the Football League foundation plaque, Manchester; Sheffield FC’s ground
One of the timeless debates in football historian circles is the argument about where the true ‘home of football’ is. As I argue in my first book, Origin Stories: The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World, there is no single ‘home’ of football; rather, the game’s emergence and success was a global team effort. In this post, I highlight where various features of the game surfaced.
Who invented football? It’s a long-standing question and loaded with partisanship because there are plenty of claimants to have invented the world’s most popular sport. There were kicking games in China thousands of years ago played in front of emperors by both men and women. In Japan, Mexico, pre-European Australia and elsewhere, there were kicking games. However, none of them contributed to the codified game of Association football, which is the sport we’re focussed on.
Folk or mob football in Britain has also been around for hundreds of years. It was so violent that it was banned on the streets of London by King Edward II in 1314, while James I of Scotland followed with his own edict in 1424. By the 19th century, many of Britain’s top schools had their own codes of football, most famously at Rugby, Charterhouse, Eton and the University of Cambridge. In Edinburgh, a ‘Foot-ball Club’ was even set up in 1824 by John Hope, a former student of the High School of Edinburgh, although it had folded by 1841 and has no links to the Association rules game.
The Football Association (FA) was founded in London in October 1863 with the aim of reaching consensus on rules that players could rally around. Just to summarise a complex debate, those members who preferred handling the ball and rough tackling (hacking) erred towards the Rugby code and left, while those who preferred kicking stuck with the Association and thrashed out a rule book, the genesis of what we use today.
So, rather than try to pin a ‘home’ on football, let’s take a look at who contributed what to the sport:
London
Hull-born solicitor Ebeneezer Cobb-Morley convened the founding of the Football Association at the Freemasons’ Tavern in Holborn on 26 October 1863. The FA rulebook was agreed over a series of meetings and published by John Lillywhite.
Charles W. Alcock of the Leytonstone-based club Forest FC (later renamed Wanderers) came up with the idea of the FA Cup based on his experience of knock-out tournaments at Harrow School. Alcock’s Wanderers won the first edition in 1872. He also pioneered international football between ‘English’ and ‘Scottish’ sides before the first official international, also in 1872.
East London club Upton Park proposed the rules around goalkeepers and handling, and, as an amateur side representing Great Britain, won the first Olympic football gold medal at Paris in 1900.
Sheffield
Sheffield FC is recognised by FIFA as the world’s oldest football club. The club started out in 1857 playing under its own ‘Sheffield Rules’ but was involved in the creation of the FA rulebook. Features of the Sheffield Rules included the corner kick, throw-ins, free kicks and the crossbar.
Within Sheffield, a football culture emerged in the 1860s that led to the creation of the Youdan Cup, the first football competition (under Sheffield Rules) held at Bramall Lane cricket ground (now home of Sheffield United, formed 1889) and won by the world’s second-oldest football club, Hallam FC, also of Sheffield.
The first demonstration of floodlit football also took place in Sheffield.
Cambridge
The University of Cambridge already had centuries of football history before 1848, when students posted the ‘Cambridge Rules’ around the Parker’s Piece area of open land where they played. They were a consensus to enable players who had played at Rugby, Eton and other schools to find common ground. These rules are thought to have influenced the FA rulebook.
Glasgow
It is impossible to discuss football history without acknowledging the significant contribution of the Glaswegian club Queen’s Park. Scotland’s first club adopted the FA rulebook but pioneered the ‘combination’ passing game in contrast to the more popular dribbling style down south. Queen’s Park organised the first official international in 1872 and pioneered other key elements of the modern game, including the enclosed football ground (at first Hampden), turnstiles, and season tickets.
Glasgow also produced stadium designing pioneer Archibald Leitch, as well as the father of Argentine football, Alexander Watson Hutton, and Sir Thomas Lipton, who sponsored early football tournaments in South America and Italy.
Lancashire
Association football was originally the reserve of the gentleman player, with time on his hands to play and money to buy equipment. When the working man (it was usually men at this point, although women’s football did emerge later in the 19th century) got their Saturday afternoons off in the 1870s, they went to play and watch football. Workplaces and churches set up football clubs to keep young men fit and out of trouble.
In 1883, Blackburn Olympic – featuring nine Lancastrians and two Yorkshiremen – defeated Old Etonians in the FA Cup final to overthrow the old order and cement Association football as the working-class sport. Lancastrian sides – especially Preston North End – pushed for professionalism, saving the game from the split that would later occur between Rugby Union and Rugby League.
The Football League was founded in Manchester in 1888 with half (six) of the 12 founders being Lancastrian sides – Preston North End (eventual champions), Blackburn Rovers, Accrington, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley and – at the time – Everton (now part of Merseyside).
Ireland
Who doesn’t love a penalty shootout? We have Irish goalkeeper William McCrum from the Milford club in County Armagh to thank for that feature of the game. Another Irishman, Dubliner Tom Farquharson, was responsible for a later rule change around penalty taking. Farquharson, an FA Cup winner with Cardiff City in 1927, used to charge from the back of his goal net to put off penalty-takers. This led to a new rule demanding ‘keepers stay on their line at spot kicks.
Meanwhile, Belfast man Bill McCracken’s hyper-effective offside trap at Newcastle United in the 1920s led to a new offside rule change to enable more goals.
France
France’s first football club, Le Havre Athletic Club (HAC), was founded in 1872, long before many clubs in Britain. Although the Oxbridge alumni-founded club played a hybrid game between rugby and football.
A league was set up in Paris in the 1890s, and by 1904 a Frenchman – journalist Robert Guérin – had founded FIFA to govern the game. Other Frenchmen were behind many of the international silverware on offer. Pierre de Coubertin introduced football at the Olympics; Jules Rimet establishing the World Cup; Henri Delauney was behind the European Championships; L’Equipe newspaper donated the European Cup for the continent’s top clubs to compete.
Split
Hajduk Split fans are credited with helping create European ultrà culture after seeing the lively torcidas (fans) in Brazil during the 1950 World Cup and bringing it back to Europe. Inspired by what they saw in (what was then) Yugoslavia and the hooligan scene in England, Italian fans created their own unique ultrà culture.
We could go on ad nauseum about which countries have added so much to football – the South American skills, the German and Italian shirt designers, the Danubian tacticians, or the Ukrainian data scientists bringing new techniques.
Football is truly a global game. The genesis of the Association game started in London (still the home of the FA), but it was built on by others. That’s why it is so hard to identify one single ‘home’ of football. Sheffield has a claim, Glasgow has a claim, even Manchester – given the strength and history of its two main clubs and being the location of the National Football Museum – could be perceived as a home. It’s too hard to pinpoint just one.
If you’re interested in reading more about football’s roots worldwide, please grab a copy of my first book, Origin Stories: The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World (Pitch Publishing, 2021). It’s a country-by-country account of how the game got started in a rough chronological order.
