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Football is played by two opposing team,each with eleven players.
A match lasts 90 minutes and is divided into two halves.The game is
played primarily with the feet,although a player can also use the
thigh,chest,or head.Goalkeepers are the only players allowed to use
their hands.Each team employs various formation and tactics,while the
players pass the ball or run with the ball,known as dribbling,towards the goal.
Players from the opposing team can tackle to regain possession of the ball.
The main objective is to score goals. |
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EARLY ORIGINS OF FOOTBALL
The ancestry of the game can be traced to 200 BC during the Han dynasty in China.
Their game was called Tsu Chu (Tsu means roughly "to kick", while Chu denotes a ball
made of stuffed leather). Chinese emperors themselves took part.
The Greeks and Romans had a variety of ball games (such as episkuros and harpastum)
and some of them were probably foot- as well as handball games.
In the 7th century the Japanese had a form of football called kemari.
In 14th-century Florence there was the game calcio (giuoco del calcio,"game of the kick")
which was played 27-a-side with 6 umpires. This game allowed the use of hands
as well as feet.
It is not until the 12th century that we find evidence of some form of football
being played in England. Various forms of it were known in the Middle Ages.
Basically, this was mob football that took place between rival factions and groups
in towns and cities, and also between villages and parishes. Very large numbers
of players took part and the goals might be a mile or more apart. Such games,
which were often violent and dangerous, came to be particularly associated with
Shrovetide and came to be called Shrovetide Football. Forms of this survived in
England until well into the 20th century. Royal edicts by a succession of English
kings failed to suppress mob football. In fact, such games flourished in the Tudor
and Stuart periods. Oliver Cromwell managed to put a stop to them, but with the
Restoration and the reign of Charles II it was soon revived. In the 18th century
it was popular in English public schools but still involved scores of players
on each side. A few public schools developed more organized forms and these have
survived at Eton (Eton Wall Game, Eton Field Game), Harrow (Harrow Football),
and Winchester (Winchester Football).
THE SPREAD OF FOOTBALL
This adoption took place rapidly in Europe and many other parts of the world in the closing years of the 19th century. British soldiers, sailors, colonial servants, business men, engineers, and teachers exported the game worldwide, as they did cricket and other games and sports. The pattern was the same. They would produce a ball and start a game and then encourage the locals to join in.
In Vienna there was a large British colony who were responsible for creating the first Vienna football club and the Vienna Cricket and Football Club, from which FK Austria derived. The Austrian, Hugo Meisl, a member of Vienna Cricket Club and secretary of the Austrian FA (founded in 1904) was to have a very wide influence on the development of football in Europe and was the main force behind the Mitropa Cup (the prototype of modern European club events) and the Nations' Cup competitions. Denmark was another European country to take quickly to the game. There was an English Football Club in Copenhagen in 1879 and the Danish FA was founded in 1889. In Italy resident Englishmen founded the Genoa Football and Cricket Club, and Genoa (1892) is Italy's oldest league club; the Italian FA was created in 1898. The game started in Hungary in the 1890s (the FA was formed in 1901) and two Englishmen were in the first Hungarian team. In Germany and the Netherlands the game was well established by 1900 (when the German FA was founded). By 1908 there were 96 Dutch clubs. The Dutch FA was formed in 1889. Football was introduced to Russia in 1887 by two English mill owners, the Charnock brothers, near Moscow. By the late 1890s the Moscow League was in operation.
By early in the 20th century the game was in full swing in Europe and most countries had formed their football association: Belgium (1895), Czechoslovakia (1901), Finland (1907), Luxembourg (1908), Norway (1902), Portugal (1914), Romania (1909), Spain (1913), Sweden (1904), and Switzerland (1895).
In South America British sailors had played football in Brazil in the 1870s, but the main moving spirit who established it was Charles Miller, the son of English immigrants. He encouraged British resident workers to form clubs (some already existed for cricket). The first mainly Brazilian club was the Associaciao Athletica Mackenzie College in Soa Paulo. In Argentina the game was introduced by British residents in Buenos Aires and the FA was founded in 1893. However, it caught on quite slowly and in the end it was Italian immigrants who made the game popular. Chile formed its FA in 1895, Uruguay in 1900, and Paraguay in 1906. British influence in South America is evident in the names of some club sides: Corinthians in Brazil, Everton and Rangers in Chile, Liverpool and Wanderers in Uruguay, and Newell's Old Boys in Argentina.
Until recently and the staging of the 1994 World Cup, the United States had not often been associated with football, but it was played there from an early stage. The Oneida Club of Boston was founded in 1862 and the national side reached the semi-finals of the 1930 World Cup. In Africa the British colonial movement played a large part in introducing association football but it developed more slowly on that continent, while in Canada and Australia it is only lately that it has become popular.
In 1904, the world governing body, Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), was formed in Paris. Between the World Wars many other countries took up football and after World War II many developing and newly emergent countries did likewise. By 1997 FIFA had 200 members.
An extract from"Football, Association, History of," Microsoft_ Encarta_ Encyclopedia 2000.
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