Soccer (Amateur) Worldwide

History of Soccer

The decisive episode in the development of soccer, from its earliest origins to the present day, was arguably the meeting of October 26,1863, in London, which signified the birth of the Football Association in England. Prior to this event a multitude of ball-kicking games, played in various locations and across many centuries, had slowly been converging toward a universally identifiable style of play. Subsequent to the formation of the Football Association, the codified soccer version of football spread quickly back out through Europe, North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The result would be a single, universal sporting pastime with internationally acknowledged rules and regulations, the playing of which unites disparate cultures the world over.

The very first instances of group play involving the kicking of a ball cannot be known with any certainty. Most textbooks, however, regard the Chinese tsu chu, which existed over two millennia ago, as the earliest evidence of the playing of a soccer-type game. The Japanese (kemori), Greeks (episkyros), Romans (harpastum), and Italians (calico) are among the cultures to have featured organized ball games subsequent to this.

Records become more detailed in relation to the development of the game in the British Isles from about the 12th century ce. onwards. Until the 19th century, football slowly progressed in structure and style from the brutal and sometimes bloody all-in affairs that various rulers had disdained because of the tendency to encourage disorderly activity and to distract the masses from more important or patriotic pursuits. The playing of soccer in its most rudimentary form indeed resulted in its prohibition under the regime of Richard II in the 14th century, but this and other attempts to rein in such games had little lasting effect.

More Organized Games

Eventually, organized games with closer resemblance to modern-day soccer filtered through into the schools system, although the characteristics of play remained haphazard. It was at Cambridge in England where, in 1848, a group of students made the first serious attempt to draw up specific rules for participants to follow. Included in their elementary regulations was the notion of goals being registered by the ball passing between two posts set at either end of the playing field, with a line of string set between them as a crossbar.

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