To begin, the rules of soccer are to not use your hands (unless you are the goalie) or else the other team gets a penalty kick, you use mostly your feet, you may use your head or chest if the ball is air bound, you may not trip or shove any of the other teams players, however slide tackling is acceptable. The point of the game is to get the ball into the goal that the opposing team is guarding, but where did these rules come from? How did soccer get started?
Dating Back Soccer
A soccer-like game was dated back to 3 B.C. in Japan and China. This game was used in the Ch’in dynasty to train soldiers. A game that was more like soccer was played in Greece and Rome. Football, a British name for soccer, started in the 8th century in Britain, but this game was a war game. They used the head of the prince they just defeated instead of a ball. Also in this game you were allowed violence. Still no one actually knows when the first true game of soccer was actually played.
Soccer was actually 13 different games, because everyone had their different rules. This was of course until FIFA decided the rules and divided it into two different games.
Soccer in England
The soccer (football) games of England became so violent that they became banned, yet they still played soccer. Queen Elizabeth I finally passed a law that soccer players would be imprisoned for a week and had to do penance at Church. Still no law stopped them from playing football.
Finally, they decided to separate the sport into rugby that accepted violence and soccer (football) that did not.
It was 1815 when soccer became very popular in English universities, colleges, and schools. In fact, it was Eton University that came up with the Cambridge Rules of soccer. Some schools made their own rules that accepted violence and ball carrying like rugby, but the Cambridge Rules were extremely against these acceptions.
Football in Spain
Football was brought to Spain by British immigrants. The king of Spain, Alphonse XIII, created the Coronation Cup, in 1902. This was played in the capital, but in Spain, soccer was more popular in the coastal regions such as Bilbao and Barcelona. Spain helped find FIFA in 1904, however they did not have an official football association until 1913.
Soccer in Germany and France
In France, the first teams were founded by Scots and Englishmen, who were living in Paris. The first national championship was held in 1894, and was only played by six players. Afterwards, more teams came about, mostly teams from the cities under the influence of England and Scotland. France, like Spain, had no national soccer organization. They finally got an organization after World War I.
Soccer took almost thirty years to really even catch on in Germany. Just ten years after that, the sport expanded rapidly. The first recorded soccer game in Germany took place in year, 1874. The Laws of the Game were only translated to German in year 1891, this was around the time serious football clubs...
