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Football - Soccer History

History of Soccer

Part 1: The early origins of Soccer

Football in various forms had been played through-out the world long before the nineteenth-century middle-class mania for rules and regulations. In America it had been popular among native peoples before the Europeans arrived, and it maintained this popularity as the Europeans brought their village games with them to the New World. "Soccer", or association football, from which the name soccer was later derived by Americans.

In reality there was no first game of football, for its origins go back to the beginning of recorded history: in preindustrial societies it was often a "mob" game of village against village, lacking written rules and celebrated as part of a fertility rite or to mark particular seasons of the year; more sophisticated kicking games were to be found in societies as diverse as ancient China (which boasts the oldest rules resembling today's games).

As Britain changed from an agrarian to an industrial society beginning about 1750, soccer was adapted to fit suit the narrow streets and hard surfaces of the new urban communities. Improvements in roads and transportation allowed games to be played outside the local village, and as steam trains started to link the ever-growing towns of Britain, it became possible to play on a national basis the games that the middle class favored and promoted.

Some Old Salopians and Old Etonians, one of which forbade kicking opponents with steel-plated boots, drew up the first combined rules in 1846. The first serious attempt to create a uniform set of rules, however, came at Cambridge in 1848. These rules provided the basis of the laws of association football, which were agreed on at a meeting of alumni from various public schools at the historic meeting in London's Freemason's Tavern on October 26, 1863 and at five subsequent meetings.

In Melbourne, where respectable young men of liberal professions were keen to continue their favorite leisure pursuit without having to appear before their clients the following Monday with black eyes or broken arms, a set of rules were agreed on in 1866 that were meant to make their game less rough.
Notts County, founded in 1862, is the oldest soccer team still playing in major competition.

The influence of Scots and Scotland in the development of soccer is paramount, not only in England, which Scots entered freely without serious diminution of their anti-Englishness, but throughout the British colonial possessions and other countries where British commercial and industrial expertise was established. The "Scotch professors" changed the nature of soccer by adopting the passing game instead of the dribbling game. The strategy had been to get behind the man with the ball and rush forward in a mighty mass, with the hope of forcing the ball through the goal. The Scots kept more players in defense, spread their forlow players rather than rely on the almighty kick and the rush to catch up with the ball.

By the 1880s soccer had been taken up by the working classes, and games organized by towns, counties, or private clubs could almost bring industry to a standstill. A midweek game could bring many workers to a standstill and they would not return to work until the next day. It was a problem that would repeat itself in other times and other places. By the end of the 1920s employers in South America had given up hope of expecting their workers to turn up when a big game was on. Games attracted the biggest crowds in England, and they increased dramatically in the 1880s. In Scotland, the international against England attracted crowds of over 50,000. Crowds were increasingly made up of workers, who during the latter decades of the century won a shorter working week, above all the free Saturday afternoon, which gave birth to the British weekend.

Although the FA Cup was still the main competition, the Football League was formed. Based on the English County Cricket competition, the league was made up of selected teams that agreed to play one another on set dates, on a home-and-away basis, and promised to field their strongest team to give the league matches preference over all others.

On September 8 1888, the new Football League kicked off competition with twelve teams, including Preston North End, the so-called Invincibles, made up mainly of Scots, which not only won the first league "flag" without losing a game but also completed the "double" when it won the FA Cup without losing a goal.

Scotland formed its own league in 1890, and professionalism, its natural and intended outcome, came in 1893. In the two Glasgow teams, Rangers and Celtic, it provided one of the most fiercely contested local derbies in the history of sport. Rangers and Celtic built a new sports stadium early in the century, Hampden Park, which until 1950 was the world's largest.

By the turn of the century England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales had their own national soccer organizations, with their own cup and league competitions. For a long time to come there was no country beyond the United Kingdom to offer them serious competition.

The Glasgow Battalion of the Boy's Brigade grew to provide what was claimed to be the biggest football league in the world, fielding 200 teams in the 1950s.
Many of the men who ran the FA and the Football League devoted themselves to what they took to be the good of the game with no thought of financial recompense, and they thought that the players should do much the same. Power, recognition, and perhaps a title were their reward.

In the first decade of the new century the game's increasing professionalism could also be seen in the reduction of the protests that had plagued it in the amateur days and in improved crowd control and spectator behavior. The first tragedy of the decade came in 1902 during an international match between Scotland and England at Ibrox Park, Glasgow, the ground of Rangers. Part of a new wooden terracing for standing spectators gave way, plunging twenty-five to their death and badly injuring over five hundred more spectators. The second tragedy came in April 1909, when authorities refused to play extra-time in a second-drawn cup final between Rangers and Celtic at Hampden Park. Supporters of both teams then invaded the field, tore down the goalposts, and set fire to the pay boxes. Firefighters who came to put out the fires were attacked and had their hoses cut, and many police officers were injured in fighting that went on into the night.

In the United States, the American Football Association (AFA) was founded in 1884, and a short-lived professional league was introduced in 1894. In 1905, the first Intercollegiate Association Football League was founded. And by 1912 there were organized leagues in twelve states.

In the meantime soccer struck some roots elsewhere. On the West Coast the Greater Los Angeles Soccer League was set up in 1902, and a San Francisco league formed two years later. In the Midwest soccer had some hold in Chicago, Detroit, and above all, Saint Louis, which had established the curious distinction, one that it still retains, of being the home of native-born talent: the Kensingtons of Saint Louis were founded in 1890 as the first all-U.S.-born team. In 1913, the United States was accepted into FIFA.

Soccer spread as the railways linked up in Canada's far-flung wildernesses, trading centers, and eventually the Pacific and Atlantic coastlines. Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Toronto were the main soccer centers.

