Origin Soccer

The ball games resembling the modern day football and are played in various shapes in many different parts of the world. The most basic variations could be found almost 3000 years ago. One of the earlier shapes of soccer, in which players used to kick a ball on a small field, could be tracked down as far back as 1004 B.C. in Japan. In the museum of Munich in Germany there is a document of around 50 B.C. It mentions about the soccer’s origin in China. The Chinese used to kick a ball, filled with the feathers. This was the time of Han dynasty. This game was named as Tsu Chu.

There is also strong evidence that a game of soccer was played in Japan’s capital, Kyoto. In the Far East of Japan, this was named as Kemari. It started off some five to six centuries ago and still played today. The game did not have the competitive nature of today’s game, as there was no struggle being made to snatch the ball. Rather the players used to stand in a circle in a relatively small place, they pass the ball to each other with their foot in a way that the ball did not touch the ground. The Romans introduced a game resembling soccer in the Olympics which had 27 players on one side.

Another soccer resembling game was played with the name of Cuju. It had many similarities with the game which is played nowadays, in terms of rules, number of players etc. It became popular among the masses because of its war game like nature.

During the medieval England the towns and villages had their own soccer teams which used to play against each other in the battle games all the day long. The war like situation was created during the game, as no definite rules was to be followed and the players used to do all kinds of kicking, biting, hitting, gouging and punching. The English authorities tried to ban these games many times due to their violent nature however, they failed initially.

King Edward III passed a law against this game in 1331 in an attempt to abolish it. Later on Queen Elizabeth I approved a law according to which anyone got caught playing soccer would be punished with one week of the jail sentence. In spite of all the efforts being made by the rulers they could not stop soccer from becoming the most popular game in England.

The first effort, in order to standardize and civilized the game, was made by the famous Eton College of England in 1815, when a set of rules were introduced to play the game. These rules were then also accepted by other educational institutes. These rules were further polished in 1848, and a new version of rules was presented. Some of the rules at that time were also in use in the rugby game, in which tripping, kicking, pushing and handling the ball was allowed, whereas, the Cambridge rules prohibited all these methods.

However, soccer took its present form just a century and half ago. The first ever football governing body came into existence in 1863, in England, when the rugby association was separated from the football one, thus football association formed their own association.

The origin of soccer can be located in every corner of geography and history. These various origins of soccer forms really served the purpose of the game and helped in its development at different levels.