Origin of Soccer

With millions of people on the planet going crazy watching a soccer match being played in some part of the world, there is absolutely no room to question its popularity. If Super Bowl is considered to be the most popular sporting event in the United States, Soccer World Cup final enjoys the same fame at the International level. At the same time, however, we can't deny the fact that ignorance about this sport prevails to a significant extent. Some interesting facts about soccer continue to elude millions of people going crazy over this sport even today, and its origin is one of the best examples of the same.

Origin of Soccer Game

The simple sport that soccer is, it becomes very difficult to find out who invented it or when people actually began to play it. Some sources trace its history to Ancient Greece and Medieval England, while others suggest that a similar sport, referred to as the Cuju, was played in China, Kore and Japan way back in 2,500 BCE.

Various cultures across the world have documented evidence about people playing a sport resembling soccer. In 1848, the Trinity College at Cambridge came up with the first documented rules of soccer - the Cambridge Rules. Due to this, many sports historians trace its origin to various educational institutions of Europe. Going though all this confusion makes the history of soccer even more complicated, but everything falls in place once we define soccer as it is played today.

Modern Soccer Origin

Modern soccer, more popular as the association football or simply football, began with the formation of the Football Association (FA) in England in 1863. Earlier, this sport was played in various forms in different parts of medieval Europe, with no standard rules of game play whatsoever.

The Football Association was formed in order to standardize this sport, and bring about some discipline in it. That being said, we can technically say that it was the Football Association who developed football in its modern form. Before the Association came into existence, the rules of a match were stipulated right before the match began, with both the teams agreeing to it.

Within a decade of its origin, the Football Association had 50 clubs under its governance and one prestigious tournament in form of the FA Cup to its credit. Yet another noteworthy moment in the history of soccer came in 1886, when the International Football Association Board (IFAB) was formed as the governing body for this sport at the International level with the sport spreading to more and more countries.

Basically, the term 'association football' was coined to distinguish this sport from other forms of football, such as the American Football. The use of word 'soccer' began in 1880s as a contraction of the word 'association'. It began with the word 'socca', then changed to 'socker' and eventually became 'soccer' as we know it today. Even today, many English-speaking countries, wherein this sport is much popular than the American Football, refer to this sport as 'football'.

Over the time, the sport has become one of the most popular sport in the world, and its world-wide viewership is the best evidence of its popularity. Believe it or not, estimates suggest that more than 500 million viewers watched the Soccer World Cup final between Spain and Netherlands earlier this year.