The Foundation of the English Football Association
The next milestone in our whistle-stop (no pun intended) history of soccer is the foundation of the world’s first football association in England in 1863. Although rules had been instituted earlier in the century by individual public schools, when boys from different alma matas met at university the discrepancies in the rules for football they were used to lead to mass confusion. The University of Cambridge had instituted its own set of regulations, known as Cambridge Rules, in response to the problem in 1848, but a rival set, Sheffield Rules, appeared a decade later, and there was yet more befuddlement.
Thus on 26th October 1863, a final attempt at uniformity was made, and ultimately achieved, over the course of several days. Eleven football clubs and schools sent representatives to the Freemasons’ Tavern on Great Queen Street, London, for a historic meeting which changed soccer forever. A set of rules were agreed upon, which have changed in some respects in the intervening near-160 years, and the first-ever game of Association Football, as the sport is officially known, took place on 19th December 1863 between Barnes and Richmond, rival suburbs of London. The game ended in a disappointing 0-0 draw.
The Barnes-Richmond showdown was not an official match, but took place because new members of the FA were impatient to try out the new, official version of the game. The official unveiling was actually on 9th January 1864, at which a laudably inclusive and egalitarian toast was drunk: ‘success to football, irrespective of class or creed’. However, the toast does not seem to have included women’s soccer, since this was banned at FA-affiliated grounds in 1921 on the dubious basis that ‘football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged’. The ban thankfully ended in 1971.
As well as controlling all leagues of soccer in England (until the Premier League, a semi-independent competition, was founded in 1992), the FA also introduced its flagship competition, the FA Cup, in 1871. This competition, into which all clubs, professional and amateur alike, can enter, is a knock-out affair in which teams are drawn to play one another over one or two matches at random. The first FA Cup final was won by Wanderers FC, sneaking a 1-0 victory over Royal Engineers in front of 2,000 people. The competition was instrumental in helping football to reach its current popularity.