In Australia, the first football association, also one of the first outside the United Kingdom (along with Natal in South Africa), was founded in South Wales in 1882. Soccer gained significant support in parts of New South Wales and Queensland, particularly in the industrial areas to the north and south of Sydney, and New South Wales remained the dominant soccer power in Australia. 

A football association was founded in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, in 1886, and three years later in the south island province of Otago. The first national football association was formed in the capital, Wellington, on October 2 1891.

Mohan Bagan was the first Indian team to carry off the Indian Football Association Shield by winning against the best teams of the British colonial presence in 1911.

The European intruders in China had set up their elite sports in Shanghai as early as 1843, and in 1879 soccer matches were being played there. John Prentice from Glasgow became president of the Engineers team, and in November 1887 the Shanghai Football Club was set up as a separate section of the Shanghai Athletic Club. A Shanghai football association was founded in 1910.

The Hong Kong FC was founded in 1886, and in September 1896 the Hong Kong Shield was set up for competition between military and civilian groups. Games were played in Singapore in 1889, and a football association was founded there in 1892.

In May 1911 the Singapore Chinese FA was founded, and in February 1913 the South China AA represented China in the inaugural Far East Asian Olympic Games. It was defeated by the Philippines' team, which included (against the rules) British, Spanish, and American players. Thereafter China (through the South China AA) dominated this competition, which lasted until 1934, by which time as many as 90,000 attended the big games.

Part 2: Soccer Around the World

In April 1901, the Yankees came to Scotland to play a match. Previous to this time, the Americans had beaten Australians and Canadians, and were thought to be invincible. They had also beaten Englishmen the previous year in New York. The Scots tied and then went on to score two more goals.

It was the countries closest to Britain in commercial, economic, educational, or moral terms that first took to soccer: Argentina and Uruguay in South America and Switzerland and Denmark in Europe, followed by Belgium, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, and France. In view of their later success, Brazil, Italy, and Spain were comparatively tardy in taking up the association game.

Soccer was played in Hungary in the 1880s within gymnastic clubs. The two most notable were both British inspired: the Ujpest Sport Club, which was formed in 1885 and gave rise to Ujpest Dozsa, and the Budapest Gymnastic and Athletic Club. The first recorded match was played in May 1897 between two teams of the Budapest Gymnastics Club (Budapesti Torna Club [BTC]), with a ball made in Britain, as they all were at that time. Some of the public and press who saw that game were appalled at its violence, but soccer progressed undeterred, and thirteen clubs entered the first championship in 1901. In that same year the Hungarian Football Association was formed.

Out of the cycling and gymnastics clubs emerged two all-conquering soccer teams in Prague in the early 1890s: Slavia in 1892, dedicated to Slav independence, and Sparta in 1893.

Russian and Ottoman Empires tried to discourage soccer among the ethnic minorities that were under their control. In the Balkans, where the borders of the Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian Empires met, Romania had gained independence in 1878, and the oil fields of Ploiesti and the industries that grew up around them attracted a large British Presence. This in turn led to the formation of several soccer teams. Prince Carol, heir to the throne and a sports fanatic, urged the formation, in 1910, of the Federation of Romanian Sports Societies and became first secretary of the soccer section. Bulgaria, like Romania, had managed to free itself from imperial control in 1878.

In Turkey itself, young Turks had to be discouraged from taking up soccer. British residents played there in the mid-1890s, but when some Turkish boys met in a private house to discuss the rules and the formation of a team, the house was raided and the "conspirators" arrested, the latter caught red-handed with the incriminating evidence of corner flags, colored jerseys, a ball, and a pump; the prize evidence was the rule book. Even at this time students of the Galatasary High School were playing the game, but in secret. The Istanbul Sunday Amateur League was founded that year, with Galatasaray the first official team.

The Russian authorities tolerated soccer only as long as it was a game of foreigners and the elite, but despite this it became the most popular sport there before the Bolsheviks took over in 1917. But the first real soccer had to wait until 1894, when a field was specially made for it at the mill owned by the industrialist S. Morozov. After 1904 there was as many Russian as foreign teams playing against one another, all of which were made up of middle-class Russians.

The Latin countries that were later to lead the world in soccer made little impact on the game before 1914. The game came early to Britain's oldest ally, Portugal, where it was played by university students as early as 1866. The first team, Lisbon FC, was founded in 1875, and in the 1890s the Portuguese themselves, particularly students who had been to Britain, formed their own teams. Soccer was played in Spain in the 1890s. In the Basque provinces, the first team, Athletic Bilbao, was founded in 1898.

Soccer in the form of Roman Harpastum and Florentine calcio has an ancient history in Italy, and so the British influence there has been muted by long indigenous traditions. The first official soccer team was founded in Genoa in 1893. The famous Milan and Turin derbies that have dominated Italian Soccer date back to the turn of the century. The Milan Cricket and Football Club was founded in 1899.

Within the first decade of the twentieth century soccer teams and controlling bodies were to be found in every country in Europe.

The first international game outside the United Kingdom was played, in Montevideo on 16 May 1901, when Uruguay beat Argentina 3-2.

In the late nineteenth century the economy and soccer boomed alongside each other in the coastal regions of southern South America.

A makeshift league was started in 1891 and won by Saint Andrew's and when this was reorganized two years later by Hutton, the Argentine Association Football League set the game up on solid foundations-early in the new century it boasted four divisions, the most prosperous soccer competition outside the United Kingdom.

