Aaron's Soccer Highlights
Soccer is a free flowing game that has relatively few rules and requires little equipment. All that is needed to play is an area of open space and a ball. Much of the world's soccer is played informally, without field markings or real goals. In many places, the game is played barefoot using rolled-up rags or newspapers as a ball. Soccer is the world's most popular sport, played by people of all ages in about 200 countries. The sport has millions of fans throughout the entire world.
300-200 BC
The earliest mention researchers have found of a soccer-like game states that balls made of animal skin were kicked through a gap in a net stretched between poles 30 feet high in China. Records indicate that tsu chu was played as a part of the Emperor's birthday celebration.
600 AD - 1600 AD
The creation of the rubber ball occurred in Mexico and Central America. These people played games on a recessed court shaped like a capital "I". The court was 40-50 feet long with vertical walls several feet high. In the middle of each wall was a mounted stone or wooden ring and the object was to project the hard rubber ball through the ring.
England
One story tells of a village defeating a Roman team and running them out of town in 217 AD. Nonetheless, the history of the game in England during the 5th-11th centuries is vague. By the 12th century, the game had become a violent mob sport with no rules and any sort of behavior condoned, which later earned a succession of royal bans. Regardless of the bans, the sport grew in popularity. Formal rules of today's game were adopted in England in 1863.
