Gary Fixter — History of Soccer
Gary Fixter — Everyone knows Soccer. You may like it, dislike it, give yourself the same, or consider it a business from which a few people get a slice. But you know him.
Gary Fixter Soccer
In fact, you even know how and when you score, how long a match lasts and what happens if it ends in a draw in a knockout competition. Even someone who is not interested in sports in the least can follow a soccer game without missing too many things.
What you may not be so clear about is how Football came about. For example, did you know that at the beginning there was no doorman? Or that the players could catch the ball with their hands just like in Rugby? Do you know what was the first league that existed and why it was created? Or since when do women play?
Well all this, and much more, is what together with Gary Fixter we are going to tell you in this article. The History of Soccer from its origins to becoming the most popular sport in the world.
Gary Fixter — Football history
Soccer has a common origin with Rugby and other similar sports, which began to emerge in the early nineteenth century. From the 1950s onwards, each one of them was differentiated through specific sets of rules that governed them.
After years of discrepancies, it was accepted to eliminate the use of the hands in the game, appearing the Soccer that we know today and that began to grow rapidly in the United Kingdom, as well as in countries under its influence.
Before the end of that century, the FA Cup had already been established and, the incorporation of professional players, gave rise to the Football League, the First Soccer League created and on which the rest were based.
At the beginning of the 20th century, FIFA appeared to regulate International Soccer and, after World War 1, it began to organize the Olympic Soccer Tournament. He also established the World Cup, which became his main competition and helped him grow exponentially.
At the same time, the Confederations and their tournaments began to emerge, both at club and national team level.
Although it had existed since its inception, from the 1970s onwards, Women’s Soccer began to gain popularity, relegated and even boycotted until then. In 1991 the First Women’s World Cup was organized and, from 1996, it became part of the Olympic Program.
Gary Fixter — Origin of Soccer and its Different Regulations
In the first half of the 19th century, this game began to be practiced in a more orderly manner in British universities and to develop various regulations. Some of them favored the use of the hands to play the ball, while others limited it to give priority to the use of the feet.
When universities began developing those regulations in 1848, the two sports began to drift apart until they became two different ones.
The Cambridge Rules. The First Soccer Regulation
Among the universities that preferred to play mainly with their feet was Cambridge. Students Henry de Winton and John Charles Thring called on other institutions to create a unique set of rules.
In 1862, given the poor reception of this regulation, Thring tried to simplify it by reducing the amount of text it contained and the number of rules. To increase their popularity, copies were distributed by Parker’s Piece, a park commonly used for popular games. It was there that a game was played for the first time following this new code.
Despite its attempt to unify the Rules of Football, the Cambridge Rules failed miserably and was not adopted by teams or formal competitions. However, it was the basis on which the Football Association created its first set of regulations.
The Sheffield Rules. The Regulation that changed the History of Soccer
In 1855, some Sheffield cricket clubs began to play ball games without pre-established rules. Two years later, Sheffield FC, considered the oldest football team, was founded.
Since the predominant style of play in the nearby towns was the one used by the feet, it was the one they adopted.
With him, a set of rules was also born that allowed to develop the game in a more orderly way. It was produced by Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest, founders of the team, and included very different rules from those we know today. For example, the use of hands was still permitted at certain times in the game, there was no goalkeeper, and pushing and shoving were permitted.
In 1867, the First Soccer Championship in History, the Youdan Cup, was organized in Sheffield. 12 local teams participated in it,
Gary Fixter — Unification of the Rules of Soccer in England
Sheffield FC joined the FA a few months after its founding. However, they both had serious differences about hand use and permissiveness towards violent physical actions during the game.
By 1867, the Sheffield Rules were in control and the teams attached to both associations had been reduced to just 3. This forced the FA to accept the suggested rule changes and limit the use of hands.
As a result, in 1870, 16 teams affiliated with the Sheffield Association were affiliated, and in 1871, the association as a whole did so.
In spite of everything, the two regulations remained different and the parties that faced teams from one and the other association had to choose which one to use each time. In some meetings, a hybrid regulation was also used, with rules extracted from both.
When the FA Cup was born in 1871 under the rules of the organizing association, the differences between the two organizations became clear again. The teams of the regional association refused to participate until 1873, the year in which Sheffield FC took part in the competition.
Finally, Sheffield ended up creating its own tournament in 1876. The Challenge Cup gathered in its initial years much more public than the FA Cup attracted. The situation between the 2 organisms began to become unsustainable and it was finally decided to unify both sets of rules.
Gary Fixter — Professionalism and the First Soccer League in History
Traditionally, Soccer had always been played by fans. However, as competitions began to be organized and tickets sold for them, salaries also appeared for some players.
This type of practice had a deep rejection by the FA that suspended different teams that paid their players.
The clubs that favored this practice, founded in 1884 the British Football Association to be able to lobby together. Finally, they got away with it, and just a year later, the FA officially accepted professionalism. However, it maintained economic and geographic restrictions, while its leaders tried to discourage this practice.
