Football For Dummies

By Scott Murray

Whether you want to impress friends and colleagues with new-found football wisdom, brush up on details you're unsure about (the offside rule, anyone?) or improve your practical skills, this is the book for you! Covering all the basics of the game, rules and tactics, as well as giving an in-depth history of the sport and how it has evolved to the present day, this indispensable guide will get you up to speed on the most popular game in the world in no time. With dream team formations, tips on football betting and supporting, essential coverage on the World Cup, and stats on current teams, players and managers both at home and abroad, football expert and Guardian journalist Scott Murray keeps it fun, fresh and knowledgeable to get you through the major tournaments and beyond.

Football For Dummies includes:

PART 1: KICK OFF
Chapter 1: The bare essentials
Chapter 2: A rich history
Chapter 3: Get your boots on - the gear you need

PART 2: PLAYING THE GAME
Chapter 4: Laying down the laws
Chapter 5: Positions and tactics
Chapter 6: Honing your skills
Chapter 7: Talented training
Chapter 8: Coaching, managing and leadership
Chapter 9: Putting it all into practice

PART 3: THE WORLD OF FOOTBALL
Chapter 11: The World Cup
Chapter 12: The international scene
Chapter 13: The British club scene
Chapter 14: Taking on the world
Chapter 15: Women's football

PART 4: FANS ENCLOSURE
Chapter 16: Going to the match
Chapter 17: Read all about it...
Chapter 18: Compulsive viewing: Football on TV (and film, and DVD...)
Chapter 19: Joining in (sort of...)

PART 5: THE PART OF TENS
Chapter 20: Great players
Chapter 21: Great managers
Chapter 22: Great matches
Chapter 23: Bad behaviour

PART 6: APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Appendix A: Honour Boards
Appendix 2: Glossary
Appendix 3: Key Football Organisations

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Mar 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9780470664407

Scott Murray

Scott Murray is a regular writer for the Guardian where he writes match reports on football and golf, as well as their much-loved daily newsletter, 'The Fiver'. He has written for many other publications including The Blizzard, The Nightwatchman, GQ, Eurosport.co.uk, FourFourTwo and Men's Health.

Book preview

Part I

Kicking Off

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In this part . . .

To break you in gently to the great game of association football, this part provides an introduction to the game, covering how it began, and what it is all about. Those of you who are new to football receive a comprehensive rundown of the whys and wherefores of the game right here.

In this part of the book, I describe how football has become the most widely played and watched team sport on the globe. I explain the basic aims of football, the pitch on which the game is played, and, last but not least, what gear you need to have to play it.

Chapter 1

Welcome to Planet Football

In This Chapter

Football: a simple game enjoyed the world over

The basic aims and rules

Playing and watching

Some reasons why people love football so much

Association Football is the most popular sport in the world. Depending on where you hail from, you may know it as football, footy, soccer, fitba, fÚtbol, calcio, futebol, voetbol, le foot, foci, sakka or bong da, but the game remains the same: two teams of 11 players, each one trying to kick a spherical ball into a goal more times than the other.

Football is fiendishly addictive, whether you watch or compete. Across the planet more supporters and spectators follow the professional game than any other sport, and at grass-roots level more amateur participants enjoy the game than any other athletic pastime.

Football arouses passion in spectators and players like no other game in the world – and perhaps like nothing else known to humankind. It has done so ever since some English rule-makers formalised the pastime of kicking a ball around into a sport during the late 1850s and early 1860s. (That’s 150 years and counting and it’s still getting more popular by the day.) But why have billions of men and women, boys and girls, adults and children been enthralled by this simplest of sports for such a long time? What makes football so special?

Football: the Simplest Game

John Charles Thring was bang on the money when, in 1862, he wrote a set of draft rules for the game that later became known as ‘Association Football’. With the sport yet to be christened, Thring decided to entitle his rules The Simplest Game.

Thring’s rules were tweaked before being ratified by the newly founded Football Association the following year, but the new sport of Association Football remained ‘the simplest game’. Because no game – with the possible exception of running in a straight line, and that’s not really a game, is it? – is less complicated than football.

The basic aim: it really is that simple!

The object of the game is simple: for a team of 11 players to guide a ball into a goal and do it more times than the opposition team can manage.

That’s it!

