How Kicking a Ball Became a Worldwide Phenomenon
We will never understand why if one puts a ball, an old can or a rock in the street, men will magically congregate and start kicking it. Somehow men’s natural urge for competition is catalyzed by round objects, and the results can be seen in centuries of games that eventually led to football as it is today. It is impossible to say exactly when the habit started, but we can piece together some historical precedents.
Two of the earliest examples date back to almost 2000 B.C. in China and Japan, called Tsu-Chu and Kemari respectively. These games were not sports at all. In China, it was a way of training soldiers for battle, using an inflated animal bladder stuffed with women’s hair. In Japan it was a ceremonial ritual that consisted of tossing another type of ball from foot to foot.
In the West, people used to run after a ball purely for amusement, without any ritualistic purposes. In Celtic Ireland, mobs of villagers, including men, women and children, took part in the Game of the Sun. Blowing their horns, they rushed through the countryside between the villages to coax rival communities to meet them for a match. The attackers rushed towards the other village to capture their ball and bring it back to their side, where they had to touch it against a sign on a tree marking the goal.
This and similar sorts of games traveled around Europe, planting the seeds for what would become Rugby. Meanwhile the Ancient Romans were performing Harpastum, played within a rectangular field in the sand, marked by a center-line, with 27 players in each team. The objective was to take the ball across the opposing team’s boundary lines. As in China, this was used partly to train soldiers. The Romans brought the game with them as they marched to their next battlefield.
Moving into more recent times, it is possible to suggest a date for the first game of football organized specifically to be watched. On February 17, 1530, during the siege of Florence by Carlo V’s French army, the Florentines taunted their attackers by nonchalantly playing a game of football in a piazza in the city centre, while the soldiers watched from the hills outside the city walls. The effect must have been something like a stadium.
Of course, in Britain the Celtic game had spread and developed into challenges between villages, called Mob Football. Villagers would put boards across their windows while players blasted through the town square or marketplace. The violence of these games was extreme, and during the 17th century, Carew of Cornwall tried to restore a semblance of order by prohibiting any attacks below the belt. However, he was unsuccessful and people carried on playing as they were accustomed.
This type of sport was very popular in universities, where in the courtyards, students kicked and threw the ball, making up their own rules. Written regulations were not far off. The earliest guidelines were formulated at Eton College during the 19th century, but football actually took an official form at Cambridge University, and this eventually led to the foundation of the Football Association. Prohibiting the use of hands at last created the differentiation between football and rugby.
In contemporary Italy, football is by far the most popular of the two sports, even though the country’s rugby squad is becoming more competitive, winning a growing following amongst the population. In Milan, the football stadium, San Siro, is used by both the city’s soccer teams. A.C. Milan was so named (i.e. Milan and not Milano) because it was founded by British expatriates in 1899, actually starting life as the “Milan Cricket and Football Club.” (The first Italian club to be founded was actually the “Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club,” in 1893). Milan’s second club appeared in 1908, when a group of Milan dissidents – the problem was linked to the signing of foreign players – met in a restaurant and founded the Football Club Internazionale Milano. The rivalry between the two teams has always been intense, and the matches between the two squads at San Siro are momentous events. They’ll be playing each other on 24 January (the date and time may change), and if you find a ticket, it’ll be an exciting experience. See Useful Information for where to buy tickets (this is Inter’s home game, so the tickets are at Banca Popolare di Milano); they normally go on sale from the Monday before the game. You’ll have to queue…
And if you’d like to have an idea of what the game’s ancient ancestors looked like, you can visit Florence, when there are three matches of something like “Mob Football,” a re-enactment of the match played in 1530. The dates are around the city’s holiday for the patron saint, St. John the Baptist, 24 June. The winning team get a cow.
Liza Giambra and Sharon Yi