Football started in Britain. The University of Cambridge made the first rules in 1848. In fact, many other countries played a game like football for many centuries before that. The Chinese played tsu chu over two thousand years ago. “Tsu” means to kick, and “chu” means ball. Before the nineteenth century, often hundreds of people played at one time. In the nineteenth century the game was very popular in English schools and universities. Finally, in 1863, a group of people started the Football Association. The word “soccer” comes from the word “association”.
Today, football is the most popular sport in the world. You can see the World Cup on television in about one hundred different countries. But Europe still has the most players — fourteen million. South America too is very strong. Here there are far fewer players, but they do very well in the World Cup. Perhaps the most successful team of modern times is Brazil, and the most famous player, Brazil’s Pele.
People started to watch football in the industrial towns of Britain in the late nineteenth century. In 1876 a Scot, James Lang, was the first man to earn money from football — the first professional. Just over one hundred years later, in 1978, most Liverpool players earned six hundred pounds each week, but the best earned a quarter of a million pounds a year.
Things change slowly in football. Liverpool, the English champions of 1900 —1901, was still the best team in the late 1970s. Now there are many international competitions and football is of interest world-wide.