So why is football so popular?

Pop psychologists have written more words attempting to explain why football is so popular than on any other subject (except organised religion, maybe, although some supporters will tell you that’s pretty much the same thing).

The truth is, nobody’s ever been able to quite put their finger on why the game is so popular, so I’m not going to pretend to give you a definitive answer. There simply isn’t one. The best I can do is offer you the following three suggestions:

Its simplicity makes it readily accessible. You only have to watch a couple of minutes’ worth of action to work out what the teams are trying to do.

Goals have a rarity value and are at a premium. Cricket involves scoring hundreds of runs and a tennis player might win a point every 30 seconds. But you can watch 90 minutes of football and not see a single goal scored by either team. So when you do see one, the excitement is palpable.

The teams belong to the people. Despite its public-school origins, organised football quickly became a working-class sport, a release from the tedium of everyday life. Results really began to matter. Following a team became tribal, with a sense of belonging and a commitment to a cause.

Having said that, thousands of other, better reasons may exist. After you’ve watched a few matches, or played a few games, you’ll no doubt have a few theories of your own. Actually, that’s another great thing about football: everyone’s got an opinion about it.

Soccer: not an Americanism

One of the great myths in football is the origin of the word ‘soccer’. It’s generally considered to have been coined in the United States of America – where the game commonly known as ‘football’ in the United Kingdom is indeed called ‘soccer’. But in fact the word is a creation of the English upper classes!

In universities and public schools well-spoken students had the habit of abbreviating nouns and then appending them with the suffix ‘er’, to create a new informal word. For example, someone with the surname ‘Johnson’ would be known as ‘Johnners’. Similarly, the game of rugby union was called ‘rugger’.

According to legend, in the mid-1880s someone asked an Oxford student called Charles Wreford-Brown whether he wanted to play a game of ‘rugger’. Preferring to play football, he shortened the ‘association’ of ‘association football’ to ‘soc’ and tacked on the usual matey suffix – quipping back that he’d rather have a game of ‘soccer’.

This tale may well be apocryphal, but what’s definitely true is that Wreford-Brown went on to captain the England national football – sorry, soccer – team.

Where do people play footie?

Everywhere, basically. The game, in a very basic form, is thought to have started out in China over 2,000 years ago, with the ancient Greeks, the Romans and indigenous Australians playing variations on a theme over the centuries.

It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that the game as you know it today developed in England, but by 1900 it had spread all over Europe and to South America. Fast-forward another 110 years and every country and continent in the world is now playing the game. That includes the United States of America, a country that held out for so long but is now slowly falling for its charms, with major men’s and women’s leagues now established Stateside.

Explaining a Few Rules

So how does this team of 11 players actually go about playing the game and scoring these elusive goals? I go into further detail about the laws of the game in Chapter 4, but first here’s a brief overview of how you play a football game.

The pitch

You usually play football on grass, occasionally on artificial surfaces, but always on a pitch no bigger than 73 metres (80 yards) wide and 110 metres (120 yards) long. Figure 1-1 shows you how the pitch looks.

Figure 1-1: The pitch.

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Each end of the pitch has a goal, comprising two upright posts 7.3 metres (24 feet) apart and 2.43 metres (8 feet) high, topped with a horizontal crossbar. One team tries to score in one goal and the other team tries to score in the other goal. While both teams are trying to score they also try to stop the other team scoring.

The ball isn’t allowed to leave the pitch. If a player in one team kicks the ball off the pitch then a player in the opposing team must throw or kick the ball back in.

The players

Each team has 11 players. Ten of these players aren’t allowed to touch the ball with their arms or hands. They’re called outfield players. The other member of the team is called the goalkeeper; he can use his hands and arms in the penalty area around the goal he’s tending.

Four basic positions exist:

Defender: A defender’s job is primarily to defend his goal and stop players from the opposing team scoring.

Forward: A forward’s role is to score goals or create them for other players.

Goalkeeper: The goalkeeper’s job is to stop the ball going in the net at all costs, thus ensuring the opposing team don’t score a goal. He can do so by using any part of his body.

Midfielder: A midfielder – usually the team’s most adaptable players – covers a lot of ground, helping the defenders defend and the forwards attack.

