Soccer For Dummies

Introduction

Congratulations! You have a copy of Soccer For Dummies, 3rd Edition, in your hands. This book has been written specially for people who want to know all they can about the greatest and most popular sport on the planet: Association Football, whose name is usually shortened in the United States to soccer (avoiding confusion with that other sport called football!). Soccer For Dummies, 3rd Edition, aims to satisfy your curiosity, help you to understand the basics of how to play the game, arm you with knowledge so you can enjoy watching it to the fullest extent possible, and show you a whole world of soccer to explore. There’s a reason why soccer has taken off all around the globe and has become one of the most popular sports in the United States.

Soccer is the simplest of sports in principle — in the final analysis, all you need to know is that to win, one team has to score more goals than the other. Nevertheless, a plethora of rules, tactics, and skills exist that can easily flummox the beginner.

That’s where this book comes in. I wrote it so that anyone who wants to enjoy soccer — whether by playing it, coaching it or watching it — can come to grips with the sport quickly and easily, without feeling overwhelmed or intimidated. And I promise it won’t be long before you’ve become something of an expert on the most talked-about sporting pastime in the world. You’ll never look back!

About This Book

The simple aim of this book is to provide you with all the basic skills and every scrap of crucial knowledge that you need to become a proper fan of the game. All the information you need is between the covers of this book. But although it’s all crammed in here, don’t feel daunted: You certainly don’t have to read every word, from start to finish, to get the most from the book.

Each chapter covers a separate topic about soccer, so you can easily dip into the chapters to find out about something you don’t quite understand. Say you’re watching a World Cup game on television, but don’t really know much about the history of the competition; just turn to the chapter that talks about the competition and this book fills the gaps in your knowledge.

If you’re motivated to get up off the couch and play for or coach a team yourself, this book explains how you can get involved. The book offers plenty of handy hints and practical skills you can develop. Maybe you’d even like to become a referee. Well, that’s no problem. I even help you find a whistle.

And if you’re not an absolute beginner, that doesn’t matter — I’m confident that Soccer For Dummies can still help you discover plenty that’s new and fascinating from the long history of soccer.

Foolish Assumptions

Don’t worry if you feel you know absolutely nothing about soccer. Chances are you already know more than you think, and this book helps you gain confidence in your knowledge.

But even if you don’t have a scrap of understanding about the game to start off with, don’t worry! This book soon gets you up to speed. And remember: Even folks who think they know everything about the game have some gaps in their knowledge. Soon enough, I’m confident the information you glean from this book will make an expert of you.

At the moment you may ask:

Why do some teams kick the ball up in the air but others pass it around the floor?

Why are there two people running up and down the side of the field waving flags?

Why is there an offside rule, and how does it work?

Who was the greatest soccer player ever?

This book answers those questions — and many, many more. My only assumption is that you know nothing about the game to start with. I take it from there, and it won’t be long before you understand all there is to know about soccer.

Icons Used in This Book

To help you navigate through this book, keep an eye out for these icons, the little pictures that sit in the margin. They help you spot particular snippets of information. This list tells you what the icons mean.

Tip This highlights small pieces of advice that can help you become a better player or a more knowledgeable soccer expert.

Remember This information is especially useful to remember. If you only remember one thing from each page, make sure this is it!

Warning Hopefully, this won’t come up too much — but when it does, take heed, because the information accompanying it ensures you’ll be prepared.

Technical stuff The great thing about soccer is the amount of random trivia it generates. There’s lots of trivia in this book, and you’ll quickly become an expert if you commit all these facts to memory.

Beyond the Book

In addition to the abundance of information and guidance related to arthritis that we provide in this book, you get access to even more help and information online at Dummies.com.

Check out this book’s online Cheat Sheet: Just go to www.dummies.com and search for Soccer For Dummies Cheat Sheet.

Where to Go from Here

So here you are, ready for kickoff. Exactly what you get out of this book depends on your needs. If you’re a complete beginner, the book gets you up and running. If you already know a bit about the game, the book soon fills in the gaps in your knowledge. And even if you think you may be something of an expert, well, everyone’s still learning, so hopefully you’ll find something new and fascinating in here, too.

