...back from a soccer "bubble" where Candians
play indoor soccer even in the winter months....
I forgot to mention Freddy Udu as an awesome
player...
Thok wrote:In China football(soccer) were first played. But as recently as in the mid 19 century football was played modern in English puplic schools. They have just good ideads to widespread this game.
Hey i know this post is dead old but i need to set it straight. I'm a posh supporter from england, posh is the nick name of Peterborough United.
Football was invented in England centuries ago, they used a pigs bladder and the goals were in two seperate villages, it was more of a cross between rugby (the sport English Public schools play not Football or as you say soccer) it had to be banned because people were getting killed as the main stratergy was to get the ball by any means.
The Chinese, Koreans and Japaneses were introduced to football by English sailers which is why there is the joke that they are so rough.
Thanks for the clarification the Posh. Welcome
to A2K!
Here's an overview of the origins of the game:
Egypt and the Near East
Historians have suggested that fertility rites in ancient Egypt and religious ceremonies in the ancient Near East may have been linked to the development of the game.
China
The earliest mention researchers have found of a soccer-like game states that balls made of animal skin were kicked through a gap in a net stretched between poles 30 feet high. Records indicate that tsu chu was played as a part of the Emperor's birthday celebration. The Chinese also played some form of the game to train soldiers during the Ts'in Dynasty (255 BC - 206 BC). According to records, tsu chu was also played extensively during the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD).
Alaska and Canada
The Eskimos played aqsaqtuk or soccer on ice. Balls were stuffed with grass, caribou hair, and moss. One legend tells of two villages playing against each other with goals ten miles apart. There is no known date of origin.
Pacific Islands
Pacific Island inhabitants were early to develop games using hands and feet. They used coconuts, oranges and pig bladders as balls.
Mexico & Central America
(600 AD - 1600 AD)
The creation of the rubber ball occurred in Mexico and Central America. These people played games on a recessed court shaped like a capital "I". The court was 40-50 feet long with vertical walls several feet high. In the middle of each wall was a mounted stone or wooden ring and the object was to project the hard rubber ball through the ring.
England
One story speaks of using an enemy's skull as a ball; another tells of a village defeating a Roman team and running them out of town in 217 AD. Nonetheless, the history of the game in England during the 5th-11th centuries is vague. By the 12th century, the game had become a violent mob sport with no rules and any sort of behavior condoned, which later earned a succession of royal bans. Regardless of the bans, the sport grew in popularity. Formal rules of today's game were adopted in England in 1863.
United States
In the early 1600s, the American Indians played a game called pasuckuakohowog, meaning "they gather to play ball with the foot." Beaches, a half mile wide with goals 1 mile apart, served as playing fields for as many as 1000 people at a time. Games were rough and often resulted in broken bones, but no one could be identified because players disguised themselves with ornaments and war paint making retaliation close to impossible. It was common for games to be carried over from one day to the next, with a celebratory feast following the conclusion of the match.
Thanks panzade.
Another summary, from Britannica:
Quote:FOOTBALL
History > Origins
From antiquity, games existed in which two teams, or sides, attempted to kick, push, or otherwise propel a ball in opposite directions toward the opponents' goal. The ball varied in shape from round to oval, as it does today. A football game was played in China as early as 206 BC, and by AD 500 round footballs stuffed with hair were in use. In ancient Greece a game with elements of football?-episkuros, or harpaston?-was played, and it migrated to Rome as harpastum by the 2nd century BC. In this game, play began with a ball being thrown in the air between two teams, each of which tried to push it beyond the opponents' goal line. Roman legions may have introduced the game throughout Europe and in England during the Roman occupation (AD 43/44-410). One report has the Irish kicking a stuffed ball even earlier.
In 7th-century Japan there was a football game. In the 14th century calcio ("kick") was played in Florence; it persists as a festival game. Also in medieval Europe there were mob games, called mêlées or mellays, in which a ball, usually an inflated animal bladder, was advanced by kicking, punching, and carrying. As many as 100 players from two towns or parishes started at a midpoint and used their localities' limits as goals. King Richard II of England banned the game in 1389 because it interfered with archery practice, and later monarchs issued similar proscriptions into the 15th century, to little effect.
Shrove Tuesday (the last day before the Western Christian season of Lent) was a traditional football day in both England and Scotland from the 12th century. At Chester, in the north of England, the game was said to be played in commemoration of the day in 217 when a mighty flying wedge (a moving formation of soldiers resembling a wedge) drove the Romans out. A similar explanation was given for a game celebrating the driving out of the Danes from Kingston upon Thames in the 8th century. The field in later games came to be 80 to 100 yards (about 73 to 91 metres) long with a goal at each end formed by driving two sticks in the ground 2 or 3 feet (0.6-0.9 metre) apart. The ball was an inflated bladder encased in leather. When one team drove the ball through the opponent's goal, the game ended.
Football in a less violent form was played in England from the 17th century by youths from wealthy and aristocratic families at private schools (called public schools in England), although the authorities frowned on it as too rowdy for young gentlemen. Rules varied from school to school, but all forbade running with the round ball or passing it forward.
History > The early years
When football arose in England, it was first played as a winter game between residence houses at public schools such as Winchester, Charterhouse, and Eton but not often between schools, for each school had its own rules, some allowing limited handling of the ball and others not. Public schoolboys who went up to the universities could not play football there except with old schoolmates. An attempt to codify rules and remove differences was made at the University of Cambridge in 1843, and in 1846 most of the public schools adopted what were called the Cambridge rules, which were also used at that university and later by graduates who formed football clubs. Then in 1862 and 1863 a series of meetings of school and nonschool clubs in the London area and surrounding counties agreed to print the rules and, by so doing, left the rugby game outside the newly formed Football Association (FA).
The new rules were not at once universally accepted; many clubs continued to play by their own rules, especially in and around Sheffield, the first provincial club to join the FA. In 1867 the Sheffield Football Association was founded, the forerunner of county associations formed later. Sheffield and London played two matches in 1866, and in 1867 a match pitting Middlesex against Kent and Surrey was played under the revised rules. In 1871 all 15 FA clubs were invited to subscribe for purchase of a trophy cup to be played for by all clubs. By 1877, 43 clubs were competing, and the original dominance of the London area began to diminish. By the end of the 1870s only the Scottish Association rules varied from those of the FA.
Source: <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=29605>
