The story of who invented football
When it comes to a sport as important as football, there are many fans who want to know its origin. However, when it comes to who exactly invented football, it is somewhat difficult to find a precise answer to this question.
If there is a prominent sport in today’s society, it is football. A mass phenomenon that moves millions of people around the world and leads its followers to search for all kinds of information about teams, players and leagues, but also information about the origin of football, where it started to be played and many other things aspects related to ancient football. The problem is that, since this sport already has many years of history behind it, these data and origins are somewhat confusing, as we are going to see in this article.
History of football since ancient times
If we take a look at the origins of football, there are many who establish it in England in the 19th century, when the renowned Football Association or Football Association in Spanish was founded. However, historical reality places this birth several centuries before the creation of this entity.
And it is that when assessing when football was invented, it is necessary to travel to ancient times, such as ancient Egypt. In this region, certain ball games similar to today’s soccer were already practiced, using linen balls and others made with intestines or animal skins, in order to achieve a better rebound. Some of these primitive balls have appeared in tombs from the year 2,500 BC, which represents a considerable change when it comes to knowing when and where football was invented.
Somewhat more recent are the vestiges of football that we find in Chinese culture. In it, a sport called “cuju” was played, which, translated, would mean kicking the ball with the foot. We are talking about a very popular sport, which was played with a kind of ball made of leather and feathers, which had to be moved around a rectangular field and put into a piece of cloth, which would become a primitive goal. So if we want to know what modern football is, the truth is that this classic reference gives us a good clue to its origins.
Rome and the Middle Ages
Moving forward a bit in time, we continue to find references to this sport. One of them comes from ancient Rome, in which this sport was played in a version with 27 players per team and in which there were practically no rules. Something that caused the players to finish the games quite bruised. This version was so well known that this primitive football reached the Olympic Games in ancient Rome, with some references to this game in the work of great Latin orators such as Cicero. By the way, a similar version of this sport is played today in some Italian regions. It arose in the 16th century and is called Calcio, being one of the first occasions in which the players wore a kind of soccer jerseys to distinguish the teams.
We now travel to the 14th century, in which a sport called mass soccer arose. This game did not have any type of rules, not even in the number of players, so it was common for the matches to cause disturbances, due to the emotion that they put into the action. Some problems that reached such an extreme that the politicians of the time imposed the prohibition of this game. However, players followed the old unwritten rule that the rules are meant to be broken and continued to play practically until the 19th century.
A little later in time we have the reference of the Guaraní people, which for many experts responds to when football as we know it today was created. The version of the game that this town practiced is one of the most similar to the current game, it being documented that the Guarani played with a compact and light rubber ball, which they hit with the top of their foot. They also had certain rules, which makes a difference with the anarchic and massive football that we just mentioned.
the english creation
Since it is the main theory when looking for information about soccer, we now evaluate the emergence of what would be the current soccer. This creation takes place in the year 1863, when a group of English football fans, but tired of prohibitions and riots, decided to establish the rules of the game that, with various variations, have been maintained to this day.
These rules not only served to bring a little more peace and order to the game, but also established a foundation. This means determining a kind of standard accepted by most players, which makes it much easier to determine the way the game is played in different parts of the world. As with highway codes and traffic rules, having a regulatory environment and basic references is the best way to spread a sport.
Additionally, this standardization has the additional advantage that it is easier to establish different football competitions, based on a common regulation. Something that would generate the germ of the great fondness for football that we have lived for many years.
So who invented soccer?
This leaves us with the most globally accepted theory when it comes to establishing the origin of football. As far as the origin of the game itself is concerned, there is no clear answer about it. The lack of historical references to the type of ball game that was played in places like Rome or Egypt makes it somewhat difficult to determine if this is really a germ of the original game or any other type of ball sport. Therefore, determining the real origin of football is quite complicated.
What is clear is the origin of modern football, dating back to 1863 with the FA regulations. An approach that is the basis of modern football and would establish the rules with which football would spread throughout Europe. Such is its importance that it would even lay the foundations for the creation of organizations such as FIFA, among others.