Games revolving around the kicking
of a ball have been played in many countries through history. The
earliest documented version is the Mesoamerica
ballgame, played by the Olmec as
early as 1500 BCE. The Chinese game Cuju is
mentioned in military manuals from the time of the Qin Dynasty
(255-206 BCE).
Kemari in Japan and theRoman game Harpastum.
Various forms of mob football
were played in medieval
Europe,
though rules varied greatly by both period and location.
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The rules of football as they are
codified today are based on mid-19th century efforts to standardize the
widely varying forms of football played at the public schools
of England.
The first set
of rules resembling the modern game were produced at Trinity College,
Cambridge in 1848, at a meeting attended by representatives fromEton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester
and Shrewsbury
schools, but they were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many
clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the
English-speaking world to play various forms of football. Some came up
with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football
Club (formed by former pupils from Harrow) in
1857, which led to formation of a Sheffield FA
in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring
of Uppingham
Schoolalso devised an influential set of
rules.
These efforts contributed to the
formation of The
Football Association (The FA) in 1863 which first met on the
morning of 26
October1863
at the Freemason's Tavern in
Great Queen Street, London. The
only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse.
The Freemason's Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between
October and December, which eventually produced the first comprehensive
set of rules. At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the
representative from Blackheath,
withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at
the previous meeting, the first which allowed for the running with the
ball in hand and the second, obstructing such a run by hacking (kicking
an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Other English rugby clubs
followed this lead and did not join the FA but instead in 1871
formed the Rugby
Football Union. The eleven remaining clubs, under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley,
went on to ratify the original fourteen rules of the game. Despite
this, the Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s.
Today the laws of the game are
determined by the International
Football Association Board (IFAB). The Board was formed in 1886
after a meeting in Manchester of
The Football Association, the Scottish Football
Association, the Football Association
of Wales, and the Irish Football
Association. The world's oldest football competition is the FA Cup, which
has been contested by English teams
since 1872.
England
is also home to the world's first football league,
which was founded in 1888 by Aston Villa
director William
McGregor. The original format contained 12 clubs from the
Midlands and the North of England. The
Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the
international football body, was formed in Paris in 1904
and declared that they would adhere to Laws of the Game of the Football
Association. The growing popularity of the international game led to
the admittance of FIFA representatives to the IFAB in 1913. The board
currently consists of four representatives from FIFA and one
representative from each of the four British associations.
Today, football is played at a
professional level all over the world, and millions of people regularly
go to football stadium
to follow their favorite team, whilst billions more watch the game
avidly on television. A very large number of people also play football
at an amateur level. According to a survey conducted by FIFA and
published in the spring of 2001, over 240 million people regularly play
football in more than 200 countries in every part of the world. Its
simple rules and minimal equipment requirements have no doubt aided its
spread and growth in popularity.
In many parts of the world football
evokes great passions and plays an important role in the life of
individual fans,
local communities, and even nations; it is therefore often claimed to
be the most popular sport in the world. ESPN has
spread the claim that the Cote d'Ivoire
national football team helped secure a truce to the nation's
civil war in 2005. By contrast, however, football is widely considered
to be the final proximate cause in the Football War
in June 1969 between El Salvador
and Honduras.
The sport also exacerbated tensions at the beginning of the Yugoslav wars
of the 1990s, when a Red Star Belgrade-at-Dinamo Zagreb
match devolved into rioting in March 1990.
