The World Cup as World History by William D Bowman starts off by looking at the history of the game of soccer and how it can be hard to trace its exact origins. Soccer is by far the most popular sport in the world, and that has led to many different countries and nations laying claim to their own version of how the game was invented. However, the truth, Bowman argues, is that ball and kicking games are deeply rooted in the human experience, as evidenced by the discovery of people participating in games similar to soccer in ancient China and Mesopotamia.
The story of the Han dynasty in China and the ball game they played that involved two teams, a leather ball, and two goals. You could advance the ball in several ways when playing this game, but the preferred method seemed to be the feet, and we have recorded evidence of this game being played as far back as 618 CE. While these games don’t directly connect to soccer, it is still extremely important and show that society has always practiced sports, which directly ties into our sporting culture.
While kicking ball games were being played in Asia by the elites, these kicking ball games were also being practiced in Mesoamerica by civilizations like the Aztecs and the Mayans. Archaeological evidence indicates that kicking games had been played in Mesoamerica since 1500 BCE and were played through modern day central america, more or less, until the collapse of the Aztec empire.
Europeans, mostly Spaniards, were very interested in these kicking games when they first made contact with the indigenous people of Central America and of the rubber balls they used, which made the game faster and physically demanding. Catholic figures would often come back from expeditions to the New World and talk fondly about the games that the Aztecs played and tried to describe the games in a way the Europeans could understand. While being fascinated by this game, the clergy and conquistadors who went to Central America were also worried about the rowdiness and violence of the games that they witnessed.
The origin of modern soccer is in England. Kicking the ball games were a pastime that had existed in England for many centuries. But in public schools, which were usually reserved for the elite, young men started creating different varieties of soccer that they would play. Then the desire came to standardize the game so that schools could compete against one another, and this eventually evolved into clubs playing against one another.
In 1863, the football association was formed out of necessity because of the number of different clubs and organizations that were popping up around England at the time, playing different versions of soccer instead of the public school version. The creation of the football association gave more shape to the game and gave it a more comprehensive set of rules. After England had fully developed the sport, fandom took over, and it quickly became the country’s favorite sport. England’s political, economic, and cultural connections to Europe helped to allow the sport to spread all across the continent and beyond, with the sport becoming the most popular sport in the world by a clear landslide.
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