Thanks To The Han Dynasty, The Bard and Pele's Great Expression

Turn on, tune in and drop out class, Footie 101 is in session.

Many of you have probably wondered where the lecturing has gone, as the Footie Prof has spent most of the time bringing you up to speed on vital current events in the footie world. So today I lecture. But I want to open future lecture topics up to suggestions from you - the class. So if you think of a LEGITIMATE subject you’d like to see the Footie Professor slide tackle, please leave a comment, or sent a note to: thefootieprofessor@gmail.com.

Today’s lecture will be a not-so-quick history lesson on the origins of our beloved game. If you don’t have the time, you may want to come back to this post when you do. If you do have time, grab some munchies and plentiful beverages… I’m about to drop some footie knowledge!

Class, it’s first important to note that ball games date back at least 3,000 years. In pre-Columbian Meso-America, the Aztecs played a game called Ulama – though the game was played primarily with the hips and scoring was done in a wall-mounted hoop, similar to basketball.

Unfortunately the losing team captain is believed to have been sacrificed, not unlike French World Cup Captain Patrice Evra and Le Sulk himself Nicolas Anelka… The courts where these life-and-death matches were contested still spot the landscape of Mexico today.

A more direct (and FIFA recognized) origin comes from 206 BC China, where both men and women in the Han Dynasty were known to play a game called Cuju (literally “kick ball”). Then, as now, the ball was made of panels of leather sewn together. It was inflated with hair and other soft fillings rather than air. A variation of the game called Kemari was later documented in Japan. It’s still played ceremonially today.

How this ancient Chinese practice found its way to Europe is unknown, but let’s remember that trade between Asia and Europe via the “Silk Road” dates back to (you guessed it) the Han Dynasty.

Next up, the Greeks and Romans (who both traded with Asia) were strong proponents of games. The Greeks, the earlier of the two civilizations, played a game called Episkyros, while the Roman incarnation was called Harpastum, but both were ball carrying games.

While trading in Asia, both the Greeks (roughly 200-86 BC) and Romans (753 BC-476 AD) also interacted with Western Europe. At its height, the Roman Empire encompassed modern Britain and even gave it the name “Britannia.” The Latin version of the name was coined by the ancient Greek Pytheas around 320 BC – Han Dynasty anyone?

The ancient Roman era marked a high point in European civilization and culture, and Rome used its extensive knowledge – partially cobbled together from previous great civilizations such as the Egyptians – wherever its empire reached. When the empire fell, portions continued to function in Central Europe as the Holy Roman Empire and in Eastern Europe, as the Byzantine Empire, but Western Europe descended into what is commonly known as The Dark Ages – 400s-700s AD.

This period is marked by a massive technological, sociological, economic, and cultural devolution of European society. Imagine the US, Canadian and Mexican governments dissolving and North America regressing back to the knowledge and reality of 1700s – more like the 1400s. Think that Lexus would be replaced by horse? My friend, you’d be walking!


If you’re thinking the Dark Ages were knights in shining armor, you’re wrong. This is the period before medieval nobility. Europeans essentially went from having running water in their homes to not even knowing to boil water to purify it. Water was so contaminated then from people using rivers and ponds as their toilets and garbage heaps, that the only thing considered safe to drink was beer and wine.

There were few actual cities in Western Europe then. Most people – peasants – lived in small communities in the countryside. They lived off what they could grow and scavenge.

This era lasted until the Middle Ages, roughly the 800s-1300s, which encompasses the Classical, Medieval, and Modern period. Next came the rapid technological, cultural and social advancement called the Renaissance, which ran roughly from the 1300-1600s. It was during this period that the British Empire emerges and the first records in England appear citing a game that is the direct predecessor of modern football.

Through it all, some form of pre-modern football was being played throughout Europe. It’s not too much of a stretch to assume that some form of the Roman ball game continued to be practiced into the Renaissance.

After all, it’s a pretty simple concept. Two opposing groups of people kick a ball into opposing goals. Even the poorest of people can find resources to play this game. And living in rural England during the Dark and Middle Ages… you were PPPPoooooooooe! People worked for their daily sustenance from sunup to sundown. The average life expectancy was 40. And the game was as rough as life was then.