These players are arranged in various formations. The most common is 4-4-2: four defenders, four midfielders and two attackers. The goalkeeper isn’t listed in the formation; his position is taken as read. Find out more about the fun of formations in Chapter 5.

General behaviour

A referee is on hand to officiate every game, and his decision is final.

Players aren’t allowed to barge each other off the ball, or kick each other, or trip each other up or obstruct each other. If they do, they give away a foul and the referee awards the other team a free kick. See Chapter 4 for more on free kicks.

If one team concedes a free kick close to the goal then the team awarded the kick has a fair chance of scoring direct. If a team concedes a free kick in the penalty box then the ref awards the opposition a penalty – a free shot from 12 yards out with only the goalkeeper in the way.

Referees can send off, or banish from taking any further part in the match, players who continually concede fouls. Find out more about free kicks, penalties and obeying the laws of the game in Chapter 4.

Goal!

To score a goal the whole ball has to cross the goal line, going between both of the posts and under the crossbar.

Players are allowed to score by shooting with their feet or heading the ball into the goal. This sounds easier to achieve than it actually is, which is why goals are greeted with such unbridled joy by crowds.

Keeping score . . .

The scoring system in football is simple. If Team A has scored one goal and Team B hasn’t scored any then the score is 1-0. If Team B then scores two goals the score is 1-2.

A match may end with neither team scoring a goal. (This score is 0-0 – that’s ‘nil nil’, not ‘zero zero’ or ‘nothing nothing’.)

. . . and keeping time

A match lasts 90 minutes, split into two 45-minute halves. The team with the most goals at the end of 90 minutes wins the game. If both teams have the same number of goals then the match is a draw.

Playing the Game

The beauty of football as a sport is that anyone can play it, anywhere. That’s something you can’t say about horse racing or Formula One!

Jumpers for goalposts

Everyone who’s ever kicked a ball remembers putting down a couple of jumpers for goalposts in the park as a youngster and having a bit of a kickaround with their friends. Usually only four or five kids would play, so you’d have to play some other games in lieu of a proper match.

Three and in. One player’s the goalkeeper, with the other players competing with each other to become the first to score three times. The winner then takes his turn in goal.

Headers and volleys. One player’s the goalkeeper, with the other players trying to score, but only with headers and volleys. Players get a point for a goal scored but have to go in goal if their attempts are caught in the air by the keeper.

World Cup doubles. The best street football game bar none. You only have one goalkeeper. Everyone else pairs up. Each pair tries to score; whenever they’re in possession all the other pairs try to stop them. Upon scoring, a pair qualifies for the next round. Each round sees the last pair yet to score dropping out.

You don’t even really need any equipment, apart from a ball – and even then you can improvise. (Famous players, like the Brazilian legend Pelé and Argentinian icon Diego Maradona, both grew up in shanty towns playing with rolled-up newspapers.)

Playing solo

Although football’s a team sport, you don’t even need anyone else to play it with. Football is a game you can have just as much fun practising alone. Bobby Charlton, who won the 1966 World Cup with England and the 1968 European Cup with Manchester United, used to spend all his spare time as a little boy practising with a tennis ball up against a wall. As well as keeping him fit and healthy, it honed the skills that turned him into one of the greatest players the world’s ever seen.

Playing with others

If you do have a few friends to play with, but not enough to make two teams for a match, you can play hundreds of street football games, variations on the game that give a kickabout in the park some purpose and a little bit of competition.

But if you want a proper game, don’t fret: thousands of organised teams exist, at all age groups and levels of ability, that you can join. And who knows: if you’re good enough you may one day get a trial for a professional team. And then . . . well, we’re not promising anything, but somebody’s got to be the next Cristiano Ronaldo, haven’t they?

Watching Football – and Supporting a Team

Professional football is the most popular spectator sport in the world. Billions of people follow the game, either by going to a stadium to witness the action in the flesh or watching live coverage or edited highlights, either on television or over the internet.

Following club and country

Most people follow the fortunes of two favourite teams: the club side closest to their heart and their international team that represents the country of their birth or that of a parent’s.

Supporters choose club sides for different reasons. Perhaps they were born near the ground. Maybe their father or mother, or some other close family member, was a fan. Or it could be that a child watched a particular match and fell in love with the club immediately.

