Football history: from ancient ball games to the FA

Nobody can name an exact date for the beginning of football. The game's origins go back to around 200 BC, when a form of it was played in China. Many peoples had their own versions of ancient football; the Romans and Greeks, for example, also played a similar game with a ball, long before any written rules existed.

In Britain, football began to be played in the early Middle Ages, when the Anglo-Saxons repelled an attack by the Danes, and the game served as a kind of celebration. It was very different from modern football, however. Whole villages took part in what was a massive, chaotic contest with few rules and no fixed number of players.

Over the centuries many monarchs tried to ban the game, but people were so passionate about football that nobody could stop them playing it, and the game survived every attempt to suppress it.

The first real attempt to turn football into the game known today was the drawing up of rules at Cambridge University in 1848. These Cambridge Rules became the basis of the FA rules. A few years later, in 1855, Sheffield FC became the first football club in the world, formed by members of the local cricket club, a modest beginning for what would grow into a worldwide movement.

After those crucial events, many new clubs were formed across the UK. Among the oldest, after Sheffield FC (1855), are Notts County of Nottingham (1862), Sheffield Wednesday (1867), Aston Villa (1874), Domingo FC, later Everton, and Newton Heat (Manchester United) (both 1878), Stanley FC, later Newcastle United (1881), and Arsenal (1886).

Other important milestones changed the game a great deal: it was settled that a team should consist of 11 players (1870); Wanderers won the first FA Cup (1872); England and Scotland drew 0-0 in the first official international match (1872); the crossbar was introduced (1875); two-handed throw-ins followed (1883); professionalism was legalised (1885); Preston North End became the first champions of England (1889); and the goal net and the penalty kick were introduced (1891). These and many other developments transformed football into the game known all over the world.

Those events form the first chapter in the story of football, from its ancient roots to the organised English game of the late 19th century.

The Football Association, 1863

The decisive step towards a single set of rules came in London. On 26 October 1863 representatives of a number of clubs and schools met at the Freemasons' Tavern to form the Football Association. The meeting followed a newspaper letter from Ebenezer Cobb Morley, a solicitor and member of Barnes Football Club, who proposed a governing body with the power to set common rules. Morley was elected the FA's first secretary and drafted its first laws.

Agreement did not come easily. Further meetings followed in November and early December 1863, and the main arguments were about carrying the ball in the hands and hacking, the kicking of an opponent's shins. The laws were formally adopted on 8 December 1863. Blackheath, whose representative Francis Maule Campbell defended hacking, withdrew from the Association in December 1863, and the clubs favouring the handling game went their own way towards rugby football.

The first league and the Invincibles

As the game spread, the four British associations created the International Football Association Board, which first met on 2 June 1886 at the FA's offices at Holborn Viaduct in London, with England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland holding equal votes. The board became the guardian of the Laws of the Game.

Two years later, Aston Villa director William McGregor drove the creation of the Football League. After a meeting in Manchester on 17 April 1888, twelve clubs formed the first league: Accrington, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Derby County, Everton, Notts County, Preston North End, Stoke, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Preston, managed by Major William Sudell, went through the first season of 1888-89 unbeaten and also won the 1889 FA Cup, beating Wolves 3-0 in the final. That first league and cup double earned the team the name "the Invincibles".

Football goes international

The game soon outgrew Britain. On 21 May 1904, representatives of seven countries, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, met at 229 rue Saint-Honoré in Paris to found FIFA, the international federation. The Frenchman Robert Guérin became its first president. Spain was represented by a club, Madrid FC, because the Royal Spanish Football Federation was not created until 1913.