Known as a national passion, football is a game that today mobilizes the passion of many people around the world. Gaining unparalleled prominence in the world of sports, the Football World Cup is considered the biggest sporting event on the planet. However, all this prominence given to team sports goes back to a very long history, much older than the time when the British Charles Miller would be considered the inventor of this sport.
According to some research, football has its first manifestations in China, around 2500 BC. According to this current, soldiers played with the skulls of their decapitated enemies in a lively game. In contrast, other scholars attribute the invention of football to the Mayan civilization. Divided into two collectivities, the teams should hit a fixed hoop. The dispute was so intense that the leader of the defeated team was punished with death.
These first manifestations of the game of football are considered attempts to give origins more remote than the one established by common sense:England in the 19th century. In the previous century, one of the first "rehearsals" of this game took place with "mass football", a dispute where two large groups from the city of Chester tried to make a ball pass one of the city's gates.
The 19th century saw the height of rationalist and progressive ideals. As a result, various instances of British daily life would gain norms. Hit by this wave of normalization, football gained its thirteen original rules that still influence most of the contemporary rules. Endowed with a set of rational rules, football was soon considered a prestigious sport among the financial and intellectual elites of the time.
According to the records of the time, the competitiveness and quick thinking required in its practice would be great allies in the formation of minds of great astuteness and determination. In a short time, the agitated British working masses would come to incorporate the practice of football. Being a great recreational activity, which according to some critics would dampen the revolutionary spirit of the class, the sport began to win teams of working class origin.
Funded by the factory owners, Arsenal (1886) and Manchester United (1878) were the first clubs born on English soil. In a short period of time, the first teams began to organize championships attended by an increasingly passionate audience. With great popular acceptance, teams began to invest in infrastructure and in hiring more skilled players. The entrepreneurial notion would begin to dominate several instances of this lucrative sport.
In Brazil, Charles Miller, son of Britons born in São Paulo, brought the first pair of balls and the game's rulebook from the land of his parents. Throughout Latin America, the popularization of the British game was noticed with the creation of several teams with names in English. In a short time, the spread of this sport around the world gave conditions for the creation of the first Football World Cup.
Initially, the British government, due to its historical patent, intended to control the organization of the event. In 1870, under the tutelage of the English Crown, the first "world" cups took place only with the participation of English teams. However, in 1904, the French defended the universalization of the sport with the creation of FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football). At the same time, football was recognized as an Olympic sport.
The creation of national teams increased competitiveness and game techniques. The natural hegemony of the British team was disputed by the Uruguayan team. In a short time, several stars began to emerge at the dawn of the international football scene. Starting in the 1950s, Brazilians revealed their first great stars, among which we highlight Pelé and Garrincha. Brazil, now considered the country of football, is a significant part of the so-called “ball world”.