There could be other reasons. Their favourite player plays for them. They really like the colour of the team shirts. They visited the ground once and especially enjoyed the atmosphere. Anything is possible when people are making emotional attachments.

Who you support is up to you, and you can’t change what feels right. One warning, though: if you’re a Manchester United fan from Torquay, some fans will accuse you of being a glory hunter (someone who follows a club just to associate themselves with its success) and ask why you aren’t supporting the side from your home town. You’ll never win this argument, so don’t bother getting involved in it. Remember, who you support is a personal decision; no right or wrong answer exists.

Remember too that supporting Team X means that you’ll automatically dislike Team Y. (Think England/Scotland, Rangers/Celtic, Arsenal/Tottenham, Real Madrid/Barcelona.) These rivalries can generate a lot of pain – but a lot of joy as well. It might not be edifying but it’s an important part of the game.

Winning trophies: the be-all and end-all?

At a very basic level football is about winning things, whether watching or playing. Club teams compete to win league championships and cup competitions, and international sides try to win the World Cup.

But it’s not just about winning the big trophies, which is just as well because there aren’t that many to go round and it’s always the big sides and perennially successful nations who land them anyway. Football is also about:

Beating your arch rivals. Your team could end the season relegated while your rivals walk away with the championship. But if you’ve beaten them home and away – preferably convincingly – you still maintain the most important bragging rights that season. There’s logic in there – albeit logic that’s a bit twisted.

Avoiding relegation. If your team has looked doomed all season then pulls a couple of late-season victories out of the bag to secure their divisional status, the feeling of relief is so much greater than the joy of lifting a trophy. Seriously.

Registering an unexpected win. Some weekends it’s best to write off a result in advance, especially if you’re going to the league leaders in full knowledge that they’re miles better than you. It insulates you from the pain of defeat – and also makes it 100 times better when your side somehow come away with a ludicrous 4-1 win.

Schadenfreude. It’s not necessarily an emotion to be proud of. But few feelings are better in football than letting rip a guttural guffaw after watching a painful defeat befall a club you dislike intensely.

Formation and tactics. Football isn’t just a visceral thrill, it can be an intellectual pursuit too. Working out how your team played, and why they won or lost, can be enlightening and frustrating in equal measure.

Having an opinion (and an argument). Apart from the hard facts on the scoresheet, no absolute rights and wrongs exist in football. A heated discussion with fans of either your team or another club over the performance of various teams and the merits of different players can be one of the real joys of being a fan. And a pressure value to let off steam and keep you sane.

The game’s history. Football is over 150 years old and there are thousands of fascinating stories to be told. If you’re bitten by the bug you may never be able to stop reading about old-school players and what they got up to. Despite what Sky Sports want you to think, football didn’t begin with the Premier League in 1992!

A famous jaw-dropping moment. Everyone remembers where they were when Eric Cantona jumped into the crowd and kicked a supporter, when Zinedine Zidane headbutted Marco Materazzi in the World Cup final and when Liverpool scored three goals in six minutes to come back from 3-0 down in the Champions League final.

A personal jaw-dropping moment. Nobody will remember this one apart from you. Maybe it was a moment spent watching the game as a youngster with your dad, or the time a first-goal-scorer bet came in at 50/1.

Watching the biggest games. You may never see your team compete in one but still nothing shares the pomp, ceremony and sheer anticipation of the final of a major tournament.

The pain of defeat. Because without it, you wouldn’t appreciate the good times.

Chapter 2

The Ball Starts Rolling: a Potted History of Football

In This Chapter

From China to Covent Garden: football in its infancy

How the English gave birth to the modern sport

From England to Brazil (via Scotland): the game goes global

Football stars take over the world . . . with a little help from television

Wherever you go in the world today you’re doing well if you can avoid football for more than 24 hours. Over the years the game has spread to every last nook and cranny on the planet – yes, even the United States of America – and can justifiably claim to be the number one team sport in the world.

But how did footie get so big? And when – indeed where – did it start? This chapter looks into the rich history of the sport, from its inauspicious beginnings to the multi-billion pound behemoth it is today.

The Birth of Football

So did someone kick a ball in anger first? As you’d expect, both the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans played games that occasionally involved propelling a ball by hoofing it around with the foot. The Greeks played games called Episkyros and Phaininda, the Romans a sport called Harpastum. However, it seems these sports have more in common with rugby – or, indeed, all-in wrestling – than anything you’d recognise as football.