A competition known as Shrovetide Football was played in Britain as early as the 1100s. Still played today, it occurs annually on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday in the town of Ashbourne in Derbyshire, England. A popular theory of its origin suggests the ghoulish notion that the ball was originally a severed head tossed into the waiting crowd following an execution.

Shrovetide is believed to be a more ritualized occurrence of Mob Football, which emerged during the Middle Ages (some believe the game began as early as the 700s) and typically took place between neighboring villages and towns. Looking more like a riot than a game, Mob Football was characterized by an unlimited number of players and few, if any, rules.

The violent matches eventually became so popular that they distracted peasants from practicing archery - peasants were often drafted involuntarily to fight for the crown and their primary weapon was the bow and arrow. King Edward II (1308-1327) eventually had enough and tried to squash Mob Football. He passed laws that promised imprisonment for anyone playing the game.

“For as much as there is a great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arise, which God forbid, we command and forbid on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city future.”

By then, European cities had started to grow again, and the emerging industry of those cities was threatened by workers distracted by football – not to mention the destruction the game would reap in the smaller, confined spaces of a city. Edward II’s prohibition of “hustling of large balls” was also an attempt to protect local merchants. His decree was followed by similar actions by English kings Edward III, Henry IV, Henry VI, and James III of Scotland.

Laws failed to stem rural and city football, so by 1681, the crown relented and sanctioned its practice. This took place as the British Empire was continuing to expand, which ironically lent to the continued growth of footballs’ popularity. During this time it was even introduced into English public schools in order to keep young boys orderly and fit.

Though there were other popular sports in Britain, football was the game of the common man during the Industrial Revolution (1700s-1800s). Life of common people changed significantly during this time from daily rural labor for livelihood, to factory work that sometimes left workers with surplus time and money.

They usually worked every weekday, a half day Saturday and had Sunday off- but Sunday was for church. This revolutionary change in daily life introduced the first glimpses of leisure time to working class people. Football became an inexpensive practice and even spectator activity to blow off steam and be entertained. Many workers guilds were the impetus to the creation of football clubs still operating today.

And as British sailors, preachers, adventurers, and speculators took to the seas to spread empire, they often took the little round ball with them, acting as much as missionaries of the game as for God, or country. It is often said that English vicars (priests), arriving in the faraway colonies often left their ships with a bible in one hand and a football in the other.

Back home, by Britain’s Victorian Era (1837-1901), football was fully integrated into the ethos of the nation. Muscular Christianity, the notion that one’s physical masculinity brought them closer to God, helped solidify football in the mid 1800s along with the YMCA movement. Together, they took root in the United States a century later.

The mixture of football, empire and Muscular Christianity was so powerful, the effects are still being felt today. Though English sailors are known to have played the game in Brazil as early as 1874, Sao Paulo-born Englishman (and one-time Southampton player) Charles Miller is credited with introducing the game to Brazil. He left Brazil to study in England, but returned in the 1890s with two footballs and pushed workers of the London Bank and Railway Administration to organize teams.

Little more than a century later, Brazil is the most successful and celebrated footballing nation on the planet, having won five world championships. Miller is worshiped there as the “father” of their football.

It should be noted that variations of ball games were also being played in other parts of Europe through the Dark and Middle Ages and into the Renaissance (Italy for example). But England must be credited with formalizing the game that we all love today.

Even into the England of the 1800s, footie clubs had their own rules (which sometimes included use of hands and even carrying the ball), so each time a match took place, rules for that match had to be negotiated.

The first step toward standard rules in England came in 1862 when 12 London clubs met for that purpose. On Oct. 26, 1863, they formed The Football Association in London’s still-standing Freemasons' Tavern. By December, the organization still known as The FA today had agreed upon the original set of 13 comprehensive rules.

The founding clubs present at the first 1862 meeting were: Barnes, Civil Service, Blackheath, Blackheath Proprietary School, Crusaders, the original Crystal Palace, Forest of Leytonstone (later to become Wanderers), Kensington School, N.N. (No Names) Club (of Kilburn), Percival House (of Blackheath), and Surbiton. Charterhouse sent their captain, B.F. Hartshorne, but declined the offer to join.

