Believe it or not, but the modern day soccer owes its origin to the barbarous war mongering nature of human beings.
There
is no proper documentation that can state the date and place of
origination of the most popular modern day sport--Soccer. However,
depending on the socio-historical facts and data we can assume that some
type of a ball game was played somewhere in this planet for at least
over 3000years now.
The earliest evidence of soccer was found in Kyoto, Japan where a field marked to play a ball-kicking game was found.
There
is also proper documentation that supports the fact that the Chinese
military forces around 2nd and 3rd century BC (Han Dynasty) played a
game that involved kicking a ball into a small net. This was then an
essential skill building exercise for the armed forces.
Historical
evidence also shows that some form of Soccer was played also by the
Greeks and the Romans, however, the primitive form involved a larger
team on each side. At times the team strength would go up even to around
27 people on each side. The Greeks were playing four different forms of
the ball game, namely "Episkyros", "Ourania", "Pheninda" and
"Keritizein". Episkyros was the closest to football. In this 2 equally
numbered teams, would try to throw the ball over the heads of the other
team. There was a white line between the teams and another white line
behind each team. Teams would change the ball often until one of the
team is forced behind the line at their end.
Now, how many of you would believe that the modern day soccer actually originated as a war game?
Unbelievable,
but true! The first Football (as Soccer is called in Britain) game was
played by the locals of east of England, where they started a game,
kicking around the severed head of a Danish prince whom they have
defeated in a war. That marked the origination of Football as a war
game.
After this, for a long time, football was played by rival
towns and villages where the objective was to move the ball to a
predetermined spot. Hundreds of people would take part in these games
and a single game could last a whole day. Punching, kicking, biting ,
everything was allowed.
The savage nature of this form of football
was not much appreciated by the rulers and the Royalty took all
possible steps to stop these games. King Edward III of England, passed
laws in 1331 to stop the game, he was followed by King James I of
Scotland in 1424. The Queens were not far behind, rather, had a more
strict approach. Queen Elizabeth I of England, enacted laws that could
sentence a football player to jail for a week followed by penancing in a
church.
However, in spite of all their best efforts and
intentions they could not stop the game. It was too popular among the
masses and they loved the game.
The first approach to regularize
and give a civilized form to this game was taken by the famous Eton
College of England in 1815 when they established a set of rules for the
games. These rules were accepted by the other schools, colleges and
universities. Later, in 1848, these rules were further standardized and a
new version was adopted by all the schools, college and universities.
This new set of rules was known as the Cambridge Rules.
At this
stage, there were actually two set of rules that were being followed in
this game. Some organizations preferred to follow the rules of the Rugby
School, that allowed tripping, kicking and carrying the ball, whereas
the Cambridge rules prohibited all this methods.
In October, 1863,
The Football Association was formed, when eleven London schools and
clubs came together to establish a single set of rules to administer any
football match that were to be played among them. On 8 December 1863,
Association Football and Rugby Football finally split onto two different
organizations.
In 1869, these rules were further amended to
exclude any handling of the ball beyond the scope of acceptability and
that created the foundation for the modern day sports mania--SOCCER !
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