The
earliest evidence of soccer dates from about 200 in China, where a form of
the game was played that emphasized the ability of players to dribble a
leather ball. The Greeks and Romans also participated in a variation of
soccer that permitted ball carrying.
The
modern-day outgrowth of soccer is known to have started in England, and
the first ball reportedly was the head of a dead Danish brigand. Although
King Edward III prohibited soccer in 1365 because of its excessive
violence and for military reasons playing took time away from archery
practice the game had become too popular to be curtailed.
The
earliest organized games were massive confrontations between teams
consisting of two or three parishes each, with goals as many as 3 to 4
miles (56.5 km) apart. By 1801 the game had been refined, requiring a
limited and equal number of participants on each side and confining the
playing area to between 80 and 100 yards (70.90 meters), with a goal at
each end. The goal was usually made of two sticks a few feet apart. The
first crossbars were merely lengths of tape stretched between the two
goalposts. In 1875 the Football Association made the bar mandatory.
In
the 1850s the rules still varied from place to place, and consequently the
number of players on a side ranged from 15 to 20. The current 11-player
teams were formally established in 1870, with 9 forwards and 2 defenders
the most common formation. Not until the 1880s was the goalkeeper formally
distinguished from the
other players; at that time the goalkeeper was the only player allowed to
touch the ball with his hands.
Modern
Soccer
In
1857 the first soccer club was formed in Sheffield, England. This
set the stage for one of the most significant dates in soccer
history, Oct. 26, 1863. On this date in London, 11 clubs met to form
the Football Association, which laid the foundations for the nearly
140 modern national associations. With the advent of a national
association in England, any soccer played under its jurisdiction was
called association football. As time passed the word association was
abbreviated to assoc., which eventually gave way to the word soccer,
the game's common name in North America.
In
1904 a world governing body, the Fédération Internationale de
Football Association (FIFA), was created to coordinate all of the
national soccer associations in the world. The result has been the
development of spectacular international competitions such as the
World Cup, instituted in 1930, which have sparked soccer's growth
into the world's most popular sport.
