hroughout the history of mankind, the urge to kick at stones and other such objects is thought to have led to many early activities involving kicking and/or running with a ball . Football-like games predate recorded history in all parts of the world, and thus the earliest forms of football are not known.
Ancient games
Documented evidence of what is possibly the oldest activity resembling football can be found in a Chinese military manual written during the Han Dynasty in about the 2nd century Bc. It describes a practice known as cuju, which involved kicking a leather ball through a hole in a piece of silk cloth strung between two 30 foot poles.
Another Asian ball-kicking game, which may have been influenced by cuju, is kemari. This is known to have been played within the Japanese imperial court in Kyoto from about 600 AD. In kemari several people stand in a circle and kick a ball to each other, trying not to let the ball drop to the ground (much like keepie uppie). The game appears to have died out sometime before the mid-19th century. (It was revived in 1903, and it can now be seen played for the benefit of tourists at a number of festivals.)
Mesoamerican ballgames played with rubber balls are also well-documented as existing since before this time, but these had more similarities to basketball or volleyball, and since their influence on modern football games is minimal, most do not class them as football.
The Ancient Greeks and Romans are known to have played many ball games some of which involved the use of the feet. The Roman writer Cicero describes the case of a man who was killed whilst having a shave when a ball was kicked into a barber's shop. The Roman game harpastum is believed to have been adapted from a team game known as "επισκυρος" (episkyros) or pheninda that is mentioned by Greek playwright, Antiphanes (388-311BC) and later referred to by Clement of Alexandria. These games appears to have resembled rugby.
There are a number of references to traditional, ancient, and/or prehistoric ball games, played by indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world. For example, in 1586, men from a ship commanded by an English explorer named John Davis, went ashore to play a form of football with Inuit (Eskimo) people in Greenland. There are later accounts of an Inuit game played on ice, called Aqsaqtuk. Each match began with two teams facing each other in parallel lines, before attempting to kick the ball through each other team's line and then at a goal. In 1610, William Strachey of the Jamestown settlemen, Virginia recorded a game played by Native Americans, called Pahsaheman. In Victoria, Australia, indigenous people played a game called Marn Grook ("ball game"). An 1878 book by Robert Brough-Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, quotes a man called Richard Thomas as saying, in about 1841, that he had witnessed Aboriginal people playing the game: "Mr Thomas describes how the foremost player will drop kick a ball made from the skin of a possum and how other players leap into the air in order to catch it." It is widely believed that Marn Grook had an influence on the development of Australian rules football (see below).
These games and others may well go far back into antiquity and may have influenced later football games. However, the main sources of modern football codes appear to lie in western Europe, especially England.
Mediæval and early modern Europe
- Mediæval football
The Middle Ages saw a huge rise in popularity of annual Shrovetide football matches throughout Europe, particularly in England. The game played in England at this time may have arrived with the Roman occupation, but there is little evidence to indicate this. Reports of a game played in Brittany, Normandy, and Picardy, known as La Soule or Choule, suggest that some of these football games could have arrived in England as a result of the Norman Conquest.
These archaic forms of football, typically classified as "mob football", would be played between neighbouring towns and villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams, who would clash in a heaving mass of people struggling to drag an inflated pig's bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of a town (sometimes instead of markers, the teams would attempt to kick the bladder into the balcony of the opponents' church). There is no evidence to support the legend that these games in England evolved from a more ancient and bloody ritual of kicking the "Dane's head". Shrovetide games have survived into the modern era in a number of English towns (see below).
The first detailed description of football in England was given by William FitzStephen in about 1174-1183. He described the activities of London youths during the annual festival of Shrove Tuesday:
- After lunch all the youth of the city go out into the fields to take part in a ball game. The students of each school have their own ball; the workers from each city craft are also carrying their balls. Older citizens, fathers, and wealthy citizens come on horseback to watch their juniors competing, and to relive their own youth vicariously: you can see their inner passions aroused as they watch the action and get caught up in the fun being had by the carefree adolescents.
Most of the very early references to the game speak simply of "ball play" or "playing at ball". This reinforces the idea that the games played at the time did not necessarily involve a ball being kicked.
In 1314 , Nicholas de Farndone, Lord Mayor of London issued a decree banning football (in the French used by the English upper classes at the time. A translation reads: "[f]orasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large foot balls [rageries de grosses pelotes de pee] in the fields of the public from which many evils might 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 the future." This is the earliest reference to football.
The earliest mention of a ball game that involves kicking was in 1321, in Shouldham, Norfolk: "[d]uring the game at ball as he kicked the ball, a lay friend of his... ran against him and wounded himself".
In 1363, King Edward III of England issued a proclamation banning "...handball, football, or hockey; coursing and cock-fighting, or other such idle games", showing that "football" — whatever its exact form in this case — was being differentiated from games involving other parts of the body, such as handball.
