The Beautiful Game Football, soccer or “The Beautiful Game” - are all names used to describe the most well-liked team game in the world. Although the words football and soccer are essentially interchangeable in the UK they have very different meanings in North America.
In the USAthe word 'football' is taken to signify American Football, a game more akin to the British rugby football, while soccer refers to the game known to the remainder of the world as football.
It is ironic that the word soccer is in fact an English slang term of the word association in the same manner that the word “brekkers” refers to breakfast.
The regulations of football were first laid down in 1863 by the Football Association in the UK and these are basically the same rules by which the game is played by today. However they were just the first endeavour to codify and standardize the vastly varying forms of the game being played in 19th century public schools in England.
However the game has a much longer history and references to a game similar to today’s football can be found in the texts of one William Fitzstephen in the late 12th century. At a range of times during the medieval period edicts were passed banning the playing of football, largely, it is believed, becauseit detracted from the time devoted to archery practice.
So it could be stated that England’s superiority in France at battles such as Crecy and Agincourt , brought about largely as a result of the successof Welsh and English longbowmen, was a direct result of lack of skill on the football pitch!
Football also fell victim to Puritan censorship and attempts to keep the Sabbath holy as naturally the only time a working man had any free time to indulge in such pursuits was on a Sunday (the Sabbath)
By the way, the term “the Beautiful Gameas a synonym for Association football has no vast history to it. Its origins are somewhat disputed as some claim that it was invented by a Brazilian footballer named Valdir Pereira although the English TV commentator Stuart Hall claims to have coined the phrase in 1958.
From its primitive beginnings football has now grown into the world’s most widely played team sport. F?d?ration Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA as it is more universally known , now has 208 member countries where an estimated 200 million plus players frequently play the game.
Such is the impact of football that star players from the major European leaguesand particularly the English Premiership are now household names the world wide and it is common while driving through a remote jungle village in South East Asia to become confronted by a larger than life size portrait of say, David Beckham, promoting something as routine to motor oil.
Little did those men meeting at the FreemasonsTavern in Great Queen St,. London on the morning of 26 October 1863 to set the rules of the game know the extraordinary world wide impact their decisions would make.
Owen Jones,the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with London Olympics 2012 venues. Click a link if you are interested in 2012 London Olympics Volunteers.