INTRODUCTION
Football is a family of team sports so that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word football generally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly called football include association football (known as soccer in Australia, Canada,South Africa the US, and sometimes in Ireland and New Zealand); Australian rules football; Gaelic football; gridiron football (specifically American football, arena football, or Canadian football); International rules football; rugby league football; and rugby union football.These various forms of football share, to varying degrees, common origins and are known as “football codes”.
Football (or soccer as the game is called in some parts of the world) has a long history. Football in its current form arose in England in the middle of the 19th century. But alternative versions of the game existed much earlier and are a part of the football history.
ORIGIN OF FOOTBALL
Football’s modern origins began in England more than 100 years ago, in 1863. Rugby football and association football, once the same thing, went their separate ways and the Football Association, the first official governing body for the sport, was established.
Records show that, in 1314, the Lord Mayor of London banned football in the city due to it causing ‘chaos’. Despite opposition for the game, football thrived in Britain from the 8th to 19th centuries, however, a standardised version of the game was still a rarity as regional versions often gained favour. These different versions of the game were neatened up to eventually become association football, rugby football and Gaelic football, all of which contributed to the contemporary equivalent of the game we play today.
CHINESE FOOTBALL HISTORY
The Chinese competitive game cuju is an early type of ball game where feet were used, in some aspects resembling modern association football. It was possibly played around the Han dynasty and early Qin dynasty, based on an attestation in a military manual from around the second to third centuries BC.
In one version, game play consisted of players passing the ball between teammates without allowing it to touch the ground.
Ancient Greece And Rome
The Ancient Greeks and Romans are known to have played many ball games, some of which involved the use of the feet. The Roman game harpastum is believed to have been adapted from a Greek team game.The Roman politician Cicero describes the case of a man who was killed whilst having a shave when a ball was kicked into a barber’s shop. Roman ball games already knew the air-filled ball, the follis. Episkyros is described as an early form of football by FIFA.
HISTORY OF FOOTBALL IN INDIA
The history of football in India can be traced back to the pre-independent period when the British people brought the game to the sub-continent .In India, the first football game was organized between ‘Calcutta Club of Civilians’ and the ‘Gentlemen of Barrackpore’, in 1854. The first football club of India, named ‘Calcutta FC’, was founded in 1872. Dalhousie Club, Traders Club and Naval Volunteers Club were also established in the following years.Women’s football in India was administered by the Women’s Football Federation of India (WFFI) until the early 1990s when the AIFF took over the administration of women’s soccer in the country. Just like the men’s game, the women’s game had its early pioneers from the state of West Bengal.
THE INDIAN PRE-INDEPENDENCE FOOTBALL ERA:1900-1947
With India’s freedom struggle in full swing between 1900 to 1947, football, interestingly, became a relevant tool of resistance.
Mahatma Gandhi, often considered the architect of Indian independence, interestingly, set up three football clubs in South Africa’s Durban, Pretoria and Johannesburg in the early 1900s and named them Passive Resisters Soccer Club.
Gandhi used the matches as a platform to spread awareness about the evils of racial segregation and educated the masses about the principles of nonviolent resistance. After coming back to India in 1914 to actively spearhead India’s freedom movement, Gandhi continued his association with the sport and facilitated the tour of the first football team from South Africa to India in 1921-22.
Meanwhile, Mohun Bagan’s IFA Shield victory in 1911, beating the East Yorkshire Regiment in the final was a watershed moment. Not only did the Kolkata side become the first all-Indian club to win the prestigious trophy but the victory also proved to be a big spark in India’s freedom struggle.
In 1940, Mohammedan Sporting would go on to replicate the same emotions by beating Warwickshire Regiment 2-1 in the final to become the first non-Indian team to lift the iconic Durand Cup trophy.
An Indian team, comprising both Indian and British players, visited Sri Lanka (Ceylon at the time) for what was the Indian football team’s first-ever official foreign tour. Legendary footballer Gostha Pal, regarded as the first captain of the Indian football team, led the squad during the trip.
A few years earlier, the AIFF was formed to take over the governance of Indian football in 1937.The following year, an Indian national football team visited Australia for five friendly matches and a host of exhibition games against local clubs for its first trip outside Asia.
It was during the same tour, in the fourth friendly vs Australia on September 24, 1938, that India’s
RLumsden scored three goals in a 5-4 loss at Sydney. It was the first international hat-trick recorded by an Indian football player.