Who Invented Football?

[Guest]

Saw this discussion on a football manager board and thought it could make for a decent discussion.

Common belief is that England invented football, but the earliest traces were back to China much before.

Personally if you want my opinion, this is my view: China were the orgins of the sport but the English pioneered it and revolutionized the sport to make it become global. I see it as a pure coincidence that China and England played similar sports. You could say both invented it.

[Cicero]

It's been traced back to ancient civilisations all over the globe. England revolutionised it into a sport. 

[Spike]

It was different in China though, it was keepy-uppy.

Archaelogical evidence suggests that the boomerang was invented in Europe before Australia but that doesn't mean that the two events are related. So I agree with you there.

[Azeem]

What Cicero said, more important is who made it into the sport we know as of today.

[Azeem]

4 minutes ago, Spike said:

It was different in China though, it was keepy-uppy.

Archaelogical evidence suggests that the boomerang was invented in Europe before Australia but that doesn't mean that the two events are related. So I agree with you there.

Ah that one thing Australia could say was their own 

[Faithcore]

@SchalkeUK

[Spike]

15 minutes ago, Azeem said:

Ah that one thing Australia could say was their own 

Didgereedo, corroboree, walkabout, fire-farming, etc. I mean you're talking shit about Indigenous Aussies not me, so I thought you know I'd stand up for the poor cunts.

[CaaC (John)+]

1 hour ago, Cicero said:

It's been traced back to ancient civilisations all over the globe. England revolutionised it into a sport. 

That's what I was told when I was a young lad at school in the '50s, in Medieval times they used a  *pigs bladder blown up and kicked that around in the streets of wherever. 

"Medieval football" is a modern term used for a wide variety of localised football games which were invented and played in Europe during the Middle Ages. Alternative names include folk football, mob football and Shrovetide football. These games may be regarded as the ancestors of modern codes of football, and by comparison with later forms of football, the medieval matches were chaotic and had few rules.

The Middle Ages saw a rise in popularity of games played annually at Shrovetide throughout Europe, particularly in Great Britain. The games played in England at this time may have arrived with the Roman occupation but there is little evidence to indicate this. Certainly, the Romans played ball games, in particular, Harpastum. There is also one reference to ball games being played in southern Britain prior to the Norman Conquest. In the ninth century, Nennius's Historia Britonum tells that a group of boys were playing at ball (pilae ludus). The origin of this account is either Southern England or Wales. References to a ball game played in northern France known as La Soule or Choule, in which the ball was propelled by hands, feet, and sticks, date from the 12th century.

These archaic forms of football, typically classified as mob football, would be played between neighbouring towns and villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams, who would clash in a heaving mass of people struggling to drag an *inflated pig's bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of a town...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_football

 

An illustration of so-called "mob football", a variety of medieval football.

[Dr. Gonzo]

There's a reason we say "it's coming home" before we have our hopes and dreams smashed every international tournament we qualify for

[SchalkeUK]

Nice post from Manchester but no mention of the posh boys who are wrecking Brexit in our Government at the moment!  Their brain-dead approach to politics seems to have suffered from the Eton Wall game which is probably the basis of  the Scottish Football defence system - i.e. shins first balls second, ball third!  Difference between Eton and everyone else seems to be they also popularised the term - hand-ball - or, in their case the plural versions!

[Dan+]

Neil Warnock.