Want some proof? Here’s the Greek comic poet Antiphanes describing a game of Phaininda: ‘He seized the ball and passed it to a team-mate while dodging another and laughing. He pushed it out of the way of another. Another fellow player he raised to his feet. All the while the crowd resounded with shouts of Out of bounds! Too far! Right beside him! Over his head! On the ground! Up in the air! Too short! Pass it back in the scrum! ’

Luckily, other ancient civilisations were partaking in pastimes altogether more refined . . .

Anyone for Cuju?

Far across the seas, in China, the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD) had come up with a game remarkably similar to modern football. It was called Cuju – a literal Chinese translation of ‘Kick Ball’.

The aim of the game was simple. Two teams of up to 16 players tried to kick a ball through a ‘goal’ – usually a hole in a silk sheet suspended between two bamboo posts. Players could use any part of the body apart from the hand. The game was indeed remarkably similar to today’s football, though huge rugby-style scrums and melees still occurred.

Over the centuries the ball – which historians think was usually made out of leather stuffed with feathers – became more lightweight, and finally air-filled. In turn the sport became more refined, less inclined to degenerate into a rabble. As the later section ‘England, the Home of Football’, explains, this wasn’t the last time the sport morphed from a free-for-all into a more skill-based pastime.

But Cuju fell out of fashion during the Ming Dynasty, from the 14th century onwards, and quickly became obsolete.

Kemari, Marn Gook and Calcio Fiorentino

Cuju isn’t the only ancient sport with similarities to modern football. In Japan, during the sixth century, an extremely hectic pastime called Kemari became very popular. Possibly more group exercise than sport, the idea was to keep an air-filled ball made of deerskin up in the air using only the feet. All players interacted with each other in order to achieve this goal.

On the other side of the planet indigenous Australians were partaking in a hobby known as Marn Gook (‘Game Ball’). Marn Gook is easily as old as Cuju – they played it well into the 1800s and it had been around for at least 2,000 years.

Accounts suggest there was little intrinsic point to the matches, which featured up to 50 players. Keeping the ball off the ground, and showing off elaborate skills while doing so, seemed to be the order of the day. Foot skills earned larger plaudits, so became the focus of the game.

A similar free-for-all developed in Italy in the 16th century. Calcio Fiorentino – or Florentine Kick Game – was basically a psychotic version of modern beach soccer. Set in a huge sandpit, players kicked the ball towards designated goals – though they were also allowed to catch, throw, punch, elbow, headbutt and choke. Kicks to the head were outlawed, mind you. (That’s all right, then!)

Many other old ball-kicking sports existed, from matches between Native Americans in deserts to ice-based games between Inuits in Greenland. Other communities in the north of France, Ireland and the Shetlands played kick-and-chase games, whole villages often joining in a massive scrum. But it was only when players in England slowly got themselves organised in the 1850s that the sport of Association Football as you know it today really began to develop.

England: The Home of Football

The English have played football for nearly a thousand years. The earliest record of a match (of sorts) being played in the country is in 1175, when schoolboys in London staged a match in the city streets. There were few rules save trying to hoof the ball to a predetermined point at one end of the street or the other. It was a dangerous pastime indeed, so much so that over the next few centuries the game was regularly declared illegal by royal decree (see the nearby sidebar ‘Red card! We’ve been banned!’ for more).

Red card! We’ve been banned!

The ballyhoo caused by rowdy football matches annoyed more than one King of England. In 1314 Edward II decided that anyone playing the sport was causing a breach of the peace. ‘Forasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arise, which God forbid; we command and forbid on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in future.’

Yet people kept playing matches. Richard II, Henry IV, James III and Edward IV all made football illegal, one statute reading: ‘No person shall practise any unlawful games such as . . . football . . . but that every strong and able-bodied person shall practise with the bow for the reason that the national defence depends on such bowmen’!

But archery was considered a duty, rather than a fun pastime, and ordinary folk kept on playing football, despite the sport being proscribed. The majority of the country could only afford football, and were quite satisfied playing it anyway, despite Sir Thomas Elyot, writer and snooty social commentator, describing it in 1564 as ‘beastlike fury and extreme violence’.