In 1893, the Argentine Football Association was founded. In the next two decades, the game had expanded well beyond its British origins. This can be traced in the changes of official names from English to Spanish, but remarkably many of the teams founded under the auspices of immigrant Britons retained their English names. The most famous of these was CA (Club Atletico) River Plate, founded in 1901 in the Boca district of Buenos Aires. By then it had set up an undying rivalry with another team born in the Boca, but one that remained there: Boca Juniors, founded by an Irishman named Patrick McCarthy in 1905.

Today Uruguay is home to one of the finest soccer museums in the world, which is located in the 100,000-capacity Centenary Stadium, built for the first World Cup in 1930.

In Brazil, sailing was the main outdoor leisure pursuit of the wealthy elites. By the turn of the century, however, some of the luxury sports clubs of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo championship. Five teams of various ethnic flavors formed that first league. A Rio championship was started in 1905, and when a league was formed at Rio Branca in the remote province of Acre in 1919, the last Brazilian soccer frontier had been conquered.

Before the 1930s, Brazil was no match for Argentina and Uruguay, whose teams frequently played one another. The two countries could find themselves playing each other as often as five times a year.

A controlling body was set up for the soccer nations of South America, which was established nearly forty years before a similar confederation was established in Europe: the Confederacion Sudamericana de Futbol, better known as CONMEBOL.

In Europe a controlling body for soccer was established in 1904. Europeans went ahead to found the International Federation of Association Football. The aim of the body, free from any "European" qualifier, was to resolve disputes within nations concerning the authority of national federations or associations and to organize regular international competitions. Seven nations were represented in Paris in May 1904, but this had to grown to twenty-four by 1914, by which time Argentina, Chile, the United States, and South Africa had joined, giving the new body a world dimension.

Part 3: The 1920s

Soccer had arrived in Europe. It was already well entrenched in South America, and as it embraced the world, it embraced the world's problems. Enthusiasts had continued to play soccer during World War I, not only in Britain but also behind the trenches in Europe. And on one famous occasion in no-man's-land, where combatants played during the first Christmas truce. Locals were astonished in 1914, as they would be in 1939, when one of the first acts of the British soldiers was to organize soccer matches. Thousands of balls were sent to the front, from Britain and France but also from Germany. At the Ruhleben camp in Berlin, 4,000 British soon established society in which soccer was by far the most popular activity. 

As many as 1,000 turned up to watch the big matches. Among these spectators were the guards, who scoffed at first but ended up supporting the game. French rural conscripts who had never seen the game were introduced to it by their British and Belgian allies. At the end of the war a triangular tournament, the Coupe des Allies, was founded by these three nations. The central powers played games with neutrals to try to win them to their side, which caused some anxiety among the British and French.

When the hostilities ceased, nightmares and the misery that surrounded them, caused them to find relief in soccer. Record crowds flocked to games in Berlin, Budapest, Prague, and Vienna. In 1919 workers in several European countries won the eight-hour workday, and attendance at soccer matches multiplied, with regular crowds of over 20,000 and often more than 50,000. Austria and Hungary produced crowds that numbered 65,000 and never went below 45,000. In Spain soccer was becoming more popular than bullfighting.

In Germany in 1919 there were 150,000 registered players; by 1932 there were more than a million. In France there were 650 clubs affiliated with the French Football Federation in 1920 there were 36 clubs and 485 players, figures that almost doubled each year until 1924, when there were 402 clubs and 11,352 registered players; a year later there were 510 clubs and 17,558 players.

The soccer craze in the postwar years extended to women, and it brought them to traditionally male leisure pursuits on an unprecedented scale. After the war, teams of young English and French women in particular played before sellout crowds. In the early days women had been encouraged to come to soccer matches to help to tone down the rougher aspects of male behavior. But some women wanted to do more than just watch. 

At Crouch End, London, in 1895, Nettie Honeyball organized a game between women from the north and south of England that attracted 8,000 spectators. The women's game got into full swing in 1917, when the engineering firm of Dick, Kerr founded a women's team in Preston. In their time out from making the weapons of war to send to the boys at the front, Dick, Kerr's ladies established themselves as a formidable soccer team. Other employers as well encouraged women to form teams, and the public flocked to their matches, in such numbers that only League grounds were big enough to hold them.

In France the first serious women's sport soccer teams were formed during the war. A French women's soccer team toured England in 1920 and again in 1921. In 1920, at Pershing Stadium in Paris, 10,000 spectators saw the French women draw with the English, 1-1. French women were still playing soccer in 1926, but by then the women's game had dies out in both France and England. In England the FA confirmed its ban on women's soccer in December 1921, declaring the game to be "unsuitable" for women and their participation "not to be encouraged", despite the fact that these games raised an immense amount of money for charity.

The 1920s were known as the "crazy years," and for George Bernard Shaw one of their craziest aspects was the passion for sports, which was increasing to such an extent that it appeared that one day no one would be interested in anything other that sports-above all, soccer.

Austria turned professional in 1924, followed by Hungary in the same year and Czechoslovakia in 1925. Long before this the best amateurs were well paid.

One of the reasons that France did not adopt professionalism until 1932 was the fear on the part of some clubs that the players would ask for even more than they were getting as amateurs.

For most South American countries, rugby and cricket were not social alternatives, and continued to follow soccer across class lines after it became professional. Argentine soccer was the first to become professional, which it did in 1931 after various splits over the issue prompted by the loss of star players to Italy. Uruguay followed in 1933, and Brazil did so between 1933 and 1936. South American soccer made its explosive impact on the European scene at the Paris Olympics of 1924, when Uruguay won gold.

