Sociogenesis of Soccer

Soccer, or football as it is known outside of the US, was one of many different variants of "football" that existed in the U.K for over a millenium. Many of these variants allowed the use of hands and forward passing, while others banned both of these actions. Eventually, groups in England came together to come up with a set of rules that everyone could embrace. The Cambridge Rules, created in 1848 and revised in 1863, are often cited as the beginning of modern association football. The 1863 version is often cited as being the first official version of soccer ever played. The use of hands and arms were banned, and they used goal posts instead of nets.

Toward the 1870's, a large group of people split off from this revolution and created their own type of football that allowed the use of hands (but no forward passing), which became known as rugby. Rugby, in turn, was the primary inspiration for American football (which added forward passing). In the meantime, soccer grew and grew within the UK and in the late 1800's the game spread around the world, first through the UK's vast collection of colonies (because being a naval superpower is awesome) and then to the neighbors of those colonies. Eventually, the other countries developed a talent for the sport, and the World Cup was born in 1930 (which was hosted and won by Uruguay).

The uniform was a bit different in the 1800's- the shorts were knee-length, a fact which would change several other times in the sport's history. The button-up shirts were gone by the 20th century. The length of soccer shorts has varied, having been far shorter in the "old days" before getting baggier in the '90's, around the same time that basketball shorts also became far baggier (a trend often credited to hip-hop culture).

One of the main appeals of the game since its inception is its simplicity. All you need to practice is a ball, and all you need for a game is an empty, flat space of land, a ball and a way to improvise goals. It's a sport that literally anyone can pick up and play, which has led to soccer becoming the most popular participation sport in the world. Professional leagues, particularly in Europe, have given chances to the poorest of the poor, allowing street kids from South America, Europe and Africa a chance to make their own way.

Soccer has accumulated a vast wealth of history due to the number of nations that play soccer (basically, every country that has open fields- even the US is starting to come around). Each nation has its own league, and each of the big European leagues (the British Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, and Italian Serie A are the biggest leagues) has roughly a century of history per team, which has resulted in some very old, bitter rivalries around the continent. The modern game is extremely lucrative thanks to its global popularity, with television contracts running in the billions of Euros.

Unfortunately, the amount of money in the game causes some pretty serious problems. The amount of corruption in FIFA is pretty ridiculous, as the human rights abuses, bribery and leadership issues pile up, which has led to a popular uprising against the World Cup in Brazil, a country that has won more World Cups than any other. Match fixing has been a persistent issue; the 2006 Serie A champions, Juventus, were actually stripped of two titles and relegated (sent to the second division) after revelations of referee tampering (the Calciopoli scandal was a massive scandal throughout Italy, and it all went down right before the 2006 World Cup, which was won by... Italy). All that being said, soccer is still the world's most popular sport, and if FIFA can ever clean up its act, soccer should be in pretty good shape going forward.