With football fever at its peak, it’s time to learn about how this beautiful game came to be and how it spread across the world. Brian D. Bunk has done a clinical job of bringing to us many stories back from obscurity and it is a neat package of wonderments. Starting from the Mayans’ reference to the Lords of Death, an unlikely mention for a sport, to the early references of “kicking” games from Greece to China and elsewhere, we realise that this was less of a sport and more of a public spectacle.
Till privileged students from elite British universities set about putting on paper the rules of the game in 1863, weaving activities to within a defined pitch, there was “folk football” in England, a “recreation” that led to hundreds, sometimes thousands of rowdy, often drunk people kicking a ball through the streets of London, resulting in injuries, deaths even. Some, aptly enough, called it “mob football”.
This level of “recreation” seemed more suited to the working folk, while the sport part of it, restricted to that defined playing arena, was carried around to several geographical zones by men passing out the elite institutions and travelling with their jobs and a football. As the Football Association took shape, such rules-based activity was called Association football.
As football with rules earned more followers, the obvious England clubs took shape, centred around cities such as the industrial town of Manchester, which sprouted two. When the clubs were many, leagues sprouted to deliver further boost.
Football spread around the English-speaking world, obviously, but Europe took to it quickly too. As the East India Company’s influence grew, so did the sport, carried by officers of the company to distant lands, including to India. India has been neglected in the book, probably for good reason, with Asia being represented in print by Japan.
The sport went on public view beyond the island nation as British communities abroad played. In 1869, the first football game was held in Switzerland between teams of British citizens who lived in Lausanne.
Switzerland was not just a luxury tourist spot, but also home to many internationally recognised boarding schools. The country also had a thriving sports culture. Wealthy Britons, many of whom had actually been involved in the founding of the FA in 1863, found in this combination good manure for the growth of the sport of football.
Italy, for example, wasn’t an easy adoption. In 1864, a man from Turin worked for an English textile firm and when he travelled to the Island, he took such a liking for the game that in 1891, he, with co-workers, formed the International Football Club in his hometown.
Europe was understandable, but travelling to South America was difficult. The idea and culture of the sport moved with British mining companies and the British immigrants playing with gusto. Thus, the sport had travelled to Peru, Chile, Colombia and then to larger countries such as Argentina, where Englishman Thomas Hogg organised the nation’s first football match in 1867.
The East India Company and the British Empire in general were immense in their economic and military heft. When they carried parts of British culture, including their sporting culture, it spread quickly among locals, specifically through schools that the British set up. Thus Brazil, too, became virtually indentured to the sport.
The simple beauty of the sport apart, financial gains were woven into the sport and it exploded. The example given is of Scotsman Henry Boyd, who scored 32 goals in 40 games for Arsenal. As he travelled, he scored and earned a pretty sum for 1894. Legal professionalism was around the corner.
The book details some famous players, but other books have it more eloquently. This book is good for history, recovered from obscurity, along with some rare photographs.
The Shortest History of Football
By Brian D. Bunk
Picador India
pp. 256; Rs 599
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