Uruguay then repeated its Paris triumph at the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928. These were the golden years of Uruguayan soccer, with the team following its Olympic triumphs by winning the first World Cup in 1930. At the Paris Olympics, Uruguay did not lose a goal until the semifinal, where it beat the Netherlands 2-1. It went on to beat Switzerland 3-0 in the final. In Amsterdam in 1928 Uruguay and Argentina advanced to the final, Uruguay won 2-1 after a 1-1 draw.

European teams visited South America more frequently after the war. When England's Chelsea toured in 1929, it won nine of its fourteen games. Chelsea was impressed by the speed and ball control of its opponents and by the sportsmanship of the crowds in Uruguay, Brazil, and Rosario in Argentina but complained bitterly about the behavior of players and crowds in Buenos Aires. The touring party was astonished at the barbed-wire fences that were meant to keep the crowds off the field but that did not always succeed, especially when the home side scored and the crowds rushed onto the field to "kiss and hug" the scorer. Chelsea's players also noted the luxury of the facilities at some of the clubs and also the poverty of others.

Brazilian soccer caught up with its southern neighbors in the 1920s. The social transformation of Brazilian soccer came when the poor broke through. Since slavery had been abolished only in 1888, Brazil's blacks were all poor, and racism was added to the class bias that faced the games controllers in other countries. As workers had discovered in Britain in the 1880s and were discovering in Europe in the 1920s, soccer was an avenue to a better way of life. One of the major figures behind the integration of blacks in Brazilian soccer was the journalist Mario Filho. Filho advocated the introduction of professionalism, and effectively integrated the two great joys of Brazil's poor, dance and soccer. Since then blacks, samba, and soccer have been the essence of Brazilian soccer success: infused with a joyous samba rhythm, Brazil's soccer teams created a style of play that no other teams could match.

Throughout the 1920s soccer prospered along with the cinema and dancing as the most popular leisure pursuits. In 1938 a soccer tournament that included Colombia and Venezuela was inaugurated, and over the years various other bodies were formed, bringing in the United States, Mexico, and Canada; it was not until 1961, however, that this took final form in the North American and Caribbean Football confederation.

The U.S. influence in this region has been overwhelming, but the strongest of the CONCACAF countries, however, is Mexico, whose major stadiums, are the largest in the Americas outside Brazil. A national league was founded in 1903, based on teams in Mexico City; its first football association formed in 1927 and in 1929 joined FIFA.

In the 1920s even the United States threatened to set itself up as a soccer nation to challenge its Latin neighbors. But soccer would struggle unavailingly to thrust off the burden of being seen as an un-American activity. A more serious blow came with the effects of the Wall Street crash on the mill towns and the heavy industries, which were still soccer's strongholds. Nevertheless, at the World Cup in 1930 the U.S. team performed admirably, reaching the semifinals.

Soccer in Canada and Australia, as in the United States, has forever remained a foreign game. Australia never reached the international success of the United States in soccer in the 1920s, but games involving foreign visitors drew massive crowds.

The spread of the game in Asia was patchy. It was only in Europe and South America that regular leagues were set up. As we have seen, the first South American Championship was established in 1916, and others followed over the years. In Europe international championships began to proliferate in the late 1920s-in Scandinavia (1924), the Baltic (1929), and the Balkans (1921)-and in 1931 the Orient Cup was introduced with Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and Greece the competing nations.

The potential for violence in games between teams representing nations whose political relations were tense was easily realized. Throughout the 1920s foreign ambassadors pleaded with visiting teams to behave themselves, and well won victories were applauded for doing more good work in ninety minutes than a team of ambassadors did in a week. The games across national border brought out the worst, and the Mitropa Cup of 1932 was awarded to Bologna on a walk-over when both Juventus and Slavia were disqualified for crowd troubles at their semifinal game. With Juventus winning 2-0, but unlikely to score the two more it needed to equal Slavia's four in the previous game, the Juventus spectators invaded the field, and 1,500 police were required to rescue the Slavia players, who were locked in the dressing room for hours.

When the Argentina/Uruguay game scheduled for July 16 had to be canceled because of the danger of overcrowding, frustrated fans set fire to the stands. On January 4 1931 five people were killed in Arequipa, Peru, following a Uruguayan team's victory against the locals-a tally that would be overshadowed just over thirty years later in that country by the greatest tragedy in the history of soccer. The list could be continued. A Moscow team playing in Odessa in November 1926 responded in kind to the fouling it was subjected to, and the game ended in a riot; after an even more spectacular riot at a game in Liningrad in 1937, soldiers were ordered to ring the ground to keep spectators off the playing area, and this became the general practice, even when on some few occasions soldiers outnumbered spectators. "Hooligan" behavior was frequently denounced.

Were the game nothing but riots it could not have reached the popularity it has. Of all the football codes, only soccer had produced not only a geniune global competition but one that, despite the riots and battles on and off the field, progressed from strength to strength after 1930.

The next two World Cups were played in Europe. It was the final factor that led Argentina to decide to adopt open professionalism. Brazil, like Argentina, underwent a change of government in 1930, and Getulio Vargas's increasingly dictatorial ways were tampered by a populism in which he used soccer to help sustain his hold on power. It was in Europe, however, that the most deadly brands of fascism developed, as the dictators there used sports to win popularity at home and glory abroad. Mussolini's Italy led the way with two World Cup titles in soccer and a string of international victories at club level throughout the 1930s.

Part 4: A Decade of Dictators

The Olympic Games of 1936 were a triumph for the Nazi regime, spoiled for Hitler only by Norway's elimination of Germany in the second round of the soccer tournament and, to a lesser extent, the victories of Jesse Owens and other black athletes in track and field. Hitler stormed out of the soccer stadium when Germany was losing 0-2 to its Aryan neighbors, with no chance of proceeding to the semifinals.