The masses kept on playing, even with many individuals getting fined or physically punished for doing so. By the 1800s the authorities seemed past caring and the game had spread all across the country.

The 1850s: time to lay down some rules

The first football clubs in the world were set up in England during the mid-1800s. Public schools and universities in the south founded some, cricket clubs or firms in the industrial north set up others. By 1860 historians estimate that at least 70 clubs existed across the country.

The problem was, everyone was playing to a different set of rules, so football as an organised sport struggled to take off. The first attempt to write some standardised rules came in 1846, when scholars at Cambridge University cobbled some together.

In 1857 the first-ever football-only club was founded in Sheffield. (Other football clubs existed already, but they were either linked to schools, universities, or cricket or rugby union clubs.) The men behind Sheffield FC laid down some rules of their own – the Sheffield Rules – and by 1860 even had another team to play, a new set of local rivals called Hallam.

Enter the FA

But while a burgeoning scene was developing in Sheffield it was the posh lads in the south who finally helped the game to spread all across the country.

In 1863 several London-based clubs – mainly from local public schools – got together at a pub in Covent Garden, London, to pen the definitive set of rules. They formed the Football Association, with the intention of governing the game right across the country.

Governance didn’t happen immediately, and for the first decade of the FA’s existence their rules co-existed alongside the Sheffield Rules among many others. But it was the FA who kept printing out their rulebook and sending it around the nation’s clubs. Eventually, their rules became the standard, as more and more clubs joined the association. (Of course, it also helped when, in 1871, the FA launched the first major football tournament in the world: the FA Cup.)

The FA also helped give the game its name – Association Football – which distinguished it from rugby.

Step aside for the professionals!

The FA Cup – or to give it its full name, the Football Association Challenge Cup – was first held in the 1871/72 season. By this time the FA had fifty members, though only 15 clubs decided to compete. The first final of the first major football competition in history was won by founder members Forest-Leytonstone, who had been renamed Wanderers, and they were the team of the FA secretary Charles Alcock! Hmm.

By 1883 over 100 teams were competing in the FA Cup. In the first 12 years of the tournament’s existence a team of amateurs from the South won the cup. But in 1883 Blackburn Olympic won, backed by a local manufacturer who’d controversially paid for the players to take a week off in Blackpool ahead of the final in preparation. Professionalism was on its way.

Being professional in 1883 was, technically, against FA rules. But nobody complained until a team called Upton Park played the pros of Preston North End in 1884. Upton Park – old-school southern amateurs – complained to the FA that their northern industrial opponents had an unfair advantage. The FA banned Preston, along with several other clubs, from competing in the following year’s FA Cup – so the teams (from the industrial North and Midlands) simply threatened to form a breakaway professional association.

The FA buckled, allowing professionalism to become legal. So Old Etonians’ FA Cup win in 1882 forever remained the last time a fully amateur team won the famous trophy. For more on professionalism and amateurism in the game, check out Chapter 12.

The FA

The Football Association (the FA) is the oldest national governing body in the world. This explains why there’s no ‘English’ in the title: because it was the first the founders felt no need to differentiate.

It was formed on 26 October 1863 when representatives of London public schools, civil service departments and sporting clubs met in a pub in Covent Garden, central London, to agree on a single code for the sport. The founder members were Kilburn, Barnes, War Office, Crusaders, Perceval House, Crystal Palace, Forest-Leytonstone, Blackheath School, Kensington School, Surbiton and Blackheath.

Agreement on rules didn’t come immediately – handling the ball, for example, wasn’t outlawed for another three years! (Which goes to explain why some of the founder members quickly dropped out to become rugby clubs, going on to form the sport of rugby union in 1871.) The FA kept going, though, beating off challenges from several rival organisations to establish itself as English football’s governing body.

The FA runs English football to this day, from the grass roots to the very top of the sport. It organises the FA Cup and FA Premier League, and is responsible for the English national team, Wembley stadium and the National Football Centre academy for the development of young players.

As well as those major men’s competitions the FA oversees women’s football and the amateur game.

The world’s first league

The professional clubs had got their way, but with professionalism came problems. It was all well and good being able to pay players, but you needed money to do so! Fans were willing to pay to watch matches but the FA Cup didn’t offer enough competitive football. A club knocked out in the first round would only have one competitive game a year; the rest were less-appealing friendlies, games with nothing at stake but the kudos of winning.

