„Football rules have been reviewed and adapted every year for over 150 years. This hasn’t just been the case since the International Football Association Board (The IFAB) was founded in 1886. And the endeavours to make the game of football faster and therefore more offensive and higher-scoring are just as old. This is still the case today.“ A new article by me for WebDE is online and you can read it here. (Article is in German, so please use the translation service of your browser.)

Daylight Offside and SAOT are the buzzwords around the offside rule. „Gary Lineker, the former England international and current TV pundit, is not alone in thinking that the offside rule needs to be reviewed. VAR makes it technically possible to make very close offside decisions, but the length of time and the „forensics“ (UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin) are a thorn in the side of many club officials and fans. Suggestions for speeding up the offside process range from a maximum ten-second review to thicker calibrated lines for attackers. The new offside technology, currently being used in the men’s Champions League and soon to be used at the World Cup in Qatar, is the answer – or so it is hoped. The technology is deliberately semi-automatic, however, as it only detects a potential offside position. But not every offside position is punishable. Referees still have to check whether there is an intervention in play (active offside), in which half of the game the offside position takes place, whether the ball comes from an opponent, and whether …

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 …

Trautmann (original title: The Keeper) was released in cinemas on 14 March 2019. The film tells the life of Bert Trautmann, who became famous worldwide as Manchester City goalkeeper and was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004 for his merits as a footballer for Anglo-German understanding. He passed away in 2013. Bert Trautmann played for Manchester City from 1949 to 1964. Anyone expecting me to write about the changes in goalkeeping during those years will have the same train of thought as I did and will be sobered to find out: During those 15 years, none of the rule changes affected the goalkeeper’s game. It is also the second longest phase in which nothing changed for goalkeepers. In third place is the phase between 1980 (goalkeeper allowed to move on the goal line when taking the penalty kick) and 1992 (prohibition of the back pass). The longest phase is the current one, because nothing has changed for goalkeepers since the four-step rule was changed to the six-second rule (2000). However, a certain …

The introduction of the video assistant referee has had some impact on the Laws of the Game. Nothing new, because the introduction of the referee on the pitch (1891) has also led to new or changed rules. Briefly about the time before 1891 In principle, the captains first tried to come to an agreement. If that was not possible, they called the two (partisan) umpires on the sidelines. If no agreement could be reached here either, the one (impartial) referee decided. Umpires and referee, however, were always at the side of the field and only reacted to some kind of challenge. It was not until 1888 that the umpire occasionally stepped into the field for a short time, because that was when the umpire’s ball was introduced. Let’s move on to the period from 1892 to 1905: Here, there were some changes and innovations that were directly or indirectly related to the introduction of the referee. I’ll just list them: Influence of the referee on football rules Listed here are not only the rule changes, …

The Schutzhand in German, beschermen in Dutch. Not everywhere in world exist the myth about the reflex of holding your hands in front of your face to protect yourself when something suddenly comes at you. However, this reaction is inconvenient when playing football, because you risk an intentional or deliberate handball. It is better to turn your face away or duck. I tell you more about the myth from the German perspective and would be glad if you let me know if this myth in your country exists and what name is has. Yet the myth about the Schutzhand has been around for about 100 years. Exactly where this myth first arose is no longer discernible. The myth of the Schutzhand in Germany In Germany there has been a term for this reflex since 1931: The „Schutzhand“, protective hand literally in English. As late as 1929 and 1930 this reflex was still only paraphrased in the Deutsche Schiedsrichter-Zeitung (German Arbitrator’s Newspaper): The rules do not know any „reflex actions“ or „reflex movements“, was to be …

Substitutions in Football in the 19th century: Emergency! In the second half of the 19th century, football was not yet so widespread outside the UK. In addition, substitutions in our modern understanding did not exist, but there was something similar that had the same name. If not all the players of a team were present at the start of a match, the missing player was allowed – by prior, mutual agreement – to be replaced by another person for the duration of his or her delay. However, there was rarely a substitute player in the team, which is why a spectator was accepted as a player instead. However, the players was not always recorded with their name, but sometimes as a substitute as S. Ubstitute or E. Mergency. The rules of the Eton Field Game in the 1850s did not call it substitution, but emergency, which describes it much better: It was an emergency that substitution was provided for. “The Charterhouse eleven played a match in cloisters against some old Carthusians, but in consequence of …

„Modern football“ is a buzzword. A buzzword with predominantly negative connotations in times of wobbling 50+1, increasing commercialisation, fragmented match days, etc. But was football old before? Antique? Of course not. Etymologically, modern means nothing other than „fashionable/according to today’s fashion“. Synonyms are adjectives such as current, new, contemporary and also mean progressive and something that has just become popular („modo“). The question of modern football is about the phase in which football became popular with the mass of the population, not just a few nerds, and in which the original form was developed further. From Empire to Commercialisation In the Middle Ages and the early modern period, there was football in England, soule in France and calcio in Italy. In Germany, or more precisely the then German Empire, there was no football before the 19th century. It could not, therefore, fall back on forms that were already known and subsequently regulated. Football was unknown. And therefore it first had to gain a foothold in order to be modernised. For the word modern presupposes that …

Rouge. What is that supposed to be anyway? There is not one, but different styles of Rouges. In association football, which is widely played around the world, this style has not endured, but it has in rugby. Because a Rouge has certain similarities to a Try. But what is a Rouge? Let me explain the styles in a clear and brief way. The Rouge is, or was, part of the rules at Eton College (Eton Field Game) and Cheltenham College, as well as at Sheffield FC and in the Sheffield FA. Eton Field Game Scoring At Eton, a distinction is made as to by whom the ball goes out of bounds: by the defending team: A Rouge is scored directly if a player of the defending team touches it first. by the attacking team: The ball is then placed 1 yd from the goal post and the attacking team tries to push the ball over the goal line. As a bully is formed similar to a scrimmage, this is not so easy. Awarding In the …

Change and acceptance need consistency. A longread, not only about female referees at the 2022 World Cup. In football, it is a hedge that has often been divided and then overgrown again – and not just for a few years, but for almost a century. Yes, there have been women in men’s football for almost 100 years, and that on the field as match officials – female referees and assistant referees. At first only a few, but for a good 30 years now and then in the highest level of men’s football – be it in a country’s top league or in international football. Now they were in the highest place: the men’s football World Cup. Stéphanie Frappart from France was the first female referee (1 December 2022). US-American and assistant referee Kathryn Nesbitt was the first woman to officiate at the final of a men’s World Cup (as a reserve assistant referee) (18 December 2022). Incidentally, in the qualifying matches for this World Cup, it was Stéphanie Frappart and Karen Díaz Medina, among others, …

Whoa, that’s a sensation: a female referee officiating a championship match in Brazilian football. Not now or 30 years ago, but almost 100 years ago. The German newspaper „Echo der Gegenwart“ („Echo of the Present“) of 28 October 1933 bears witness to what was perhaps the first woman to not only officiate a charity or friendly match: „Miss Colona“ from Rio de Janiero. First female referee and a smile Her first name is unfortunately not mentioned, but we learn from the article that she was a student at the university of the Brazilian capital and a respected member of the academic „Society of Rio“. The article tells us that – surprisingly for the audience – a woman is in charge of a championship match between two men’s teams. However, Ms. Colona is apparently known to and appreciated by the public, because „[s]he was greeted with greater applause than the most popular stars among the football players“. She is lucky to be in charge of the game even in very difficult situations because she smiles. Smiling …