During the 1930s the dictators discovered sport, manipulating the masses with the aid of the latest technological developments and writing sports into the programs of national regeneration as a way of distracting the workers from more serious concerns. Mussolini's Fascist regime was the first to use sports as an integral part of government, and Hitler copied much of Mussolini's work in his Nazi regime; Stalin, on the other hand, reserved sports for national unification and defense preparation, unwilling to put the Soviet athletes to the test of international competition until he was sure that they would win. In each of these three dictatorships, soccer was the main cultural link between the government and the people.

Soccer at the 1936 Olympics is better remembered for the fracas at the Peru-Austria game: with the score tied 2-2 at the end of regular time, overenthusiastic Peruvians rushed onto the field and jostled some of the Austrian players. Peru went on to score two goals in extra-time, but Austria protested that its players had been upset by the spectators rushing the field. A replay was ordered, but Peru refused to participate. Instead, Peru's entire Olympic contingent retired from the games after trying to take along the rest of its South American compatriots. In Peru the two days and nights of celebrating that had greeted news of the victory quickly turned to anger when the crowds heard that the game had to be replayed.

The 1934 World Cup took place between May 27 and June 10, the final being played in Rome before Mussolini, who had promised rich rewards to the Italian players if they won the cup and dire punishment if they lost. Thus inspired, the Italian team fought its way to the final with a style that was a fitting tribute to the regime it represented.

Other national heroes emerged from the 1934 World Cup, and thousands of supporters traveled many miles to see them, a new tourist advantage: newspaper advertisements offered special train and hotel packages for fans who wanted to attend important games. They arrived in tens of thousands.

Newspapers had encouraged and in turn benefited from the growth of soccer since its inception, but in the 1930s radio arrived as a new branch of the media. Fears were expressed that this might encourage people to stay at home and listen to broadcasts rather than go to games. But these fears were misplaced. The first radio broadcast of a soccer match was for a league game in England on January 22 1927 between Arsenal and Sheffield United.

Belgium witnessed the trial of another means of bringing the game to people who could not get inside the ground. On November 4 1928, a newspaper reported, complete with photo, a where a large stand was set up outside the grounds where Belgium was playing Holland, from which a man with a stick pushed around figures on a giant replica of a soccer field in an attempt to keep up with the game being played inside the stadium.

The 1938 World Cup final was an all-European affair, but unlike those of 1930 and 1934, the host nation was not one of the finalists. France beat Belgium in the first round but was then eliminated by Italy before 58,000 spectators at the Colombes Stadium. French resentment against the Italians was expressed most vehemently, however, at the semifinal match between Brazil and Italy played in Marseilles after a victory gained by a controversial goal. Spectators invaded the field and had to be restrained by police. Most of the players were well used to playing before hostile crowds.

The final was played between Italy and Hungary before 45,000 spectators and the Italians' fast, determined play proved superior to the Hungarians' individual, measured style. Goalkeeper Natal Sabot took consolation for the 2-4 loss by claiming that Hungary had saved the lives of eleven men, he claimed that the Italian team had received a telegram before the game saying "Win or die."

When war came this time, there was no talk in Britain of continuing its soccer program as normal. British soldiers sent to France soon organized soccer competitions with the locals, but these came to an end with the blitxkrieg of May through June 1940. The Nazis continued their program of games as usual, even after Stalingrad, in an attempt to keep up an atmosphere of normality. Germany played against neutrals such as Switzerland and Sweden, allies such as Italy, Hungary, and Romania, creations such as Croatia and Slovakia, and friends such as Franco's Spain.

In the Soviet Union soccer continued to be played throughout the war. Amid the daily death and starvation, matches were played before crowds of up to 8,000, broadcast throughout the Soviet Union to give heart to their fellow citizens and dismay the Germans. In 1942 and 1943 an artificial field was laid out on Red Square so that games could be played there on May Day.

During the war some of the heroes of the soccer field proved themselves heroes in the grimmer battles for life and death, while others ended up as victims. Asbjorn Halvorsen, the star of Norway's Olympic team that beat Great Britain in 1920 and later secretary of the Norwegian football association, refused to collaborate with the Nazis and was tortured to death. Carl Sturmer, who starred in Italy before World War I and went as a coach to Italy afterward, was shot by the Americans as a spy. Alex Villaplane of the 1930 French World Cup team was shot by the French as a collaborator.

Countless others met similar fates, their soccer skills no guarantee of the choices they would make when faced by the supreme agony. Some established stars never played again, and others, especially in England, lived through their peak years decked out in khaki instead of their team's colors.

The defeated Germans recovered in soccer as they did in the economy. The German Team won the World Cup in 1954.

Even before the guns had gone silent in Europe, arrangements were being made to resume soccer matches, and shortly after the victories in Europe and Japan, the British football associations made their peace with FIFA, returning to the fold in 1946. Great Britain versus "The Rest of Europe" spectacular was played in Hampden Park, Glasgow, before 134,000 spectators in May 1947. The 6-1 victory to Great Britain reassured Britons that the world was back to normal. When the question of the next World Cup's location was raised, however, South America was the only choice, and the honor fell to Brazil.

Once the 1950 World Cup tournament got under way, Brazilians of all walks of life prepared for the party they would have when the home team won the trophy, however, Uruguay came from a goal behind in the deciding match to beat Brazil 2-1. The crowd at the Maracana fell silent, the preparations for the party were put away, and the samba written especially for the celebration, "Brazil the Victors," was not used, and after a lapse in 1954 Brazil went on to achieve the potential that was always there waiting to be unlocked. Brazil's defeat was a surprise, but the biggest upset in the history of professional sports was Englands 0-1 defeat by the United States. The England team at the 1950 World Cup included some of its greatest players ever; the team from the United States was one of the most makeshift outfits ever to take part in the World Cup.