But although I’d advise beginners to start at the beginning, even they don’t have to. This book is designed for you to dip in and out of — so if you want to find out about the world’s most famous clubs first, turn to that chapter. You can always turn to a different chapter to bone up on the rules of the game. Or its history. Or its most famous games. Or the hardest tricks to pull off to impress your team mates. Or …

Part 1

Kicking Off

IN THIS PART …

To break you in gently to the great game of soccer, this part provides an introduction to the game, covering how it began, and what it is all about. Those of you who are new to soccer will receive a comprehensive rundown of the whys and wherefores of the game right here.

This part of the book describes how soccer has become the most widely played and watched team sport on the globe. It explains the basic aims of the game, the field on which the game is played, and, last but not least, what gear you need to have fun playing it.

Chapter 1

Introducing Planet Soccer

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Understanding why soccer is the simplest game

Bullet Learning how to play: The basic aims and rules

Bullet Playing and watching

Bullet Explaining why people love soccer so much

Association Football — soccer, as it’s known in the United States — is the most popular sport in the world. It’s referred to by many different names around the world: football, footy, soccer, fitba, fútbol, calcio, futebol, voetbol, le foot, foci, sakka, or bong da. Whatever it’s called, the game remains the same: two teams of 11 players, each team trying to kick a spherical ball into a goal more times than the other.

Soccer is fiendishly addictive, whether you watch, compete, or do both. Across the planet more supporters and spectators follow the professional game than any other sport, and at grassroots level more amateur participants enjoy the game than any other athletic pastime. Though its growth has been slower in America than elsewhere, it’s become one of the most popular participation sports in the United States. As a spectator sport, millions now attend games and tune in to international soccer games via television or online, and the top professional leagues in North America — Major League Soccer (MLS) for men and the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) for women — are both growing fast and thriving.

Soccer arouses passion in spectators and players like no other game in the world — and perhaps like nothing else known to humankind. It has done so ever since some British rule-makers formalized the pastime of kicking a ball around into a sport during the late 1850s and early 1860s. (That’s 150 years and counting, and it’s still getting more popular by the day.) But why have billions of men and women, boys and girls, adults and children been enthralled by this simplest of sports for such a long time? What makes soccer so special? Read on for some ideas.

Nothing as Simple as Soccer

John Charles Thring was spot on the money when, in 1862 in Uppingham, England, he wrote a set of draft rules for the game that later became known as Association Football. With the sport yet to be christened, Thring decided to entitle his rules The Simplest Game.

Thring’s rules were tweaked before being ratified by the newly founded Football Association in England the following year, but the new sport of Association Football remained the simplest game. Because no game (with the possible exception of running in a straight line, and that’s not really a game, is it?) is less complicated than soccer.

The basic aim: It really is that simple!

The object of the game is simple: for a team of 11 players to guide a ball into a goal and do it more times than the opposition team can manage.

That’s it!

So why is soccer so popular around the world?

Pop psychologists have written more words attempting to explain why soccer is so popular than on any other subject (except organized religion, maybe, although some soccer fans will tell you that’s pretty much the same thing).

The truth is, nobody’s ever been able to quite put their finger on why the game is so popular, so I’m not going to pretend to give you a definitive answer. There simply isn’t one. The best I can do is offer you the following three suggestions:

Its simplicity makes it readily accessible. You only have to watch a couple of minutes of action to work out what the teams are trying to do.

Goals have a rarity value and are at a premium. Basketball involves scoring tons of points and a tennis player may win a point every 30 seconds. But you can watch 90 minutes of soccer and not see a single goal scored by either team. Some skeptics say this makes the game boring, but its massive popularity around the world suggests that the rarity value of goals only increases the excitement of soccer for many, many people.

The teams belong to the people. Despite its origins in British private schools, organized soccer quickly became a working-class sport, a release from the tedium of everyday life all around the world. Results really began to matter. Following a team became tribal, with a sense of belonging and a commitment to a cause.

