Kick Back And Relax, Soccer's Here To Stay

In terms of participants, viewers, and ridiculously loud, outrageous fans, soccer ranks among the most popular sports in the world today. Across the globe fans and players alike give it their all when participating in or cheering on a match, regardless of their age, race, or location. This may lead us to wonder, where and when did such a passion-full sport originate? Well, it is actually unknown as to soccer's pinpoint of origination in history, but variations of the sport are said to have been played as early as 2000 B.C.!


One of these early variations was played in Japan around 1000 B.C., and there are ancient Chinese texts dating back to 50 B.C. detailing a soccer-like game between Japanese and Chinese teams. The Chinese conducted their variation of the sport with a leather ball filled with hair, and there was an actual soccer game played in Kyoto, Japan in 611 A.D. The Romans even had a variation of soccer in their Olympics, in which each team had 27 players, two thirds of which had to be hospitalized after a 50 minute long match because competition was so fierce and brutal! Although there are records of certain incidences of the game occurring, people of the time were not as concerned with recording soccer's history as that of religion or war, and thus it is quite difficult to determine just how the sport spread across the globe.


During King Edward's occupation of the throne of England in the 1300's, he declared playing soccer a punishable offense. There even laws passed by King Henry IV and VIII, as well as Queen Elizabeth I that put anyone caught playing soccer in jail for up to seven days! But despite the throne's attempts, soccer players didn't give up and soccer became an officially sanctioned sport by the crown of England in 1681. Soccer had become so popular in England that by the 1800's teams would get so riled up after matches that they would run through their local villages yelling, screaming, and rampaging. One account of a soccer match in Derbyshire, England in 1829 said that the game had “broken skins, broken heads, torn coats, and lost hats.� Records show that first actual rules for the game were used at Eton College in 1815, and slowly spread to all colleges around England, commonly known as the Cambridge rules.


Now soccer is played and viewed by more than 8 million people around the globe, on every continent (except Antarctica) and almost every country. What started out as a somewhat rag-tag, small sport played in Asia, moved through Europe only to become an illegal sport in England, quickly spread throughout the world and is now arguably the most popular sport on the globe. The most recent World Cup was watched by over 33 million people worldwide for 27 days; that's more people than the Olympics, or the total of the United States football, baseball, and basketball championships viewers put together!