So in 1888 William McGregor, the chairman of Aston Villa, wrote to his counterparts at Blackburn Rovers, Bolton, Preston and West Bromwich Albion, suggesting an amazing new idea. ‘Ten or twelve of the most prominent clubs in England combine to arrange home and away fixtures each season,’ he wrote. ‘This combination might be known as the Association Football Union.’

In fact, the organisation, and the tournament, would be called the Football League. Within months it was up and running, beginning on 8 September 1888, and by January 1889 Preston had become the first league champions. McGregor got his reward, though: by the turn of the century Villa had won five league titles of their own!

The first international

Initially, the FA had hoped their cup would be an all-encompassing British competition, but in 1873 Scotland formed an FA of their own – the Scottish Football Association, naturally – and in 1873–4 launched their own cup competition. (Yes, you’ve guessed it, the Scottish Cup.)

Even so, top Scottish teams such as Queen’s Park occasionally travelled down to England to compete in the FA Cup. (They even reached the final twice in the mid-1880s.) Relations between the teams, and the associations, were good, and so in 1872 the two associations decided to stage the world’s first international fixture: Scotland versus England.

Romantically, the game was held on St Andrew’s Day in Glasgow. Less romantically, it ended 0-0. Scotland soon gained the upper hand in the early annual fixtures, recording 7-2, 6-1 and 5-1 wins during the first decade. English clubs, noting Scotland’s dominance, enticed many Scottish players south of the border, and these players became a major factor in the legalisation of professionalism.

Meanwhile in Scotland the game became absurdly popular. The Scots followed the English lead in setting up a league – they set up the Scottish League in 1890 with Dumbarton and Rangers sharing the first title.

Football was beginning to spread around the world.

Dribbling or passing?

Why were the Scots so dominant in the early days of the Scotland/England internationals? It was all down to the different tactics they played.

The English liked to run with the ball and dribble it past opponents, but the Scots realised that passing it around between each other paid dividends. They still dribbled the ball too, but mixed their play up with short and long passes. This was called ‘combination play’.

As the British took the game around the world, many countries copied combination play, swiftly adapting it because most Europeans and South Americans were more interested in the skilful side of the game rather than the trademark British physicality.

The World Takes Notice

After the FA set down their rules in 1863, British sailors, soldiers and civil servants started taking them round the world. Often packing a ball in their bag on their travels, they introduced the game first to mainland Europe and later South America.

The game takes over Europe . . .

The first club in mainland Europe actually pre-dated the FA, though it still required a travelling Brit to set it up. The Lausanne Football and Cricket Club was founded in Switzerland in 1860.

In turn, Switzerland helped popularise football in Spain – it was a Swiss, Hans Gamper, who founded the famous FC Barcelona in 1899 – but not before British miners working in copper mines in Andalucia helped to set up Recreativo de Huelva, the oldest club in Spain, in 1889.

Meanwhile British students had taken the game to Portugal, introducing Lisbon to the game in 1866; Belgium, setting up a club in Antwerp in 1880; Austria, forming two clubs in Vienna in 1890; Russia, where they played football in St Petersburg in the same year; and Germany, where a club in Berlin was formed in 1893.

Other countries discovered England’s creation for themselves. The Dutch started their own FA in 1889, having witnessed British embassy staff at The Hague enjoying kickabouts. And travelling Italian textile worker Edoardo Bosio, after experiencing football in Nottingham and London, took a ball back to his native Turin and in 1891 formed Italy’s virgin club, Internazionale of Torino.

remember.eps Bosio’s club is not to be confused with the famous modern Internazionale, who hail from Milan.

. . . then South America . . .

Many British emigrants already lived in South America due to long-established trading routes, so the game quickly caught on across the continent. Several British boarding schools in Buenos Aires began playing the game in the mid-1860s, not long after the FA was set up.

By 1867 the city had its

Reviews for Football For Dummies

[bluetyson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Football for Dummies by Howie Long is actually a reasonable book. It would probably be ok for showing to non-yanks, as well, to try and fill them in on the basics of the gridiron, and how it is covered and watched.Gives detail on positions, downs, the basic rules, all the sort of useful information for the casual viewer or those starting to want to learn.