Having said that, thousands of other, better reasons may exist. After you’ve watched a few games, or played soccer yourself, you no doubt have a few theories of your own. Actually, that’s another great thing about soccer: Everyone’s got an opinion about it — often a strong one!

Where do people play soccer?

Everywhere, basically. The game, in a very basic form, is thought to have started out in China over 2,000 years ago, with the ancient Greeks, the Romans, and indigenous Australians playing variations on a theme over the centuries.

It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that the game as you know it today developed in Britain, but by 1900 it had spread all over Europe and to South America. Fast-forward another 110 years and every country and continent in the world is now playing the game. That includes the United States, a country that has long favored other sports such as baseball and its own version of football, but now has well-established professional leagues, the most successful women’s national team in the world, and a huge level of participation in youth soccer.

SOCCER: NOT AN AMERICANISM

One of the great myths in the sport is the origin of the word soccer. It’s generally considered to have been coined in the United States — where the game commonly known as football in the United Kingdom is indeed called soccer. But in fact, the word is a creation of the English elite.

In British universities and elite private schools, well-spoken students had the habit of abbreviating nouns and then appending them with the suffix –er, to create a new informal word. For example, someone with the surname Johnson would be known as Johnners. Similarly, the game of rugby union was called rugger.

According to legend, in the mid-1880s, someone asked an Oxford student named Charles Wreford-Brown whether he wanted to play a game of rugger. Preferring to play football, he shortened the association of association football to soc and tacked on the usual colloquial suffix — quipping back that he’d rather have a game of soccer.

In America, it makes sense that the game is most widely known as soccer, to distinguish it from another popular form of football now dominated by the NFL — similar to why the term was coined all those years ago by Wrexford-Brown, who went on to captain England’s soccer team!

Explaining a Few Rules

So how does this team of 11 players actually go about playing the game and scoring these elusive goals? I go into further detail about the laws of the game in Chapter 4, but first here’s a brief overview of how you play a soccer game.

The field

You usually play soccer on grass, occasionally on artificial surfaces, but always on a field no bigger than 80 yards wide and 120 yards long. You might also hear it called the pitch. Figure 1-1 shows you how the field looks.

Each end of the field has a goal, composed of two upright posts 24 feet apart and 8 feet high, topped with a horizontal crossbar. One team tries to score in one goal, and the other team tries to score in the other goal. While both teams are trying to score, they are also trying to stop the other team from scoring.

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 1-1: The field.

Play stops if the ball leaves the marked field. If a player in one team kicks the ball off the field, then a player in the opposing team must throw or kick the ball back in.

The players

Each team has 11 players. Ten of these players aren’t allowed to touch the ball with their arms or hands. They’re called outfield players. The other member of the team is called the goalkeeper; this player can use their hands and arms in the penalty area around the goal they’re tending.

Four basic positions exist:

Defender: A defender’s job is primarily to defend their team’s goal and stop players from the opposing team scoring.

Forward: A forward’s role is to score goals or create them for other players.

Goalkeeper: The goalkeeper’s job is to stop the ball going in the net at all costs, thus ensuring the opposing team doesn’t score a goal. The goalkeeper can do so by using any part of their body.

Midfielder: Midfielders — usually the team’s most adaptable players — cover a lot of ground and help the defenders defend and the forwards attack.

These players are arranged in different places around the field, and the variations on ways to do this are known as formations. The most common is 4-4-2: four defenders, four midfielders, and two forwards. An alternative is 4-3-3: four defenders, three midfielders, and three attackers, a more offensive lineup than a 4-4-2. You may notice both of those formations only add up to 10 players, not 11: That’s because the goalkeeper isn’t listed in the formation; that position is taken for granted. Find out more about the fun of formations in Chapter 5.

General behavior

A referee is on hand to officiate every game, and the referee’s decision is always final.

Players aren’t allowed to shove each other away from the ball, kick each other, trip each other up, or obstruct each other. If they do, they give away a foul and the referee awards the other team a free kick. (See Chapter 4 for more on free kicks.)

