The real origin is closely related to the political, economic and cultural background of this sport. By the beginning of19th century, the first industrial revolution in Britain had entered the era of mass production economically. A large number of unemployed people from rural areas have entered cities, and cities have expanded rapidly. At the same time, the British trade, which has a wide influence all over the world, has also spawned an information network that can efficiently transmit information on a global scale.
In this context, some children from aristocratic private schools around London began to play football games in their spare time. The school encourages students to participate in team sports in order to strengthen their physique and cultivate team spirit. At this time, football has no rules at all. Hands folded, feet kicked around, and everyone ran away in the mud under the rain, showing the power of youth.
After graduating from these schools, most of the children go directly to Niu Jian (Oxford and Oxford Bridge) for further study. Therefore, the pillars of the civilized future society of the two top universities also use this barbaric game to enjoy the other side of life in their spare time. Football is a war in peacetime for them, and it is a game to show male charm. In that rapidly changing era, anything novel will attract widespread attention, not to mention that this sport was born in Niu Jian.
Modern football can be said to have been born on campus and developed in industrial and mining areas, from an amateur game of aristocratic teenagers to the leisure and entertainment of working-class people. By the 1940s, hundreds of workers had started their football matches in industrial base cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield. The original intention is to fight against the cold weather in Britain during the winter vacation and get rid of the extremely depressed working environment temporarily. The ultimate benefit is the sport itself.
Football, like wildfire, swept through all the industrial cities in England and quickly spread to Scotland in the north, Wales in the southwest and neighboring Ireland. At this time, the first big test involving football life and death appeared: what rules should be followed in playing this game?
In Niujian campus, football can be used with both hands and feet, and players can have strong physical collisions. There is no limit to the venue, as long as it is flat. However, when the sport becomes more and more popular, not only the participants enjoy it, but also the onlookers are on the scene, so the importance of the rules is highlighted. Especially in the spontaneous competition between teams from different schools and regions, due to the different rules of the competition, the competition has lost the basis of fair competition, and one of the most important virtues of the British is fair competition.
Of course, the problem can't be solved by miners who are kept in the dark all the year round in coal mines, nor can it be solved by spinners who are immersed in the deafening sound of machinery in Manchester Textile Factory. 1848, football fans in Cambridge published a Cambridge Football Code, which defined the basic rules of modern football. The most important part of the code is to distinguish modern football from rugby: football is kicked with feet, while rugby is both hands and feet. More than one hundred years later, until today, the rules of competitive football are still being revised, but as a highly organized team sport, Cambridge Code points out a bright road for modern football.
After the rules were determined, football developed more rapidly, especially in large emerging industrial cities with high population density and lack of other forms of entertainment. In Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Liverpool and London, the urban population has soared, and there is a lack of communication between people and social forms that can promote community communication. Therefore, a football match, especially one that can represent the honor and friendship between society, factories and mines or schools, is often a good opportunity for thousands of people to get together and socialize. Birds of a feather flock together, and naturally there appears a football club that is attached to football.
1855, Sheffield Football Club, the first football club in the world, was established. Since then, various football clubs have appeared everywhere. Due to the demise of Sheffield Football Club after World War II, the oldest existing football club is Naudts County (now the second division), which was founded in 1862. Although the league performance of this club is mediocre, it has trained many stars. The latest one is Jermaine Pennant, who became famous in Britain when he was 15 years old. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger spent 2 million pounds to buy the 16-year-old midfielder, who is also a 16-year-old English midfielder.
Other established clubs include: 1863' s Stoke City (now League One), 1865' s Nottingham Forest (now League One), 1866' s chesterfield (now League Two), and 1867' s Sheffield Wednesday Team (.
There are more and more football clubs, and there are more and more friendly matches between them. Because these clubs are in the same region, the same industry or the same religious group, friendly matches also have supporters from different regions and industries, and they often compete for the glory of their own regions and communities, which makes the audience more yearning for this exciting sport. Even if the number of games is increasing, there is no unified manager, and the games are not standardized, it still cannot meet the hungry needs of the audience. So some clubs began to organize unified and coordinated organizations. 1863, the English Football Association, the oldest football management organization in the world, was established.
