Soccer has grown to become an international pastime and the most popular sport in the world. But so many cultures played early versions of sports similar to the modern game that nobody can say for certain just how soccer got started.
Early Versions
Early versions of the sport were violent with few or no rules. One of the earliest versions of the game has been traced back as far as 1004 B.C. in Japan. A Chinese text from approximately 50 B.C. mentions games very similar to soccer that were played between teams from Japan and China.
The early Olympics in Rome also featured a game that resembled modern soccer. The game had 27 men on each team who competed so vigorously that two thirds of them had to be hospitalized after a 50-minute game.
Soccer Was Born
Even though many places around the world had contributions to the sport, the modern version of soccer comes from England.
The sport was loved by the people, but not the English government. In the 1300s laws were passed that threatened imprisonment to anyone caught playing soccer. Evidently judged to be vulgar and indecent, soccer players were jailed for a week with church penance by Queen Elizabeth I.
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Rules Overcame Chaos
Laws, however, failed to stop the love of soccer, and the sport earned official sanction in England in 1681. Order gradually overcame the chaos of the early versions of the sport. A record of the development of the game in England shows that Eton College had the earliest known rules of soccer in 1815. And standardized rules known as the Cambridge rules were adopted by England's major colleges in 1848.
By the 1800s, England had exported modern soccer to every continent in the world. By 1930 there were professional soccer leagues in many countries.
Most Beloved Sport
Undisputedly, soccer is the most played and watched sport in the world today. Soccer is played by over 240 million people around the world, with spectators numbering in the billions. And soccer's World Cup is the single most watched sporting event.
