The Emergence and Development of Association Football

The Emergence and Development of Association Football

Football has come a long way and has gone through various changes in

order to develop into the popular game we know today. Football has

developed into the most popular and diffused sport in the world, and

has gone from being a game to also a business with commercial success

being of uppermost importance.

There have been reports made by various sources suggesting that

football has ancient origins and that it was played in some form as

far as back as 1000BC, and maybe before. The Ancient Greeks allegedly

played a form of football known as episkyros, and the Romans a similar

game, harpastum. (http://www.thehistoryoffootball.com/, 2003).

However, there is no valid evidence to suggest that the Chinese,

Greeks, Romans or any other ancient civilisation played any form of

football or kicking related game.

The ‘sports’ played in Ancient times were violent affairs, but this

reflected the tolerance and acceptance of violence in their societies

at this time. Violence in sport continued to be a huge part of sport

well into the middle ages and beyond. However, the levels of violence

in sport have changed significantly over time and this is represented

through The Civilising Process. Elias (1998, p. 178) concludes ‘A

comparison of the level of violence represented by the game-contests

of classical Greece, or for that matter by the tournaments and

folk-games of the Middle Ages, with those represented by contemporary

sport-contests shows a specific strand in a civilising process.’

In the Middle Ages violence in sport remained predominant through

‘folk football’. In Europe throughout the...

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...tball began as an upper-middle class sport and eventually became

the sport of the working classes. The Public Schools in particular,

and following them the universities were extremely important in the

development and characteristics of modern sport, however the Public

School system and its values became outgrown when the working classes

began to play football competitively. Consequently the character and

ethos of the game changed, and increasing spectatorism led to the

eventual professionalism of football. Football then developed at a

rapid pace and quickly became the most popular sport in England. It

can be concluded that the British, or more specifically the English

were crucial in the development of football into its modern form, and

also in the subsequent diffusion of football around the British Empire

and beyond.