At the beginning of the establishment of the Football Association, there were only eight clubs with no national influence. It was not until the FA began to organize competitions systematically, especially when the FA Challenge Cup was held in 1872 that the FA became famous. This game is today's FA Cup and the oldest football game in the world.
1872, only 15 teams participated in the first FA Cup. In the final, Bolton beat the Royal Engineers by 1 and became the first champion team in the history of modern football. In the early days of the FA Cup, the influence of this event was not very great. Bolton have won five of the previous seven FA Cups. In the 2 1 century, more than 600 teams participated in the FA Cup every year.
The great charm and suspense of the FA Cup still can't satisfy the British people's enthusiasm for football, so there is a market demand for football leagues all year round, and the organizational role of the FA is even more useful at this time. 1888, seven clubs met in London to discuss the football league plan, and soon they worked out the plan. Most of the clubs participating in this national football league came from the industrial bases in central and northern England, which also reflected the characteristics of English football as a working-class sport at that time. 1888- 1889 is the first season of English first division. Preston Club won the league and FA Cup with unbeaten results in the season, but only 12 teams participated in the league at that time. By 1892, due to the existence of many clubs and the inability of the first division to cover most parts of England, the Football Association established the second division under the first division. 1920 has a triple, and 1958 has a quadruple. So far, the four-level league system of English football has been very complete.
Another revolution took place in the early 1990s, marked by the appearance of the Premier League. Judging from the relationship between club performance and promotion and demotion, the Premier League is the same as the previous League One. In fact, the Premier League is the inevitable result of the drastic transformation of British society, which has an important feature: the high degree of commercialization of society. The birth of the Premier League is related to the dissatisfaction of some English football giants in sharing business income with weak clubs. They need a more perfect system to tap the commercial potential of the club as much as possible and expand the global influence of the club brand. Therefore, the Premier League is an epoch-making product in the history of British football and the most commercialized football league in the world.
As a part of English football, there are two trophies. 1908, the Charity Shield Cup becomes the opening ceremony before each season. The first Charity Shield Cup is an invitational tournament organized by the Football Association, which aims to make the team donate the game proceeds to social charity organizations while warming up. Later, this event became a contest between the league champion and the cup champion last season before the start of the new season. In 2003, the event was renamed the Community Shield Cup. 1960, the FA founded the League Cup again. The difference between this Cup and the FA Cup is that only 92 clubs are allowed to participate in the four major professional leagues in England, and the winner will qualify for the UEFA Cup next season.
From a map, it is difficult to analyze the traces left by modern football in Britain from its origin to the present 200 years, but from the map of English football, we can at least see the background of English football development and the distribution pattern of English football towns.
Most of the 92 professional football clubs in Britain are located in emerging industrial cities and their surrounding areas during the industrial revolution. Almost every industrial center at that time had one or more famous football clubs: Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Everton, Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United, Birmingham and Aston Villa, Newcastle United and Sunderland, Southampton and Portsmouth. Because of the special status of the capital, London has the highest professional club in Britain, and many famous clubs in the city are also related to the industrial revolution: Arsenal was originally Wolwich's workers' club, Arsenal on the south bank of the Thames, and was originally composed of two players from Nottingham Forest; Chelsea is a workers' club in south London, as are West Ham United and Millwall.
This phenomenon that modern industry gave birth to modern football clubs can be seen everywhere outside England. For example, in Glasgow, an industrial center, there are a pair of vagrants and Celts, Cardiff, Wales, and even many clubs established by the British in the process of spreading football overseas.
The distribution of football clubs can be clearly drawn from the football map: mainly concentrated in the two traditional industrial areas in central and northwest England, and around the two central cities of Birmingham and Manchester. In addition, there are many football clubs around London and Newcastle, one in the south and the other in the north, but the football culture and traditions in these two areas are not as concentrated and rich as those in the central and northwest!