History of Football

By Mirsad Hasic

The history of soccer can be said as old as recorded history. The game has been played in varying forms. A game resembling soccer was played by the ancient roman and had 27 players at each side. But the game was said to be so violent that most of the players had to be given medical treatment and suffered many injuries in which both major and minor types are included. Still not much record is available for sports related activities as historians at that time were not so interested in them

Soccer also had to face difficulties in growing up as well. First it was not given too much attention and was played by people at a small scale. The 14th century also gave soccer some tuff time. King Edward passed laws against the soccer in the early 14th century. Anyone who was found playing soccer openly was imprisoned

The king said that the game makes a lot of noise through the people watching it and also by the players playing the game. Though it may be said as a completely senseless decision but considering the time, too much noise may not be liked by the people or the kings at least. But the game was living inside the people and they didn't seem to give up on the game. The game again saw a boom and public support from the start of the 19th century and again started to gain popularity among the masses

There was no official governing party so the game events were held by individual clubs and small group of people who were willing to keep the game alive. But the games usually didn't seem to end peacefully. Some injuries could be seen during the game and some maybe after the game during some quarrel lings between groups of people supporting different teams. Broken legs and busted heads could be heard and seen in the games and some minor injuries as well

Still there was no official rule book for the sports. Later in the mid 19th centuries, many colleges and small groups started making their own rules and the matches arranged by them had to be played in accordance to their rules. But a little later, Cambridge University introduced some rules which were called Cambridge laws, were then followed by many groups and colleges and many matches had started to be played within those rules and regulations. Then an association named Football Association was formed and only a single college and other small groups and people joined the association

In the year 1863, a number of meetings were held by this association and a few round of meetings between October and December 1863 proved successful and the first group of agreeable rules and regulations were decided. At first many groups decided to leave the association's governance because they were not happy with a number of laws

One of these laws was that the ball cannot be carried by the player in the hand and tripping (known as hacking) was not allowed and was considered a foul and the opponents were given due advantage for the foul. These and some others were not preferred by some so they decided to leave. But after some time, the football association was changed into Federation Internatinale de Football Association also known as (aka) FIFA in the early 20th century

The FIFA was also not given a welcoming hand at first but later people decided to accept it and the groups seeing this fame, joined it and this body is still governing the official matches held internationally and between clubs