I recently stumbled across the following article about a floodlit game in the sports magazine „Freie Sport-Woche. Zeitschrift für Spiel und Sport“ from 1930: Football at night? In England the first football match has been played under artificial lighting; opinions about it differ in the English daily and sports press. The socialist organ, the Daily Herald, comments: „Seductive as the idea of night football is, however, it is doubtful whether it has any practical value. As a temporary sensation it may capture the imagination of the masses, but as a permanent fixture the night football game is unlikely to hold its own. Football is a game for broad daylight; much of its appeal will disappear when it is played in the light of arc lamps; it will become an artificial game under artificial lighting. Then football will also be a sport for the winter. Football at night, however, in order to be financially profitable, would have to be played throughout the summer and would thus compete with summer sports. The fresh air of the winter …

Football reporting emerged in Germany, as in Austria, in the 1890s. Sports journalists, along with sporting goods manufacturers and dealers, building and transport contractors, bookmakers and beverage producers, were among the groups of people who profited directly from modern sport. The first specialist journalists were mostly active footballers who tried to open up the market for this new kind of diversion in this way. The very first sports magazine, however, appeared as early as October 1792. „The Sporting Magazine, or Monthly Calendar of the Transactions of the Turf, the Chase and every other Diversion interesting to the Man of Pleasure, Enterprize, and Spirit“, however, was about the then most popular sports of the upper classes: Hunting and horse racing.[1]Behringer, Wolfgang: Kulturgeschichte des Sports. From Ancient Olympia to the Present. Munich 2012. p. 236. Here I introduce the two sports magazines Sport im Bild by Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles and Spiel und Sport by John Bloch.   Sport in Picture Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles (1871-1956) was one of the first sports journalists in late 19th century Germany and, significantly, English. …

What do football fan chants and pilgrimage songs have in common? They are sung to melodies that are already familiar, because that way only the new lyrics have to be learned and not the melody as well. This is true not only of today’s songs sung to the theme tune of the A-Team, Pippi Longstocking or „Seven Nation Army“ by the White Stripes, but also as far back as the turn of the 20th century, when „assocation football“ became known as „football without picking up the ball“. I found 90 German football fan songs in the volksliederarchiv.de, all from the three football song collections „Fussball Sang und Klang“, „Fussball-Liederbuch“ and „Sport-Liederbuch“, which were published in several editions until 1933. I had wordles created from the song texts. Before I get to the Wordles, a few introductory words. (I won’t prevent you from scrolling down once, if you are too curious). I am aware that this is not an extremely representative evaluation. 90 songs are probably only a small of the songs circulating between 1895 and …

Football in the year 2000 is now a thing of the past. In 1925 it was still a vision of the future and therefore the article „What to expect in the year 2000“, which appeared in the Mansfield Reporter on 1 May 1925, sounds exciting. So what was the vision of the future? How did one imagine the game of football to be played at the following turn of the millennium? But at first glance one is disappointed. This is already revealed by the beginning of the title: „Football Special. Exclusive Interview with a Martian„. But between the lines, much can be read about the ideas and desires of the author, sports journalist L. V. Manning. What is it about? The article is written in prose and is rather reminiscent of Kafka in its beginning: „How he got into the room I cannot explain. I only know that he was there, helping himself to my tobacco and enjoying my whisky and soda like a mere mortal. ‚It’ll make a great story,‘ he said, ‚but I …

I came across this page this month, which lists several Sheffield Rules. More than just the four I have used so far. So I have now been able to update the various rules and the concise history of the Sheffield FA Rules. Here it is now to give a little more detail of the Sheffield rules, but of course not as much detail as various books cover, looking at Sheffield FC in its early days. It is the elaboration of my comparison. My first mistake that caught my eye in the analysis was that the Sheffield FA was not founded at the same time as Sheffield FC, but in 1867, nine years later. That is, after the Football Association was founded. The latter consisted mainly of London football clubs, but not only London clubs were involved in the founding, but a representative of Sheffield FC, for example, was also present. So for the time being, it’s about the … Sheffield FC Rules (1858-1867) The drafts and first published version 1858 The first draft Sheffield FC …

