History Of Soccer Essay

The Global Game

Without a doubt soccer is the world’s most popular sport. There are thousands of amateur and professional soccer teams playing it for fun or revenue. Millions of people from more than two hundred countries watch soccer on television or in stadiums every year. “Over half of the planet’s population watched the 2010 FIFA world cup final between Spain and Nederland held in South Africa”. Some soccer clubs, coaches and players are among the best known names on the planet which makes it a worldwide phenomenon. It is the popularity and the amount of participants and spectators of soccer games, its importance to each nation and how it connects people from all around the world that justifies “why soccer is called the global game”.

Soccer is one of the oldest sports or even activities mankind has ever performed. There are conflicting theories about which nation invented soccer, some suggest soccer’s origins goes all the way back to 2500 BC but Chinese were the closest to play it in the modern form around 2200 years ago. A game called Tsu-chu (kick ball) was designed by the Chinese which soldiers completed in a

After introduction of tsu-chu by Chinese its tradition began to spread around the world especially in Europe. Soccer was played in Britain’s streets, schools and universities in different forms and rules from 9th to 18th century. It was so popular that more than 30 royal and local rules had been set to ban soccer between 1314 and 1667. In 1848 Cambridge University developed the basic guidelines of modern soccer which led to formation of football association (FA) in 1863. Football association unified different rules across Britain and set a standard code for soccer. Britain still remains one of the most important contributors to popularity and expansion of soccer and without it soccer as we know it may have never