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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
penance 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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