Hungary's victory at the 1952 Olympics announced to the soccer world that the "Golden Team," one of the greatest in the history of the game, had arrived. Between 1950 and 1956 it played forty-six international matches, lost only one, and scored 210 goals.

In most Communist countries Olympic success took precedence over soccer. Generally the Soviet bloc countries found it easier to achieve success in track and field, through scientific selection at birth, rigorous testing, ruthless exploitation, and performance-enhancing drugs. Soccer played second fiddle to the regimes tireless pursuit of Olympic gold. Games communist philosophy decreed that individual skills and spontaneity be submerged in the collective. The one soccer nation to prosper under communism was Hungary. 

Hungary's success was based on the country's sports resources being channeled into Honved and the national team. Other clubs lost their best players to Honved, and the national team players did not have to fear that they would be dropped for any temporary loss of form. Tactics were perfected around the particular skills of a group of players of exceptional talent. Hungary went to Switzerland in 1954 as the runaway favorite to win the World Cup, as had Brazil in 1950. Instead it lost 2-3 in the final to Germany, which it had beaten 8-3 in a preliminary round. This defeat had been deliberately planned by Sepp Herberger, the German Coach-to field a virtual reserve team against Hungary, knowing that Germany could lose by a large margin and still qualify for the elimination games by beating Turkey and South Korea. An overconfident Hungary surrendered an early 2-0 lead to lose 2-3, the Germans being helped by some good fortune and a bad off0side decision that deprived Puskas and Hungary of a clear tying goal in the closing stages. Storia del calcio refers to the cloud that hung over the German victory in a political climate that "decreed at all cost that no communist nation win" and the rumors of drugs that the Germans were said to have taken.

It all came to an end in October 1956, when the tanks of the Warsaw Pact countries crushed the dreams of a Hungary free from Soviet domination. Hungary's glory days in soccer were over. Replacing Hungary on the international stage was Brazil, which won the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. Sweden qualified for the final with a 3-1 win over Germany. It was with aging stars from the Italian league that Sweden went on to lose 2-5 to Brazil in the final. This Brazilian team combined the individual ball skills with which it had become synonymous with teamwork and tactics. Seventeen-year-old Edson Arantes do Nascimento, about to be under the name of Pele, as well as other stars, set out to startle the world with teams of unsurpassable quality through to the 1970s, teams that exhibited the best possibilities of a multiracial society.

The 1958 World Cup finals were the only ones in which all four British football associations took part. Scotland played poorly, but Northern Ireland and Wales played well enough to reach the quarterfinals. The Irish team had some players of rare quality. Wales might have gone even further than it did had it not lost its star player, John Charles, through injury. England failed to make the knock-out stage, but played well and deserved sympathy. England had lost a clutch of its best players earlier in the year when a plane returning Manchester United's "Busby a snow-covered Munich airport and crashed into a house at the end of the runway. Eight players died, and several were injured.

Middle Eastern politics made their first serious entry into the competition when Indonesia, Egypt, and Sudan refused to play against Israel in the preliminary rounds.

From the mid-1950s, European club competitions were inaugurated and thereafter continued to grow in popularity. Real Madrid, resplendent in all-white uniforms won the first five championships in the European Cup. It was followed by Portugal's Benfica, under the guidance of Bela Guttmann, thus showing that the Iberian countries had finally arrived on the big stage.

In South America itself the use of soccer as an arm of domestic policy was widespread among the dictators who ruled that continent, generals in Brazil and Ongania of Argentina in the late 1960s bailed out financially troubled teams or actively assisted the national team. When Brazil's star player, Garrincha, was ejected in a semifinal game against the home nation at the 1962 World Cup in Chile, Brazil's prime minister, Tancredo Neves, dispatched an urgent telegram to FIFA secretary Stanley Rous asking that his misdemeanor be overlooked. Garrincha played in the final, and Brazil's shaky democracy lasted another two years.

In the late 1950s the success of the new European club competitions gave new life to the previously considered idea of a European superleague. The English journalist Capel Kirby looked forward to the days when floodlights would allow games to be played regardless of the time of day and planes would take teams to a match and back without the need for an overnight stop. He also foresaw the use of artificial turf and private boxes.

Like the World Cup and FIFA, the European, or Champions, Cup was of French inspiration. The French were stung into action when England's Wolverhampton Wanderers was declared to be the champions of the world by English tabloids. At first UEFA showed little interest, but Hanot and L'Equipe went ahead and received the support of some of Europe's biggest teams. Unable to ignore the popularity of the idea, UEFA took on the organization of what was initially called European Champion Clubs Cup, contested by sixteen clubs in the 1955-56 season.

It was played between the league champions of each of the nations belonging to UEFA on a knock-out system based on two matches home and away, except for the final, which was held at a predetermined venue. Until recently, and apart from the first year, a premium of away goals was introduced in 1967, getting ever closer to a straight European league. The first years of the competition were dominated by the Latins, Real Madrid and Portugal's Benfica being followed by the Italian clubs AC Milan (1963) and Inter Milan (1964, 1965) and Real Madrid in 1966. The following year, Glasgow Celtic outclassed millionaires of Inter Milan in Lisbon. Manchester United won in 1968, and then came the Dutch and Germans with their "total" football. Rotterdam's feyenoord beat Celtic in 1970, then Ajax of Amsterdam, Johann Cruyff and with other stars close to his class, a feat equaled by Bayern Munich under Franz Beckenbauer between 1974 and 1976. English clubs then dominated until they were banned after the Heysel disaster of 1985. In 1971 UEFA took over and donated a new trophy known as the UEFA Cup. Teams proceed as in the other competitions, on the aggregate score of home and away games.

