Posted on 06/20/2006 4:48:08 AM PDT by voletti
How did a game that was once just a passion of Europe’s industrial working class spread around the world until its most sublime moments became the closest thing to an expression of a true global community there has ever been?
"In the beginning, there were the English." That’s the first sentence of a recent book on Italian football, but it could accurately start any history of the game, anywhere in the world. Humans have been kicking something round—an enemy’s head, an inflated pig’s bladder—since time immemorial, but it was in the English fee-paying "public" schools of the 19th century, with their commitment to muscular Christianity and mens sana in corpore sano, that rules were first established to regulate the mayhem of ancient ball games.
When young Victorians left their schools to go to university or to take employment, however, they found their attempts at football often chaotic, because each school had developed its own laws. At Harrow players could handle the ball, for instance, whereas at Rugby they could carry it while running, too. So attempts were made to systematize the way in which various codes of the game should be played. The most famous such effort took place on Oct. 26, 1863, at the Freemasons Tavern, a pub in London, where a group of former public-school men grandly announced that they would call themselves the Football Association (a title which, abbreviated, gave the world the word soccer), and went on to establish 13 laws of the game. Melvyn Bragg, a British novelist and cultural critic, recently argued that the football laws constitute one of 12 books—along with such others as Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica—that changed the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Long live football! The American sport should really be American rugby, cause that's what it is.... a more fancy version of the English hand-carry game. It has nothing to do with use of the feet.
I may be ignorant, since I am not a fan, but from watching some of the recent World Cup games, it seems that a major strategy in soccer is to fall down and grimace, hoping to get a penalty called on the opposition. Is this true?
When did they add the golden snitch?
I wouldn't tell that to a running back, or even a receiver, punter, etc. I know what you're saying, but it's kind of like how we shouldn't refer to ourselves as "Americans."
Long live football (the real sort). I think there's a reason these "international" sports have never caught on in the U.S., and I don't think that's a bad thing at all.
No. The object of the game is simple: you team drives the ball past the other team with their feet into the opponents' goal. If you do, you score that precious point and get to congratulate your teammate who scored the goooooaaaaaaaaaaal!
Right around the time Capri Sun became a major advertiser...
I'm with Bruce Dickinson when he declares that soccer needs more cowbell.
At least these days I know what the hell that means.
8-)
TS
It's pitiful, but it must work or they wouldn't all do it.
IT'S JUST A GAME!!!!!!
The difference between little girls playing soccer and FIFA is the same as our NFL compared to Australian Football.
Pads, helmets, and short pauses between even shorter bits of game play? The NFL needs to "man up"...
I watched part of the Spain-Tunesia game last night. Pretty good match, all in all.
But I have an interesting problem from seeing this game:
Do I support a team representing an Islamic country or do I support a team representing an apostate country?
Or should I hope that both lose.
You left out salaries.
'Long live football (the real sort). I think there's a reason these "international" sports have never caught on in the U.S., and I don't think that's a bad thing at all.'
Is that good reason because you only like to play team sports that ensure an American win? It takes guts to represent your country internationally, staying at home and playing with yourselves is the easy option!
No that is the second major strategy. . .the first major strategy is to keep kicking the ball until it finally, inadvertedly, dribbles into the net. .at which time the guy who "scored" goes apesh*t and slids down on his knees. After that there will be no more "scoring."
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