Who Invented Soccer?

Intro to who invented soccer
One of the most popular games on earth and running almost every day on hundreds of sport channels, soccer is a classy game that caught up with impulsive fame in the past four decades or so. Unlike many other famous sports such as golf and tennis, soccer is rather down-to-earth despite the nature of its taxonomy.

It is basically played by anyone interested in dynamic sports, making it a daily cup of tea in many parts of America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. In the United States itself, there are roughly 7 million common soccer players at the moment, ranging across various age groups. Despite all this, not many are aware of the origins of soccer nonetheless; most people play because it’s prominent or because it’s enjoyable.

Initially, this game was re-invented by the English in the 19th century, although it was much confined to the high society aristocratic people in their private soccer clubs; conferring it a high-class status. Eventually its popularity spread easily within the next few decades due its low cost and the ease of playing, landing in the masses as one of the most commonly played games throughout the century and further.

Having seen that the Englishmen had actually re-invented the game, where do you think the original version came from? If truth be told, the game itself has been around for thousands of years, although the exact details or timeline in history is not precisely known. Some speculate that this game originated from the Romans, while some others claim that this game was from the Mayans or Aztecs of the olden day South America.

There are also some other groups who claim that the game originated from the Greeks, but to date, nothing has been declared certain from these speculations. Documented proof on the other hand shows the opposite. Apparently, to your surprise and mine; the Chinese and the Japanese had actually developed a game similar to soccer some four and a half millenniums ago to prepare their soldiers for battle.

Some 3800 years later, it became a popular sport in Europe during the 13th century, although at this time no official soccer rules or methodology of play was properly founded. The objective of the game here was to merely move the ball around to specific spots, with the players allowed to do anything they wanted from kicking to biting the co-players.

Coming back to the 1840s, the game finally found its official rules and regulations under the Cambridge Rules. These rules are still in use today in modern day soccer, which essentially covers the methods of goal scoring, game victories, field boundaries, and many more. These particular rules were then standardised by the London Football Association throughout Europe, after which professional teams and international games begun to appear all around.

The game became so popular it made it to the Olympics in the year 1900, although the professional teams were not allowed to represent their countries. Back in its homeland, soccer was a rough game involving physical injuries, to an extent where certain “rough” people were banned from joining any soccer teams for the safety of others. Nonetheless the game was deemed for its widespread influence, which eventually spread to all parts the world including the Americas and Africa.

You might also be wondering how the Chinese or the Japanese originally would have played their version of soccer. Interestingly, the players kicked around a leather ball that was filled with hair to certain spots in a field. This is much similar to ours today, and in contrary much different from the alleged extra-vigorous Greek version of using a pig bladder or animal skin as the ball that was filled with old rags and straw.

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