Part 5: The New World of Soccer

Because of its financial state, Alan Hardaker, who was secretary of the league in 1957, was determined to gain the league money by setting out to garner a full harvest of golden eggs from the pools, which in the 1950s had become the country's seventh-largest industry, employing 10,000 people. Other countries used their own pools systems to earn income for the sole use of sports, most notably in the communist-bloc countries. Before pools money and television sponsorship, players were paid from the sixpences and shillings of those who passed through the gate or turnstile. 

Players resented the way they were expected to forgo their rights while the clubs maintained a grip as tight as when they were providing full employment and full wages. Despite the mammoth crowds of the postwar period, the League was usually successful in fobbing off the players' union, and by 1953 the only gain the players had made was a raise in the maximum and minimum wage, to approximately $25.00 a week. Three individuals can be seen as metaphors for these changing times: Jimmy Guthrie, who carried out much of the spade work on behalf of the players but whose attitudes were rooted in the past. Stanley Matthews, whose hand raised in favor of a strike if the players demands were not met represented a crucial change in attitude; and Jimmy Hill, who brought most of the demands to fruition and set himself on the proverbial path to fame and fortune. It was in such circumstances that the appearance of Stanley Matthews at a PFA meeting in Manchester in November 1960 to support strike action showed that discontent was at a dangerous level even among the most conservative and self-interested players. 

The most famous name in football at this time was Stanley Matthews. His career should have been over by the mid-1950s, but an inspired burst of brilliance in the closing minutes of the 1953 Challenge Cup final that turned what could have been Blackpool's 2-3 defeat by Bolton into a 4-3 victory, resuscitated a career that had begun in 1932 at the club level.

Although star players like Matthews and Billy Wright openly showed their support for the players, most of the rich clubs tacitly supported a big raise in the maximum wage. So did Hill and the PFA, refusing to be bought off by the League's tempting concessions. Faced by this united front, the League backed down, the strike was called off two days before it was to begin, and the maximum wage was abolished.

Prior to the 1966 World Cup established soccer powers in Europe and South America displayed an attitude to the game in Asia and Africa similar to that of the British to the Continentals before the 1950s. These attitudes received a severe jolt with the performances of the North Koreans, who were the sensation of the tournament. 

They disposed of Italy (1-0) and drew with Chile to go on to the elimination rounds. There they took an early 3-0 lead against Portugal in the quarterfinals, only to meet the star of the tournament in scintillating form, as Eusebio, the "Black Panther" from Mozambique, inspired the Portuguese in a revival that saw them emerge the winners by 5-3. Despite the success of Japan and North Korea, it was Africa that excited the hopes of those whose soccer vision went beyond Europe and South America.

Part 6: Expanding Markets

The World Cup final of 1974 was played in Munich, between the Netherlands and West Germany. The Germans won 2-1 in a close game between two teams whose "total football," involving every player on the field being able to play in every position. The major soccer event of 1974, in fact, was not so much the World Cup played that year but the annual meeting of FIFA held just a few weeks before the finals took place.

At this meeting multimillionaire Joao Havelange replaced former schoolteacher Stanley Rous as president of FIFA. The consequences were revolutionary because Havelange was a man more tuned to the realities of Third-World economies. The nature of the election was as significant as the result, with Asian and African representatives being assiduously courted by both candidates. Havelange was expected to win the election, thanks to a wide range of promises with both immediate and long-term rewards, but the lobbying for Rous by Adidas's Horst Dassler made it a close-run event.

Asian and African countries in 1974 comprised just over half of FIFA's membership of 141: thirty-nine countries from Africa and thirty-three from Asia. FIFA was then presiding over six regional confederations CONMEBOL, UEFA, AFC, CAF, and CONCACAF.

Havelange has been criticized for overcommercializing soccer. Under his presidency many of the weaker soccer countries have benefited from the provision of coaches and equipment and, perhaps above all, by the institution of youth competitions weighted in favor of the weaker confederations. More to help the weaker soccer nations than out of respect for the Olympic ideal, FIFA decreed in 1978 that any European or South American soccer player who had already played for his country would be banned from the Olympics.

The British, and to a degree the French, brough soccer to Asia, but it was only after 1945 and the postcolonial period that the game started to boom there. Beginning in the late 1950s many regional competitions were introduced, the most successful of which was the Merdeka ("independence") tournament started in Malaysia in 1957 to celebrate that country's freedom from colonial rule. Most notable are the King's Cup, Kirin Cup, which began as the Japan Cup in 1978, and the Nehru Gold Cup in India. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and China also have their tournaments. Professionalism was introduced in Malaysia in 1990, and more recently it has been permitted in restricted form in Indonesia and Bangladesh.

One of the reasons for the introduction of professionalism in Malaysia was to help control the craze for gambling that runs like a fever throughout the region. In late 1994, bribery and corruption were alleged to have spread to the fixing of Premier League games in England. Some star players in England were accused of complicity in match fixing, and in Malaysia itself the initial investigations resulted in over 100 arrests and many players suspended or sentenced to internal exile. This investigation promises to be the most scandalous incidence of corruption in soccer's history.

