Early history
Ancient
games
Ancient Greek football player balancing the ball.
Depiction on an Attic Lekythos.The Ancient Greeks and Romans are known to
have played many ball games, some of which involved the use of the feet. The
Roman game harpastum is believed to have been adapted from a team game known
as "επισκυρος" (episkyros) or phaininda, which is mentioned by a Greek
playwright, Antiphanes (388–311 BC) and later referred to by the Christian
theologian Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215 AD). The Roman politician
Cicero (106-43 BC) describes the case of a man who was killed whilst having
a shave when a ball was kicked into a barber's shop. These games appear to
have resembled rugby football. Roman ball games already knew the air-filled
ball, the follis.[2][3]
Documented evidence of an activity resembling
football can be found in the Chinese military manual Zhan Guo Ce compiled
between the 3rd century and 1st century BC.[4] It describes a practice known
as cuju (蹴鞠, literally "kick ball"), which originally involved kicking a
leather ball through a small hole in a piece of silk cloth which was fixed
on bamboo canes and hung about 9 m above ground. During the Han Dynasty (206
BC–220 AD), cuju games were standardized and rules were established.
Variations of this game later spread to Japan and Korea, known as kemari and
chuk-guk respectively. By the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618–907), the
feather-stuffed ball was replaced by an air-filled ball and cuju games had
become professionalized, with many players making a living playing cuju.[citation
needed] Also, two different types of goal posts emerged: One was made by
setting up posts with a net between them and the other consisted of just one
goal post in the middle of the field.
A revived version of Kemari
being played at the Tanzan Shrine.The Japanese version of cuju is kemari
(蹴鞠), and was developed during the Asuka period. This is known to have been
played within the Japanese imperial court in Kyoto from about 600 AD. In
kemari several people stand in a circle and kick a ball to each other,
trying not to let the ball drop to the ground (much like keepie uppie). The
game appears to have died out sometime before the mid-19th century. It was
revived in 1903 and is now played at a number of festivals.
An
illustration from the 1850s of Australian Aboriginal hunter gatherers.
Children in the background are playing a football game, possibly Marn Grook.[5]There
are a number of references to traditional, ancient, or prehistoric ball
games, played by indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world.
For example, in 1586, men from a ship commanded by an English explorer named
John Davis, went ashore to play a form of football with Inuit (Eskimo)
people in Greenland.[6] There are later accounts of an Inuit game played on
ice, called Aqsaqtuk. Each match began with two teams facing each other in
parallel lines, before attempting to kick the ball through each other team's
line and then at a goal. In 1610, William Strachey of the Jamestown
settlement, Virginia recorded a game played by Native Americans, called
Pahsaheman. In Victoria, Australia, indigenous people played a game called
Marn Grook ("ball game"). An 1878 book by Robert Brough-Smyth, The
Aborigines of Victoria, quotes a man called Richard Thomas as saying, in
about 1841, that he had witnessed Aboriginal people playing the game: "Mr
Thomas describes how the foremost player will drop kick a ball made from the
skin of a possum and how other players leap into the air in order to catch
it." It is widely believed that Marn Grook had an influence on the
development of Australian rules football (see below).
The Maori in
New Zealand played a game called Ki-o-rahi consisting of teams of seven
players play on a circular field divided into zones, and score points by
touching the 'pou' (boundary markers) and hitting a central 'tupu' or
target.
Games played in Mesoamerica with rubber balls by indigenous
peoples are also well-documented as existing since before this time, but
these had more similarities to basketball or volleyball, and since their
influence on modern football games is minimal, most do not class them as
football.
These games and others may well go far back into antiquity
and may have felt the growing pains of the elected officials also influenced
which later affected football games. However, the main sources of modern
football codes appear to lie in western Europe, especially England.
Medieval and early modern Europe
Further information: Medieval
football
The Middle Ages saw a huge rise in popularity of annual
Shrovetide football matches throughout Europe, particularly in England. The
game played in England at this time may have arrived with the Roman
occupation, but the only pre-Norman reference is to boys playing "ball
games" in the ninth century Historia Brittonum. Reports of a game played in
Brittany, Normandy, and Picardy, known as La Soule or Choule, suggest that
some of these football games could have arrived in England as a result of
the Norman Conquest.
An illustration
of so-called "mob football".These forms of football, sometimes referred
to as "mob football", would be played between neighbouring towns and
villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams,
who would clash in a heaving mass of people, struggling to move an item
such as an inflated pig's bladder, to particular geographical points,
such as their opponents' church. Shrovetide games have survived into the
modern era in a number of English towns (see below).
