University of Toronto approximately yards west of Queen's Park.

One of the participants in the game involving University of Toronto students was Sir William Mulock, later Chancellor of the school. Barlow Cumberland, Frederick A. Bethune, and Christopher Gwynn, one of the founders of Milton, Massachusetts, devised rules based on rugby football. On 6 NovemberRutgers faced Princeton in a game that was played with a round ball and, like all early games, used improvised rules.

It is usually regarded as the first game of American intercollegiate football. During the game, the two teams alternated between the rugby-based rules used by McGill and the Boston Game rules used by Harvard. On 23 Novemberrepresentatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia met at the Massasoit Convention in Springfield, Massachusettsagreeing to adopt most of the Rugby Football Union rules, with some variations.

InYale coach Walter Campwho had become a fixture at the Massasoit House conventions where the rules were debated and changed, devised a number of major innovations. Camp's two most important rule changes that diverged the American game from rugby were replacing the scrummage with the line of scrimmage and the establishment of the down-and-distance rules.

President Theodore Roosevelt to hold a meeting with football representatives from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton on 9 Octoberurging them to football game biography drastic changes. Though it was underutilised for years, this proved to be one of the football game biography important rule changes in the establishment of the football game biography game.

Over the years, Canada absorbed some of the developments in American football in an effort to distinguish it from a more rugby-oriented game. Inthe Ontario Rugby Football Union adopted the Burnside ruleswhich implemented the line of scrimmage and down-and-distance system from American football, among others. In the midth century, various traditional football games, referred to collectively as caidremained popular in Ireland, especially in County Kerry.

One observer, Father W. Ferris, described two main forms of caid during this period: the "field game" in which the object was to put the ball through arch-like goals, formed from the boughs of two trees; and the epic "cross-country game" which took up most of the daylight hours of a Sunday on which it was played, and was won by one team taking the ball across a parish boundary.

By the s, rugby and association football had started to become popular in Ireland. Trinity College Dublin was an early stronghold of rugby see the Developments in the s section above. The rules of the English FA were being distributed widely. Traditional forms of caid had begun to give way to a "rough-and-tumble game" which allowed tripping.

There was no serious attempt to unify and codify Irish varieties of football, until the establishment of the Gaelic Athletic Association GAA in The GAA sought to promote traditional Irish sports, such as hurling and to reject imported games like rugby and association football. The first Gaelic football rules were drawn up by Maurice Davin and published in the United Ireland magazine on 7 February The prime example of this differentiation was the lack of an offside rule an attribute which, for many years, was shared only by other Irish games like hurling, and by Australian rules football.

Professionalism had already begun to creep into the various codes of football. In England, by the s, a long-standing Rugby Football Union ban on professional players was causing regional tensions within rugby football, as many players in northern England were working class and could not afford to take time off to train, travel, play and recover from injuries.

This was not very different from what had occurred ten years earlier in soccer in Northern England but the authorities reacted very differently in the RFU, attempting to alienate the working class support in Northern England. Infollowing a dispute about a player being paid broken time payments, which replaced wages lost as a result of playing rugby, representatives of the northern clubs met in Huddersfield to form the Northern Rugby Football Union NRFU.

The new body initially permitted only various types of player wage replacements. However, within two years, NRFU players could be paid, but they were required to have a job outside sport. The demands of a professional league dictated that rugby had to become a better "spectator" sport. This was followed by the replacement of the ruck with the "play-the-ball ruck", which allowed a two-player ruck contest between the tackler at marker and the player tackled.

Mauls were stopped once the ball carrier was held, being replaced by a play-the ball-ruck. Another change was successively taking place when some clubs became willing to pay the best players to join their team. This would be the start of a long period of transition, not without friction, in which the game would develop to a professional level.

The motivation behind paying players was not only to win more matches. In the s the interest in the game has moved ahead to a level that tickets were sold to the matches. And finally, in professional football was legalized and three years later the Football League was established. During the first season, 12 clubs joined the league, but soon more clubs became interested and the competition would consequently expand into more divisions.

For a long time, the British teams would be dominant. After some decades, clubs from Prague, Budapest and Sienna would be the primarily contenders to the British dominance. As with many things in history, women were for a long time excluded from participating in games. It was not before the late 19th century that women started to play football.

The first official women's game took place in Inverness in Other milestones were now to follow. The following year, a match between two national teams was played for the first time. The match that involved England and Scotland ended and was followed by 4, people at Hamilton Crescent the picture shows illustrations from this occasion. Twelve years later, inthe first international tournament took place and included four national teams: England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Football was for a long time a British phenomenon, but it gradually spread to other European countries. The first game that took place outside Europe occurred in Argentina inbut it was foreign British workers who were involved and not Argentinean citizens. England and the other British countries did not join FIFA from the start, they had invented the game and saw no reason to subordinate to an association.

Still, they joined in the following year, but would not partake in the World Cup until Domestic leagues occurred in many countries. The first was, as already mentioned, the English Football League which was established in The leagues would by time expand by more divisions, which were based on team performance. In would football for the first time be included as an official sport in the Olympic Games.

Women's football was not added until As in many other sports the white male was predominant for a long time. In football black players started being present relatively early and in comparison with, for example, tennis, football has traditionally been known as a sport with a mix of black and white players. Few other sports show examples of passion to that extent as football.