History of football

                    Football originated in the early 1800's in England from a sport called rugby. Rugby was a popular sport that eventually spread all over the world.  It was first played in the United States  in 1869 and in a couple of years it took its modern form.  Football history had constant rule changes to increase the protection of player and to boost the excitement of the game.

           Representatives from multiple universities met in New York City to decide the fundamental rules for college football teams to follow.  The teams then established the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA). The Association, led by Walter Camp, decided that 15 would be the number of players in a game. Walter Camp was the coach at Yale University and later wanted to change the number of players to 11 to make it more interesting.  The Intercollegiate Football Association changed the numbers of players to 11 and that helped the transformation from rugby to the modern game of American football.

            The number of players from 15 to 11 caused to make the standard playing field decrease to 110 yards.  In 1882, West Camp introduced the system of downs.  The system of downs allowed the attacking team three attempts to advance the ball 5 yards.  Many players made it seem to easy to advance the ball 5 yards, so the committee changed the distance to 10 yards, in 1906.  In about six years later the association added the fourth down making a long game.

History of soccer

             The origin of soccer goes back as far as 3000 years. The earliest form of soccer was played in China by the military to increase there performance in battle . Another early form of soccer “Tiachi” was performed in South and Central America.  Soccer began to take shape in its modern form in England.  The first football association was established in England in 1863, when rugby and football split up forming their own associations. Soccer in other parts of the world is referred as Football.

             The Football association had to have fundamental rules of the game for every team to follow the same rules.  Therefore in October 1863, soccer representatives had a meeting to set up the fundamental rules of the game. In December 1863, rugby and football finally came apart when in the football rules it was forbidden any handling of the ball.  Eight years after its establishment, The Football association had 50 member clubs.

             The first football competition in the world started in 1863 and was named the FA cup.  International games were performed in Great Britain and the first was in 1872 (England vs. Scotland).  Although soccer at that time wasn’t played in professional level, a club in England started to pay there players to beat a supposedly invincible team named Old Estonians in the FA cup. The first players that received money for their talent were two Darwin players, John Love and Fergus Suter.  The Football association had to legalize professionalism in 1885 because many players were being paid for playing.