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The first
detailed description of what was almost certainly football in England
was given by William FitzStephen in about 1174–1183. He described the
activities of London youths during the annual festival of Shrove
Tuesday:
After lunch all the youth of the city go out into the
fields to take part in a ball game. The students of each school have
their own ball; the workers from each city craft are also carrying their
balls. Older citizens, fathers, and wealthy citizens come on horseback
to watch their juniors competing, and to relive their own youth
vicariously: you can see their inner passions aroused as they watch the
action and get caught up in the fun being had by the carefree
adolescents.[7]
Most of the very early references to the game speak
simply of "ball play" or "playing at ball". This reinforces the idea
that the games played at the time did not necessarily involve a ball
being kicked.
An early reference to a ball game that was probably
football comes from 1280 at Ulgham, Northumberland, England: "Henry...
while playing at ball.. ran against David"[8]. The first definite
reference to a football game comes in 1321 at Shouldham, Norfolk,
England: "[d]uring the game at ball as he kicked the ball, a lay friend
of his... ran against him and wounded himself".[8]
In 1314,
Nicholas de Farndone, Lord Mayor of the City of London issued a decree
banning football in the French used by the English upper classes at the
time. A translation reads: "[f]orasmuch as there is great noise in the
city caused by hustling over large foot balls [rageries de grosses
pelotes de pee] in the fields of the public from which many evils might
arise which God forbid: we command and forbid on behalf of the king, on
pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future."
This is the earliest reference to football.
In 1363, King Edward
III of England issued a proclamation banning "...handball, football, or
hockey; coursing and cock-fighting, or other such idle games", showing
that "football" — whatever its exact form in this case — was being
differentiated from games involving other parts of the body, such as
handball.
King Henry IV of England also presented one of the
earliest documented uses of the English word "football", in 1409, when
he issued a proclamation forbidding the levying of money for "foteball".[8][9]
There is also an account in Latin from the end of the 15th century
of football being played at Cawston, Nottinghamshire. This is the first
description of a "kicking game" and the first description of dribbling:
"[t]he game at which they had met for common recreation is called by
some the foot-ball game. It is one in which young men, in country sport,
propel a huge ball not by throwing it into the air but by striking it
and rolling it along the ground, and that not with their hands but with
their feet... kicking in opposite directions" The chronicler gives the
earliest reference to a football pitch, stating that: "[t]he boundaries
have been marked and the game had started.[8]Other firsts in the
medićval and early modern eras:
"a football", in the sense of a
ball rather than a game, was first mentioned in 1486.[9] This reference
is in Dame Juliana Berners' Book of St Albans. It states: "a certain
rounde instrument to play with ...it is an instrument for the foote and
then it is calde in Latyn 'pila pedalis', a fotebal."[8]
a pair of
football boots was ordered by King Henry VIII of England in 1526.[10]
women playing a form of football was in 1580, when Sir Philip Sidney
described it in one of his poems: "[a] tyme there is for all, my mother
often sayes, When she, with skirts tuckt very hy, with girles at
football playes."[11]
the first references to goals are in the late
16th and early 17th centuries. In 1584 and 1602 respectively, John
Norden and Richard Carew referred to "goals" in Cornish hurling. Carew
described how goals were made: "they pitch two bushes in the ground,
some eight or ten foote asunder; and directly against them, ten or
twelue [twelve] score off, other twayne in like distance, which they
terme their Goales".[12] He is also the first to describe goalkeepers
and passing of the ball between players.
the first direct reference
to scoring a goal is in John Day's play The Blind Beggar of Bethnal
Green (performed circa 1600; published 1659): "I'll play a gole at
camp-ball" (an extremely violent variety of football, which was popular
in East Anglia). Similarly in a poem in 1613, Michael Drayton refers to
"when the Ball to throw, And drive it to the Gole, in squadrons forth
they goe".
Calcio Fiorentino
An illustration of the
Calcio Fiorentino field and starting positions, from a 1688 book by
Pietro di Lorenzo Bini.Main article: Calcio Fiorentino
In the 16th
century, the city of Florence celebrated the period between Epiphany and
Lent by playing a game which today is known as "calcio storico"
("historic kickball") in the Piazza della Novere or the Piazza Santa
Croce. The young aristocrats of the city would dress up in fine silk
costumes and embroil themselves in a violent form of football. For
example, calcio players could punch, shoulder charge, and kick
opponents. Blows below the belt were allowed. The game is said to have
originated as a military training exercise. In 1580, Count Giovanni de'
Bardi di Vernio wrote Discorso sopra 'l giuoco del Calcio Fiorentino.
This is sometimes said to be the earliest code of rules for any football
game. The game was not played after January 1739 (until it was revived
in May 1930).
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