Early Years of Football

I thought a lot about what my first post should be, and I guess I'll just give a brief about this game.. Football, according to FIFA, has its history spanning more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the Football Association in England was formed - becoming the sport's first governing body. Its a game played with 11 players on each side, with two teams facing each other at one time. Now with several different formations and tactics involved in the game, world's most loved sport has never been this exciting. 

For all the evidence of early ball sports played elsewhere in the world, the evolution of football as we know it today took place in Britain. The game that flourished in the British Isles from the eighth to the 19th centuries featured a considerable variety of local and regional versions - which were subsequently smoothed down and smartened up to create the modern-day sports of association football, rugby football and, in Ireland, Gaelic football.

Primitive football was more disorganized, more violent, more spontaneous and usually played by an indefinite number of players. Frequently, games took the form of a heated contest between whole villages - through streets and squares, across fields, hedges, fences and streams. Kicking was allowed, as in fact was almost everything else. Sometimes kicking the ball was out of the question due to the size and weight of the sphere being used - in such cases, kicking was instead limited to taking out opponents.

Curiously, it was not until nine years after the rules of football had been first established in 1863 that the size and weight of the ball were finally standardized. Up to then, agreement on this point was usually reached by the parties concerned when they were arranging the match, as was the case for a game between London and Sheffield in 1866. This encounter was also the first where the duration was prearranged for 90 minutes.

(Source: www.fifa.com)