Football Made in London, UK
In London, football is a very popular game in terms of number of spectators and participants interested in the game. Many leading football clubs in England are based in London and there are a total of 14 professional teams in the city with over eighty amateur leagues. The majority of football clubs in London take their names after the district where they play.
The oldest London football club that continues to play professional football is Fulham. The club was created in the year 1879. Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and Arsenal are the most successful football clubs in London, both in European and domestic competitions. These three teams have captured a total of eighty three trophies and titles.
England’s national stadium the Wembley Stadium is in London. This is where the national team of England plays their home matches and since 1923, FA Cup Finals have customarily been played in this stadium.
Football was invented as a game in 1314 and since then, records of people playing the game in London is adequately documented. Early games were almost certainly chaotic and aggressive. Richard Mulcaster the headmaster of Saint Paul’s school is credited with reorganizing mob football into a game that is well organized and the inclusion of a referee, around the sixteenth century. Mulcaster described the game of football in English, which included a coach, set positions, referees and smaller teams.
In the year 1863, in London, football as it is played today, was first codified and afterwards, taken to other parts of the world. Ebenezer Cobb Morley, a London resident, played a key role in the setting up of modern football. Morley was among those that established the Football Association, which was the oldest football organization in the world. He penned football’s initial set of rules at his home in Barnes. In the early part of the 1870’s, the Royal Engineers F.C invented the passing game as it is known today, in London.
There were no generally accepted rules governing the game of football before the year 1863 October 26, when some teams met to play the game in London’s Great Queen Street. Blackheath Proprietary School, Surbiton, Percival House, Blackheath, Kensington School, Crystal Palace, Forest of Leytonstone, Crusaders, Civil Service and Barnes were some of the teams that participated in that initial tournament. All these teams came from various parts of London, even though many of them are now defunct.
Towards the ending of the nineteenth century, the attractiveness of football began to rise. This was largely due to a decline in the number of people who go to church and many began to look for other ways of utilizing their weekend free time. London Football Association was founded in the year 1882. Many clubs were created over the next twenty five years and most of these football clubs are still doing well up till today. Fulham is widely known as London’s oldest club that continues to play professional football.
Initially, amateur teams dominated the football played in London with most of their membership coming from ex public schoolboys. However, the working folks gradually began to join these teams as well. The first professional team in London was Woolwich Arsenal.