Many of these clubs are now defunct. Others still play rugby, which split from association football at the final December 1863 meeting when the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath, withdrew his club over the removal of two draft rules: one allowing running with the ball in hand, and the other obstructing tripping, holding and kicking opponents in the shins.

Other English rugby football clubs followed suit and didn’t join the FA, or left the FA and formed the Rugby Football Union in 1871. Coincidentally, the word “Soccer,” which we Yanks generally use to describe official football, is actually an English word! When the rugby lads broke away from the FA, official footballing people came up with soccer to distinguish official football from football rugby.

Literally soccer is a play on the word “Association or its abbreviation “Assoc” of Association Football. Drop the “A” from Assoc and add an “er” at the end, and you have the word “Soccer.” Take that you Imperialist Yorkshire Pudding Eating wankers.. I take that back. I like Yorkshire Pudding.

And at the risk of alienating my “Amuruken” readership, you should know that rugby is of course the father of American football – making the original football the grandfather of American football.

Ever wonder why a touchdown is called a touchdown, even though American football players don’t have to touch the ball down to score? Look no further than rugby, where the practice of touching the ball down after crossing the opponent’s goal line – or a “try” – is still practiced today.

Fellow Americans… don’t get me started on baseball’s cricket origins!

And for the record, original football has a long history in North America. When the Pilgrims arrived in North America in the 1600s, they noticed the native people playing a game called Pasuckaukohowog, which literally means “they gather to play ball with the foot.” By 1862, Oneida Club, the United States’ first official football club, was formed in Boston. A monument reportedly now stands on the Boston Common, where the Oneidas played home matches.

I’ve not seen it, but I understand there is a photograph in The National Soccer Hall of Fame and Museum (in Oneonta, N.Y.) of Civil War soldiers playing football (the original football) after a battle.

Back to the laws of the game, they’re determined by the International Football Association Board (IFAB), formed in 1886. Readers of this blog may recognize this as the organization that current FIFA King Sepp Blatter has said will consider integrating goal-line technology to help improve match officiating. I’ll believe it when I see it.

FIFA, the international football governing body, was formed in Paris in 1904 and had representatives admitted to the IFAB in 1913. The IFAB is now made up of four representatives from FIFA and one representative from each of the four British associations. Why? Despite dismantling their own empire, the English still feel they run everything. After all, at its peak, Britain was the most expansive empire in human history. It was so big, the sun never set on it!

But in 1872, Scotland cast an intuitive shadow on English football. That’s when the first official international football match took place in between Scotland and England in Glasgow. This match, which ended in a 0-0 draw, is credited with featuring the greatest evolution in the game's history.

At the time English football looked essentially like five-year-olds were playing. When one player had the ball, they’d advance up field until most of the opposition was upon them. They’d then hoof the ball far up field in hopes that a teammate would be able to take possession. This long ball tactic is sadly still the common style of English football.

But at that crucial 1872 match, the Scots….. (drum roll please)… PASSED THE BALL TO EACH OTHER!

The Scottish run and pass tactic shredded the English and was then heralded as the “combination game.”

It would later be expanded upon by the dominant Hungarian team of the 1950s known as the “Mighty Magyars” featuring Ferenc Puskas, the Brazilians of the late 50s and early 60s featuring Pele and Garrincha, the Dutch in the 70s with Johan Cruyff and “Total Football,” and now the current world and European champion Spain – which learned to play beautifully from Cruyff.

It’s important to note that although Pele is generally considered the greatest player of all time (I promise to revisit this debate at a later date), most Brazilians say Garrincha is the greatest Brazilian player of all time. Hmmm. Still, Pele first described football as Jogo Bonito, or “The Beautiful Game.” Who can’t appreciate that?!?

And even with all its flaws (and there are flaws aplenty), because it’s so beautiful, football remains wildly popular today. All you need is a ball (or a reasonable facsimile).

 

It’s better played with others, but you can play it by yourself. You don’t need money, equipment, or lots of space – just you and the ball. Same as it ever was.

And now for your special historic lecture footie anecdote:

The game was so popular in England that William Shakespeare was sprung. The Bard featured it in his play “The Comedy of Errors,” written sometime in the 1590s.

“Am I so round with you as you with me,

That like a football you do spurn me thus?

You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither:

If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.”

CLASS DISMISSED