If one team concedes a free kick close to the goal, the team awarded the kick has a fair chance of scoring directly. If a team concedes a free kick in its own penalty area, the referee awards the opposition a penalty kick — a free shot from 12 yards out with only the goalkeeper, who must stay on the goal line until the ball is kicked, in the way (not surprisingly, this usually results in a goal).

Referees can send off (eject for the rest of the game) players who continually concede fouls or do something really bad. Find out more about free kicks, penalties, and obeying the laws of the game in Chapter 4.

Goal!

To score a goal the whole ball has to cross the whole goal line, going between both of the posts and under the crossbar.

Players are allowed to score by shooting with their feet or heading the ball into the goal. This sounds easier to achieve than it actually is, which is why goals are greeted with such unbridled joy by crowds.

Keeping score …

The scoring system in soccer is simple. If Team A has scored one goal and Team B hasn’t scored any then the score is 1-0. If Team B then scores two goals the score is 1-2. It’s pretty simple, which is why fans will sometimes chant the hopeful ditty: We’re gonna score one more than you!

In a less thrilling result, a game may end with neither team scoring a goal. This score is 0-0; traditionally known as a nil nil scoreline, though zero zero works fine too.

… and keeping time

A game (also called a match) lasts 90 minutes, split into two 45-minute halves, with a 15-minute break in between. The team with the most goals at the end of 90 minutes wins the game. If both teams have the same number of goals, the game is a tie (also called a draw). Depending on the rules of the competition the game is being played in, ties are sometimes settled by playing extra time or going to a decisive penalty shootout.

Playing the Game

The beauty of soccer as a sport is that anyone can play it, anywhere. That’s something you can’t say about horse racing or NASCAR.

You don’t even really need any equipment, apart from a ball — and even then you can improvise. In fact, famous players like the Brazilian legend Pelé and Argentinian icon Diego Maradona both grew up in shanty towns and played with rolled-up newspapers for a ball.

Playing solo

Although soccer’s a team sport, you don’t even need anyone else to play it with. Soccer is a game you can have just as much fun practicing alone. Argentine legend Lionel Messi used to spend all his spare time as a little boy practicing by kicking around a tennis ball. As well as keeping him fit and healthy, it honed the skills that turned him into one of the greatest players the world’s ever seen.

EVEN SIMPLER SOCCER

Sometimes you may only have a few friends to play with at your local park, but it’s still easy to have fun playing games in lieu of a proper game of 11 on 11.

Headers and volleys. One player’s the goalkeeper, with the other players trying to score, but only with headers and volleys. Players get a point for a goal scored but have to go in goal if their attempts are caught in the air by the keeper.

Knockout (also known as World Cup). The best street soccer game, bar none. You have only one goalkeeper. Everyone else pairs up. Each pair tries to score; whenever they’re in possession all the other pairs try to stop them. Upon scoring, a pair qualifies for the next round. Each round sees the last pair to score dropping out.

Playing with others

It’s easy to find people to play soccer with at parks all around the world. Join in a pickup game for some friendly competition and a chance to hone your skills in a (usually) relaxed setting.

But if you want a proper game, don’t fret. There are thousands of organized teams that you can join, for all age groups and levels of ability. And who knows: If you’re good enough, you may one day get a try-out for a professional team. And then … well, we’re not promising anything, but somebody’s got to be the next Messi or Marta, right?

Watching Soccer and Supporting a Team

Professional soccer is the most popular spectator sport in the world. Billions of people follow the game by going to a stadium to witness the action in the flesh or watching live coverage or edited highlights, either on television or online.

Following club and country

Most people follow the fortunes of two favorite teams: the club team closest to their heart and their international team that represents the country of their birth or that of a parent.

Fans choose club teams for different reasons. It can be the closest team to them growing up. Maybe their father or mother, or some other close family member, was a fan. Or it can be that a person watched a particular game on TV and fell in love with the club immediately.

There can be other reasons. Their favorite player plays for the club. They really like the color of the team jerseys. They visited the stadium once and especially enjoyed the atmosphere. Anything is possible when people are making emotional attachments.