King Henry IV of England gives the earliest documented use of the English word "football", in 1409, when he issued a proclamation forbidding the levying of money for "foteball".There is also an account in Latin from the end of the 15th century of football being played at Cawston, Nottinghamshire. This is the first description of a "kicking game" and the first description of dribbling"[t]he game at which they had met for common recreation is called by some the foot-ball game. It is one in which young men, in country sport, propel a huge ball not by throwing it into the air but by striking it and rolling it along the ground, and that not with their hands but with their feet... kicking in opposite directions" The chronicler gives the earliest reference to a football field, stating that: "[t]he boundaries have been marked and the game had started.[Other firsts in the mediæval and early modern eras:
- "a football", in the sense of a ball rather than a game, was first mentioned in 1486.[7] This reference is in Dame Juliana Berners' Book of St Albans. It states: "a certain rounde instrument to play with ...it is an instrument for the foote and then it is calde in Latyn 'pila pedalis', a fotebal." [8]
- a pair of football boots was ordered by King Henry VIII of England in 1526. [9]
- women playing a form of football was in 1580, when Sir Philip Sidney described it in one of his poems: "[a] tyme there is for all, my mother often sayes, When she, with skirts tuckt very hy, with girles at football playes."[10]
- the first references to goals are in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In 1584 and 1602 respectively, John Norden and Richard Carew referred to "goals" in Cornish hurling. Carew described how goals were made: "they pitch two bushes in the ground, some eight or ten foote asunder; and directly against them, ten or twelue [twelve] score off, other twayne in like distance, which they terme their Goales".[11] He is also the first to describe goalkeepers and passing of the ball between players.
- the first direct reference to scoring a goal is in John Day's play The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (performed circa 1600; published 1659) "I'll play a gole at camp-ball" (an extremely violent variety of football, which was popular in East Anglia). Similarly in a poem in 1613, Michael Drayton refers to "when the Ball to throw, And drive it to the Gole, in squadrons forth they goe".
- NEPAL LEAGUE
MPC Breathing Hard With MMC Cost
2007-02-21 12:37:39
Arch rivals giants Mahendra Police Club (MPC) and Manang Marsayangdi Club (MMC) today made a sensational draw with the later for the comeback of two goals in the late minutes and on the result of that is aggravation for the latter in its bid for the title.
MMC dropped frost upon MPC hopes of going ahead with one point lead over Tribhuvan Army Club (TAC) until their last showdown. The result was interesting of the sort that baffled the market rife with speculations that something should insidiously befall to the benefits of the title favorites.
MMC set out to dominate the department outfit disarranged with injuries of two key defenders from the early minutes. The first half did not see any goal, thanks to the luck behind MPC labour and to bad luck of the fierce pair of Anil Gururng and Nurudeen Olawale Salau.
It was in the 52 minutes that Anil made it to a superb finish into the net upon a ball coming off MPC defenders' poor clearance. Much did MPC stalk then after with the ball mostly hanging around the policemen's area. The second bullet was by Salau, violently trying from the beginning, who in the 68th minute measured 10 yard distance for the pass of Anil to power home a cracking goal.
Police would really have been worth a suspicion that the day was not for them. However, Ananta Thapa sparked his opportunism in not being seriously marked to ax the MMC goal over the timing of 78 minutes. Prabat Pandey saw him running up and chucked the ball into his foot to keep their hopes alive. Coach Birat Shrestha was appreciated for substituting inexperienced Kunjan Lama with Ramesh Budathoki who despite his poor form made two terrifying attacks with capitalizing one in the 83 minutes.
The match is assuredly an important turn in the final buzz. Each with the balance of two matches could not help hating loss. The equation presently is up for the armies with their one point lead over the cops.Managers of both teams said their mission today was not at all for a single point. MMC coach Chhiring Lopsang lamented that his defenders got to feel complacent with the two-goal lead. MPC manager Anil Adhikari, though particularly happy for the comeback, reasoned out the poor arrangement in the defence.
Aaha Gold Cup 2063
African United survives Dharan scare!
Defending Champions African United Club had a stone in its first take up in the 5th Aaha Gold Cup Football tournament but they managed to survive Fc scare with 3-2 margin here at Pokhara Stadium, Pokhara.
Deapite leading first in the early 6th minute through lanky Richard Samuel, AUC shuddered back with leveling goal from Dharan Fc. Henry Etuk shot the cross from right flank that trampled goalie Saroj Rai to let Samuel to net the goal in the goal-mouth-melee. But Dharan leveled the score with fine touch from Laxmi Shrestha who brilliantly utilized the blunder made by AUC goalie Dodo.
Super Sub Chris had a lucky day with brilliant goal from 25 yard in the 66th minute but superb free-kick goal from Yogesh Shrestha, who is the product of the Dharan FC. When the match was heading for the extra added time, Muritali Ali scored the "amazing" goal in the 90+3 minute when his left footed cross pocketed into net dodging goalie Rai.
"We could have won the match", former national and Dharan FC Coach Milan Shrestha told SoccerAgeNepal. "Despite playing hard, my boys lost the composure in the last and we lost the match", Shrestha added.
AUC asst. Coach Epason James promised to play good game in the next match. Himalayan Sherpa Club, Club owned by ANFA Vice President Karma Tsering Sherpa, will clash against Tarun Sangh, Kolkata who have two African players.
