Ancient Kicks: A History Of Soccer

 Soccer is one of, if not the most popular sports in the world today.  As signified by the passion which fans exert in even the smallest matches, the sport has a true place in the hearts of humanity regardless of ace, rage, or location.  But the real question is, where and when did such a sport actually come to be?  It is uncertain as to soccer’s actual time and place of invention, but it is well known that variations of the sport existed as long as 3000 years ago!

 One of these early variations was played in Japan around 1000 B.C., and there are ancient Chinese texts dating back to 50 B.C. detailing a soccer-like game between Japanese and Chinese teams.  The Chinese conducted their variation of the sport with a leather ball filled with hair, and there was an actual soccer game played in Kyoto, Japan in 611 A.D.  There was even a similar version of the game played in the Roman Olympics in which each team had 27 members and competition was so fierce that two-thirds of the competitors had to be hospitalized after a competition!  Although there are records of certain incidences of the game occurring, people of the time were not as concerned with recording soccer’s history as that of religion or war, and thus it is quite difficult to determine just how the sport spread across the globe. 

 There was even a time when soccer was decreed a punishable offense, as during King Edward’s reign in England in the 1300’s.  Even King Henry IV, King Henry VIII, and Queen Elizabeth I passed laws that could jail anyone caught playing soccer for up to a week at a time!  This did not stop the sport from gaining mass popularity throughout Europe, and by 1681 it was an officially sanctioned sport by the British Empire.  By the 1800’s the game had become incredibly popular, so popular in fact that large teams would storm and rampage through villages.  One account of a match played in Derbyshire, England in 1829 said that the match had, “broken shins, broken heads, torn coats, and lost hats.”  Records show that first actual rules for the game were used at Eton College in 1815, and slowly spread to all colleges around England, commonly known as the Cambridge rules.

 Viewed and played daily by more than 8 million people worldwide, soccer is played on every continent except Antarctica and almost every country.  What started out as a somewhat rag-tag, small sport played in Asia, moved through Europe only to become an illegal sport in England, quickly spread throughout the world and is now arguably the most popular sport on the globe.  If it’s any indication of the sport’s popularity, the most recent World Cup was watched by more than 33 million people worldwide for 27 days, totaling more viewers than the Olympics, or the total of American baseball, football, and basketball championship viewers combined!