Who you support is up to you, and you can’t change what feels right. One warning, though: If you’re a Manchester City fan from Los Angeles, some fans will accuse you of being a glory hunter (someone who follows a club just to associate themselves with its success) and ask why you aren’t supporting the team from your home city as well or instead. You’ll never win this argument, so don’t bother getting involved in it. Remember, who you support is a personal decision; no right or wrong answer exists.

Remember, too, that supporting Team X means that you automatically dislike Team Y. (Think Portland/Seattle, Rangers/Celtic, Arsenal/Tottenham, Real Madrid/Barcelona.) These rivalries can generate a lot of pain, but a lot of joy as well. It may not be edifying, but it’s an important part of the game.

Winning trophies: The be-all and end-all?

At a very basic level, professional soccer is about winning. Club teams compete to win league championships and cup competitions, while countries try to win the World Cup or continental titles.

Remember But it’s not just about winning the big trophies, which is just as well because there aren’t that many to go round — and it’s always the top teams and perennially successful nations who land them anyway. Soccer is also about:

The game’s history. Soccer is over 150 years old and there are thousands of fascinating stories to be told. If you’re bitten by the bug, you may never be able to stop reading about old-school players and what they got up to.

Discovering the world. Soccer is a truly global sport — watching broadcasts from leagues all around the world not only exposes you to exciting soccer at all times of the day, but is an invitation to learn more about different cultures and a great excuse to go abroad and watch a game or two!

Registering an unexpected win. Some weekends it’s best to write off a result in advance, especially if you’re going to the league leaders in full knowledge that they’re miles better than you. It insulates you from the pain of defeat, and also makes it 100 times better when your team somehow comes away with a ludicrous 4-1 win.

Schadenfreude. It’s not necessarily an emotion to be proud of, but few feelings are better in soccer than letting rip a guttural guffaw after watching a painful defeat befall a club you dislike intensely.

Strategy and tactics. Soccer isn’t just a visceral thrill; it can be an intellectual pursuit, too. Working out how your team played, and why they won or lost, can be enlightening and frustrating in equal measure.

Having an opinion (and an argument). Apart from the hard facts on the scoreboard, no absolute rights and wrongs exist in soccer. A heated discussion with fans of either your team or another club over the performance of various teams, refereeing, and the merits of different players can be one of the real joys of being a fan — and a pressure valve to let off steam and keep you sane.

A famous jaw-dropping moment. Everyone remembers where they were when Zinedine Zidane headbutted Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final, or when Brandi Chastain scored the winning penalty kick for the United States in the 1999 Women’s World Cup final.

A personal jaw-dropping moment. Nobody will remember this one apart from you. Maybe it was a moment spent watching the game as a youngster with your mom or dad, or the time you scored the winning goal in a pickup game that you’ll always treasure.

Watching the biggest games. You may never see your team compete in one, but still nothing beats the pomp, ceremony, and sheer anticipation of the final of a major tournament.

The pain of defeat. Because without it, you wouldn’t appreciate the good times.

Chapter 2

Getting the Ball Rolling: A Brief History of Soccer

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Remembering the game’s origins: From Beijing to Florence

Bullet Giving birth to the modern sport in Great Britain

Bullet Going global: From Britain to Brazil (via Scotland)

Bullet Exposing the game (and its stars) through television

Bullet Surviving and thriving in America

Wherever you go in the world today, you’re doing well if you can avoid soccer for more than 24 hours. Since the late 19th century, the game has spread to every last nook and cranny on the planet — yes, even the United States — and can justifiably claim to be the number-one team sport in the world.

But how did soccer get so big? And when and where did it start? This chapter looks into the rich history of the sport, from its inauspicious beginnings to the multibillion dollar behemoth it is today.

Discovering the Ancestors of Modern Soccer

So did someone kick a ball in anger first? As you’d expect, both the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans played games that occasionally involved propelling a ball by hoofing it around with the foot. The Greeks played games called Episkyros and Phaininda, the Romans a sport called Harpastum. However, it seems these sports have more in common with rugby — or all-in wrestling — than anything you’d recognize as modern soccer.

