It is impossible not to care about football, especially during the season when emotions are running high, and everyone can only talk about the game. Every four years, football fans wait for the FIFA World Cup with great anticipation. They paint their faces, travel abroad, sing songs and party the whole night in order to cheer their team on.
To find the roots of football, we need to travel, surprisingly, to ancient China. In the third century BC, during the Han Dynasty people played something called ‘cuju’ (kickball). The International Federation of Association Football recognised the Ancient Chinese game as the earliest type of football.
At the beginning of the 19 century, kids and adults played ‘kick the ball’ in every backyard in England. However, the organisation of matches was still problematic since every club had its own code. In 1863, the members of different sports clubs decided to meet in the Freemasons’ Tavern in London to establish common rules, so that they could compete with each other. As early as 1872, football went international. The first official international match was held between England and Scotland. Approximately 4.000 fans watched it. It took around thirty years for football to go outside the British Isles.
As the game began to increase in popularity, the first FIFA Statutes were laid down in Paris in 1904. It laid the ground for professional teams to appear. In 1930, FIFA decided to stage its own international tournaments since they recognised the Olympic Tournament as a ‘football championship for amateurs.’ During World War II, FIFA didn’t have any financial resources to keep itself afloat. More than that, all professional footballers had joined the services at that time. However, football was still popular among prisoners of war.
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