History of association football

[1][2][3] FIFA cites Cuju in ancient China is the earliest form of a kicking game for which there is scientific evidence, a military manual from the Han dynasty, and it closely resembles modern association football.

According to N. L. Jackson, in the University of Cambridge in 1846 "two old Shrewsbury boys, Messrs H. de Winton and J. C. Thring, persuaded some Old Etonians to join them and formed a club.

[8] According to Thring's own account, written in 1861:[9] [I]n 1846, when an attempt was made to introduce a common game and form a really respectable club, at Cambridge, the Rugby game was found to be the great obstacle to the combination of Eton, Winchester, and Shrewsbury men in forming a football club.This was among the first of several known attempts to formulate a set of "compromise" rules of football at Cambridge between alumni of different schools.

During the early 1860s, there were increasing attempts in England to unify and reconcile the various football games that were played in the public schools as well in the industrial north under the Sheffield Rules.

In early October 1863, a new set of "Cambridge Rules" was drawn up by a seven-member committee representing former pupils of Eton, Harrow, Shrewsbury, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster.

Ebenezer Cobb Morley, a solicitor from Hull, wrote to Bell's Life newspaper in 1863, proposing a governing body for football.

Morley was to become the FA's first secretary (1863–66) and its second president (1867–74), but is particularly remembered for drafting the first Laws of the Game at his home in Barnes, London, that are today played the world over.

[16] By 1867 the Football Association had chosen in favour of the Charterhouse and Westminster game and adopted a "loose" off-side rule that permitted forward passing.

[17] On the evening of 26 October 1863, representatives of several football clubs in the Greater London area met at the Freemasons' Tavern on Long Acre in Covent Garden.

The laws of the game agreed on by the FA members stipulated a maximum length and breadth for the pitch, the procedure for kicking off, and the definition of terms, including goal, throw in, and offside.

On 20 July 1871, C. W. Alcock, a gentleman from Sunderland and a former pupil of Harrow School proposed that "a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the [Football] Association",[19] the idea that gave birth to the competition.

In 1888, William McGregor a gentleman from Perthshire and a director of Aston Villa F.C was the main force between meetings held in London and Manchester involving 12 football clubs, with an eye to league competition.

The meetings were held in London, the main concern was that an early exit in the knockout format of the FA Cup could leave clubs with no matches for almost a year, and if that happened, not only could they suffer heavy financial losses, but fans often didn't stick around for that long without a game, and instead went to other teams.

Charles Alcock, who was elected to secretary of the FA at the age of 28, devised the idea of an international competition, inaugurating an annual Scotland-England fixture.

The only response that he received stated: "devotees of the "association" rules will find no foemen worthy of their steel in Scotland"[26] For this reason the 1870 and 1871 matches were composed entirely of Scots living in England.

As early as 1870, Alcock was adamant that these matches were open to every Scotsman [Alcock's italics] whether his lines were cast North or South of the Tweed and that if in the face of the invitations publicly given through the columns of leading journals of Scotland the representative eleven consisted chiefly of Anglo-Scotians ... the fault lies on the heads of the players of the north, not on the management who sought the services of all alike impartially.

[28] The first international currently recognised as official by FIFA (which took place on 30 November 1872, Glasgow, Scotland) ended in a goalless draw between the two sides and thus, one of the most bitterly disputed fixtures in footballing history was born.

Then in the 1880s, soon after Wanderers disbanded, in the north of England, teams started hiring players known as 'professors of football', who were often professionals from Scotland (who were referred to at the time as the 'Scotch Professors').

The first northern club to reach the FA Cup final was Blackburn Rovers in 1882, where they lost to Old Etonians, who were the last amateur team to win the trophy.

[38] Early English women's teams, such as the Dick, Kerr's Ladies from Preston, were so popular that their matches raised money for charities.

This makes KB, St. Gallen, Koninklijke HFC and Royal Antwerp FC the oldest still existing football clubs on Continental Europe.

La Liga, Spain's national league, had its first season in 1928, with its participants based on the previous winners of the Copa del Rey, which began in 1902.

The first recorded football match in Argentina was played in 1867 by British railway workers at the Buenos Aires Cricket Club Ground.

The end of the tour was against the local Corinthians Paulista team (which had taken its name from the English side) with former stars Sócrates and Rivellino amongst its players.

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the club is often credited with inventing the "Boston Game", which both allowed players to kick a round ball along the ground, and to pick it up and run with it.

The highest level of association football in the United States is Major League Soccer, formed as a result of the U.S. hosting the 1994 FIFA World Cup.

FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) was founded in Paris on 21 May 1904 – the French name and acronym persist to this day, even outside French-speaking countries.

This, in combination with economic factors, led to the swift replacement of Guérin with Daniel Burley Woolfall from England, which had become a member association by that point.

It was saved from extinction but at the cost of the withdrawal of the Home Nations, who cited an unwillingness to participate in international competitions with their recent World War enemies.

Women's confederations are the same as men's: Oceania (OFC), European (UEFA), North, Central America and Caribbean (CONCACAF), South American (CONMEBOL), Asian (AFC) and African (CAF).