Want some proof? Here’s the Greek comic poet Antiphanes describing a game of Phaininda: He seized the ball and passed it to a team-mate while dodging another and laughing. He pushed it out of the way of another. Another fellow player he raised to his feet. All the while the crowd resounded with shouts of ‘Out of bounds! Too far! Right beside him! Over his head! On the ground! Up in the air! Too short! Pass it back in the scrum!’

Luckily, other ancient civilizations were partaking in pastimes altogether more refined …

Anyone for Cuju?

Far across the seas, in China, the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD) had come up with a game remarkably similar to modern soccer. It was called Cuju — a literal Chinese translation of kick ball.

The aim of the game was simple. Two teams of up to 16 players tried to kick a ball through a goal — usually a hole in a silk sheet suspended between two bamboo posts. Players could use any part of the body apart from the hand. The game was comparable to today’s soccer, though huge melees occurred that would be more familiar to modern-day rugby fans.

Over the centuries, the ball — which historians think was usually made out of leather stuffed with feathers — became more lightweight and finally filled with air. In turn the sport became more refined, less inclined to degenerate into rabbles running around chasing the ball. As the later section "Inventing Modern Soccer: How It All Began in Britain" explains, this wasn’t the last time the sport morphed from a free for all into a more skill-based pastime.

But Cuju fell out of fashion during the Ming Dynasty, from the 14th century onwards, and quickly became obsolete.

Kemari, Marn Gook, and Calcio Fiorentino

Cuju isn’t the only ancient sport with similarities to modern soccer. In Japan, during the 6th century, an extremely hectic pastime called Kemari became very popular. Possibly more group exercise than sport, the idea was to keep an air-filled ball made of deerskin up in the air using only the feet. All players interacted with each other in order to achieve this goal.

On the other side of the planet, indigenous Australians were partaking in a hobby known as Marn Gook (it means game ball). Marn Gook is easily as old as Cuju — it was played well into the 1800s and had been around for at least 2,000 years.

Accounts suggest there was little intrinsic point to the games, which featured up to 50 players. Keeping the ball off the ground and showing off elaborate skills while doing so seemed to be the order of the day. Foot skills earned larger applause, so they became the focus of the game.

A similar free-for-all developed in Italy in the 16th century. Calcio Fiorentino — or Florentine Kick Game — was basically a psychotic version of soccer played on the beach. The game was set in a huge sandpit, and players kicked the ball toward designated goals — though they were also allowed to catch, throw, punch, elbow, headbutt, and choke. Kicks to the head were outlawed, though. A version of this game is still played today in Florence!

Many other old ball-kicking sports existed, from games between Native Americans in deserts to ice-based games between Inuits in Greenland. Other communities in the north of France, Ireland, and the Shetlands played kick-and-chase games, whole villages often joining in a massive melee. But it was only when players in Britain slowly got themselves organized in the 1850s that the sport of Association Football, or soccer as we call it in the United States, really began to develop.

Inventing Modern Soccer: How It All Began in Britain

People in Britain have played a form of soccer for nearly a thousand years. The earliest record of a game (of sorts) being played in the country is in 1175, when schoolboys in London staged a game in the city streets. There were few rules save trying to punt the ball to a predetermined point at one end of the street or the other. It was a dangerous pastime indeed, so much so that over the next few centuries the game was regularly declared illegal by royal decree (see the nearby sidebar "Red card! We’ve been banned!" for more).

The 1850s: Time to lay down some rules

The first soccer teams in the world were set up in England during the mid-1800s. Elite private schools and universities in the south founded some; cricket clubs or businesses in the industrial north set up others. By 1860, historians estimate that at least 70 clubs existed across the country.

Everyone was playing to a different set of rules, and that was a problem; soccer as an organized sport struggled to take off. The first attempt to write standardized rules came in 1846, when scholars at Cambridge University cobbled some together.

