Football has existed in various forms for centuries, but who invented the game we all love and enjoy today?
The sport has mushroomed into the most popular on Earth, with the Premier League, Champions League and Fifa World Cup watched by billions of people on television.
Its accessibility accounts for much of its popularity; it’s easy to play – all you need is a ball, maybe some jumpers for goalposts – and it’s not hard to understand. As Sean Dyche once said, “you keep the ball out of the net at one end, put it in the net at the other end.”
But how did football come to be? Who invented it? When and where did it come about?
Who invented football?
Association Football, or ‘Soccer’ for short, first began in Britain in the nineteenth century. The Football Association (FA) laid down the rules for the game in 1863, creating the first standardised version of the sport.
Over time the rules have evolved, such as the abolition of the back pass rule, the introduction of substitutions, and red and yellow cards, but fundamentally the game is the same.
Before this, different sets of rules were applied depending on where you played football. For instance, the Cambridge Rules differed from the Sheffield Rules.
It’s almost impossible to narrow down the inventor of football to just one person, Ebenezer Morley is often cited as the father of modern football.
Morley, the founder of Barnes Football Club, wrote a letter to the newspaper Bell’s Life which led to the very meeting where the original rules were drawn up.
That meeting took place on 26th October, 1863 at the Freemasons’ Tavern on Great Queen Street in London – there is now a plaque on the front of the building commemorating the historic date. The session involved representatives from 12 clubs, who soon codified the game of football.
Fifa, which was founded in 1904, preside over the sport of football today, while IFAB (International Football Association Board) are the guardians of the Laws of the Game. That body is run by Fifa and the Home Nations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). When voting on rule changes, the British associations have one vote each while the entirety of Fifa has four votes,
Although it is widely recognised that football was invented in England, it is also claimed that the game originated in Scotland.
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