FIFA did not always belong to the IFAB, after all it is a few years younger. Surprised? Don’t be. Aberystwyth is a Welsh port town and its football club, Aberystwyth Town, was founded in 1884. That makes it two years older than the IFAB, the International Football Association Board. FIFA – Fédération Internationale de Football Association – was not founded until 1904 and the name also shows that it was not founded in the United Kingdom. It was founded in Paris. Why was the IFAB founded? What is the IFAB? Yes, the International Football Association Board. But why was it founded? And by whom? I explained that four years ago here, but again in very short and understandable terms: It is an association of the four British associations: the Scottish SFA, the Welsh FAW, the Irish IFA and the British FA. And this association became necessary because the football rules of the four countries differed and thus made international matches a bit more complex: Which rules do you play by? Those of the home teams? …

Modern football … „[…] it is evident that football is quite an ancient game. Time alters everything, and it has undoubtedly done so in football. Where one used to play with half the village on one side and the same on the other, it is now restricted to sides composed of eleven players. As I have been requested to write on the modern game it is not worth while dwelling upon how it was played a hundred years ago. Football is really supposed to be a Scottish game, but it was in England that a proper Association with defined rules was first started.“ (John Cameron: Association Football and How to play it. London [1908]. P. 7.) The concept of modern football is not one of recent decades, as I pointed out last year in two longreads at 120minutes about England and Germany. 1870s: combination football Both Montague Shearman (1887), Charles William Alcock (1906) and quoted John Cameron (1908) describe in their writings on the game of football what has already changed since the first football …

On 16 August 2018, Google published a Doodle in honour of Ebenezer Cobb Morley’s 187th birthday in Cuba, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, China, Vietnam, India, Greece, France, Croatia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany and the UK. Google’s description of the doodle alone is teeming with errors or at least contentious statements, which I would like to name in this post. And I would like to encourage you not to take everything at face value. The fact that I am dealing with the development of football rules and regulations at all is due to a lack of source-based work. In my search for year numbers, I noticed that year numbers contradicted each other and that only in the rarest of cases is reference made to the contemporary source (e.g. newspaper reports). The assumption that many simply obtain information from two or three sites and do not check them further is confirmed again and again. This is also the case with this doodle. == Subsequent note: I did not check the links after creating the …

German football history is always started with Konrad Koch in Braunschweig. Yet this is merely a myth. A myth that has spread all too easily. Not least through a cinema film about Konrad Koch with Daniel Bruehl or through a documentary by the TV station NDR that will not be broadcast until summer 2020. The beginnings of the sport of football in Germany lie in Lüneburg. The Beginning of German Football History Football historian Hans-Peter Hock came across an article in the English weekly The Field, the farm, the garden. The country gentleman’s newspaper of 04.09.1875. This reported that at the end of August a football match under FA Rules had taken place at the Johanneum school in Lüneburg. At a time when rugby-like rules were still being played in Braunschweig or even Dresden. (Because Konrad Koch introduced rugby to Brunswick, not football. It used to be called only both football). This football club at the school of Lueneburg was founded in 1874 and probably only existed for a short time, although there were more …

A while ago @dbFCZ, who looks after the FC Zurich database, wrote to me. Including a photographed match report excerpt in which the kick-in is discussed. (The kick-in is the equivalent of the throw-in, the thrown-in). As so often in the history of football rules: As curious as it sounds, it has existed before and, in this case, even once as part of the rules. The kick-in in the old football rules Before 1863, both kick-ins and throw-ins were part of different rules   From 1863-1886: Yes, No … Yes? The (London) FA Rules and Sheffield FA Rules had it all. While Sheffield FC used the throw-in, the Sheffield FA wrote the kick-in into the rules. In the (London) FA, on the other hand, the throw-in was part of the rules. Until 1877, when the Sheffield FA adopted the FA Rules in exchange for a few Sheffield rules. Thus, from 1877 to 1886, the FA allowed a choice between a throw-in or a kick-in. By 1886, the birth of the IFAB and the Laws of …

After comparing different sets of rules for football without or with little permitted handball, it is useful to go through the development of the individual rules. Playing field measurements Playing field measurements are not mentioned at all until the 1860s. Since they are quite similar here, it can be assumed that they had already converged before then and therefore unwritten agreements were also in place. Goal dimensions Only Eton had a height limit, which was 2.13 m as early as 1847 and did not change thereafter. All other rulebooks knew no height limit within this time period. The width of the gate varied, if it was specified at all. At Eton it remained constant at 3.35 m, at Harrow (1858) goals were 3.66 m wide, at Cambridge (1863) 4.57 m, and at the FA (1863) as much as 7.32 m. It seems that gates used to be much narrower than today. Number of players The number of players is now specified in the 1849 Surrey Rule Book. Here there are already eleven players. In most …