In 1857 the first-ever soccer-only club was founded in Sheffield. (Other soccer clubs existed already, but they were either linked to schools and universities, or cricket and rugby union clubs.) The men behind Sheffield FC (Football Club) laid down some rules of their own — the Sheffield Rules — and by 1860 even had another team to play, a new set of local rivals called Hallam.

RED CARD! WE’VE BEEN BANNED!

The ballyhoo caused by rowdy soccer games annoyed more than one king of England. In 1314 Edward II decided that anyone playing the sport was causing a breach of the peace. He declared, Forasmuch as there is 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 in future.

Yet people kept playing games. Richard II, Henry IV, James III, and Edward IV all made soccer illegal, one statute reading, ‘No person shall practise any unlawful games such as … football … but that every strong and able-bodied person shall practise with the bow for the reason that the national defence depends on such bowmen!

But archery was considered a duty, rather than a fun pastime, and ordinary folk kept on playing soccer, despite the sport being proscribed. The majority of the country could only afford soccer and were quite satisfied playing it anyway, despite Sir Thomas Elyot, writer and snooty social commentator, describing it in 1564 as beastlike fury and extreme violence.

The masses kept on playing, even with many individuals getting fined or physically punished for doing so. By the 1800s the authorities seemed beyond caring, and the game had spread all across the country.

Enter the FA

But while a burgeoning scene was developing in Sheffield, in 1863 several London-based clubs — mainly from local elite private schools — got together at a pub in Covent Garden, London, to pen the definitive set of rules. They formed the Football Association (FA), with the intention of governing the game right across the country.

Governance didn’t happen immediately, and for the first decade of the FA’s existence their rules coexisted alongside the Sheffield Rules, among many others. But the FA kept printing out their rulebook and sending it around to the nation’s clubs. Eventually, their rules became the standard, as more and more clubs joined the association. (Of course, it also helped when, in 1871, the FA launched the first major soccer tournament in the world: the FA Cup.)

The FA also helped give the game its name — Association Football — which distinguished it from Rugby Football. That name was soon shortened to soccer from association, just as rugby was shortened to rugger. So although many people think soccer is an American name for the game, it actually comes from the birthplace of the sport itself, England.

Step aside for the professionals!

The FA Cup — or to give it its full name, the Football Association Challenge Cup — was first held in the 1871–72 season. By this time the FA had 50 members, although only 15 clubs decided to compete. The first final of the first major soccer competition in history was won by founder members Forest-Leytonstone, who had been renamed Wanderers, and was the team of the FA secretary Charles Alcock! Hmm.

By 1883 over 100 teams were competing in the FA Cup. In the first 12 years of the tournament’s existence a team of amateurs from the south of England won the cup every time. But in 1883, Blackburn Olympic won, backed by a local manufacturer who’d controversially paid for the players to take a week off in Blackpool ahead of the final in preparation. Professionalism was on its way.

Being professional in 1883 was, technically, against FA rules. But nobody complained until a team called Upton Park played the pros of Preston North End in 1884. Upton Park — old-school southern amateurs — protested to the FA that their northern industrial opponents had an unfair advantage. The FA banned Preston, along with several other clubs, from competing in the following year’s FA Cup — so the teams (from the industrial North and Midlands) simply threatened to form a breakaway professional association.

GOVERNING SOCCER NATIONALLY

The Football Association (FA) is the oldest national governing body in the world. This explains why there’s no English in the title: Because it was the first, the founders felt no need to identify the country.

It was formed on October 26, 1863, when representatives of London’s elite private schools, government departments, and sporting clubs met in a pub in Covent Garden, central London, to agree on a single code for the sport (only the Civil Service F.C., made up of government officials, still plays today).

Agreement on rules didn’t come immediately — handling the ball, for example, wasn’t outlawed for another three years (which explains why some of the founding members quickly dropped out to become rugby clubs, going on to form the sport of rugby union in 1871). The FA kept going, though, kicking challenges from several rival organizations aside to establish itself as English soccer’s governing body.

The FA runs English soccer to this day, from the grassroots to the very top of the sport. All other countries have since followed England’s lead by forming a national association to run soccer. In the United States, the governing body today