A major dilemma in Asia, as in all emerging soccer nations, is the influence of the more highly sophisticated European game. Top European and South American professionals have toured Asia for decades, but with television the world game has been brought to tens of millions of Asians, encouraging a new interest but also showing the local product in a poor light. Soccer in Asia is still short of world standards. This is reflected in the few Asian players who have made the grade in the top teams in the European leagues. Among the best was Kunishege Kamamoto, star of the Japanese national teams of the 1960s, who attracted unprecedented crowds to see him play. Jarnail Singh was another star of this epoch, a Punjabi who played his best years with Mohan Bagan in Calcutta. The greatest of the Asians to play abroad was Cha Boom Kun of South Korea, who starred in the German Bundesliga from the late 1970s.

Princely rewards have been offered to Asians from governments anxious to improve the domestic leagues, and there are some multi-millionaires who run soccer clubs as a hobby, but unless Asians engage more in the tougher, more competitive climate of Europe or even Latin America, the Asian game is liable to stagnate. Africa offers neither the perks not the stability to keep talented soccer players in the domestic game. They have flocked to Europe and now star in nearly every team in the best European leagues. When they have returned to play for their national teams, African players and African soccer have recently distinguished themselves at the highest level.

Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Africa were the four nations with representatives present at the birth of CAF. They met in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, on February 8 1957 to create a controlling body for soccer in Africa and to initiate a regular international tournament. Egypt could not hold the meeting because of the Suez war that broke out the previous year-it withdrew its soccer team from the Melbourne Olympics. Despite such problems, CAF, became the supreme authority over the many regional bodies in Africa. Its most immediate task in 1957 was to organize an international tournament that it named the African Nations' Cup.

The African Nations' Cup due to be hold in 1961 was delayed because of widespread political instability in the wake of new nations gaining their independence and was held in 1962 instead.  Ghana was the first sub-Saharan nation to form its own football association, which it did in 1957, and the first to join FIFA, in 1958. Its team won the African Nations' Cup in 1963, and the following year it was the first from the region to qualify for the final rounds of the Olympic Games.

To date Africa has been denied a chance to host the World Cup, and in 1995 Nigeria was due to hold the World Youth Under-20 Championship, but FIFA withdrew the privilege at the last moment. A health scare was one excuse, but fears were also expressed for the safety of the players because of the political situation.

At the same time as China was being tipped as a soccer power of the future, much the same was being said about that other "Third World" soccer power, the United States, then going through its Pele-inspired soccer boom.

While observers were predicting that China and the United States would have a rosy soccer future, Japan and Korea were modest participants on the world scene. Although South Korea is one of the most successful soccer nations in Asia, baseball was a more popular spectator sport there in the 1970s. Part of South Korea's problems was its refusal to recognize professionalism, so that many of its best players sought careers elsewhere in Asia or even in Europe. 

The South Korea football association tried to solve the problem, introducing partial professionalism in 1980 and then a fully professional "superleague" in 1983. South Korea qualified for the next three World Cups: a spirited performance in 1986 was followed by a poor run in 1990, but at USA 1994 South Korea performed brilliantly at times, and with more consistent firepower up front it easily could have gone on to the quarterfinals. Sout Korea's success in holding the 1988 Olympic Games, its continued dominance of Asian competition, and the possibility of reunification make the country a front runner to host the 2002 World Cup.

Part 7: United States Soccer

In early June 1994 the eyes of the sports world, with the exception of the host nation, were turned on the United States. The U.S. itself, as the competition got under way, the sports public of a country devoted to its own form of football could not remain immune to the fever that surrounded the competition. For those at the games, and the millions more watching on television, USA 1994 turned out to be a festival of attacking soccer, major upsets, drama, and controversy, without riots and displays of poor sportsmanship. USA 1994 was arguably the best World Cup ever.

The U.S. team had a new coach and a new approach to the game. They were the host nation, normally a great advantage, although the hearts of many Americans were as likely to be with the team of their ethnic allegiance, for the vast majority of Americans remained unmoved by successes in a foreign game. The team did as well as could have been expected of it. A clear win against early favorites Colombia, a draw with Switzerland, and a loss to classy Romania was enough to see it into the knock-out stage against Brazil on July 4. The Americans held out and the game proceeded scoreless into the second half, with Brazil a man short after Leonardo Araujo was expelled for a reflex elbow jab that sent Tab Ramos to the hospital, the possibility of a giant-killing act became increasingly possible. A goal from Bebeto set up by Romario in the seventy-fourth minute put an end to the impossible dream.

After the peals of cynical laughter that rang around the soccer world when FIFA mentioned changing the game to make it more palatable for what it saw as American tastes, the final changes and instructions to referees were all positive. Awarding three points for a win instead of two discouraged playing for a draw, and the ban on goalkeeper handling a back pass.

It was FIFA's instructions to referees to protect the ball players, however, that had the most exhilirating consequences, for referees came down on foul play with a severity never before seen. More controversial was the use of the television camera to dispense justice for offenses that the referee missed.

Referee Sandor Puhl at the Italy-Spain game failed to see the Italian player's elbow that broke the nose of Spain's Luis Enrique in the penalty area, FIFA, acting on the video evidence, slapped Mauro Tassotti with the heaviest punishment in the competition.

Soccer Shares with the Olympics the problems of its popularity and the power of television, leading to ever bigger and more showy spectacles. The problem of a final pool of twenty-four teams, and now thirty-two, is a more general problem arising wherever the finals are played. Although the increased numbers might please the smaller nations, and the players are always happy to take the increased money from television, there is too much pressure on the players, most of whom have just completed a strenuous league program.

As the world game, soccer also shares with the Olympic Games the omnipresent problems of politics, some of which is part of the game, and some of which is not. The slaying of Andres Escobar on his return to Colombia because of the goal he inadvertently scored for the U.S. team, had little to do with soccer and more to do with the drug and gambling cartels. This society has deteriorated to the extent that a Colombian killed a star soccer player.