Football
History
The act of using your feet to move a ball around started in China between the 2nd and 3rd century BC. Known as Tsu' Chu, the game consisted in kicking a ball made out of leather and filled with feathers, hair or mane towards a net held up by two bamboo poles. The player could use his feet, chest, back or shoulders – but not the hands -, while fighting off attacks from his opponents.
However, modern football came about more recently. It was the English that organised it in the way we know today. Indeed, the world's most popular sport officially started in 1863 in England, after a breakaway between two rugby groups.
In 1823, at Rugby School, there were two groups that had diverging views about the sport. One of them played rugby using their hands, while the other prohibited it. In fact, players are allowed to use their hands in rugby until today.
The two styles co-existed for a few decades, when in 1863, they officially broke away. The crucial moment in the history of modern football took place on 26 October 1863, when a meeting with representatives from 11 clubs and veterans from Cambridge University was held. At the time, football was played using different rules and one of the goals of the meeting was to try and unify them.
This get together ended up being the inaugural meeting of the Football Association (FA). It was decided that football would be separated from rugby. However, another six meetings and forty-four days were necessary before the FA could effectively organise itself and the rules were actually made official, which took place on 8 December that year.
On 19 December 1863, the FA promoted the first football match in history, between Barnes and Richmond, played at Limes Field in Barnes. The match ended in a goalless draw. The first international match was played on 30 November 1872 between England and Scotland, in Scotland, also ending goalless.
Football's popularity grew rapidly in the following years. On 21 May 1904, the International Football Federation (FIFA) was founded in Paris. In 1930 the first World Cup was held with 13 teams and won by hosts Uruguay. Today, football is the world’s most popular sport and FIFA has 209 member countries.
Curiosities
Paris 1900
Football was first included in the Olympic programme at the Paris Games in 1900. At the time, the sport was still taking baby steps and only three countries took part in the competition: Great Britain, France and Belgium. Great Britain beat the French 4-0 in the final and the country that invented football became history's first Olympic champion.
Only the gold to go
Despite being the country with the most number of World Cup wins (five), Brazil has yet to win the Olympic gold. It came close on three occasions. They finished as runners-up in 1984 at the Los Angeles Games, in 1988 at the Seoul Games and in 2012 in London. They lost respectively to France, the Soviet Union and Mexico.
