WHO INVENTED FOOTBALL?
- Lions Football Mag
- Oct 25, 2025
- 5 min read
Today, everyone in the world knows the word "football". But it took centuries for this sport to become what it has been in recent years, so who invented football and where?
Paris FC was founded in 1972, and although that was more than fifty years ago, it is a relatively recent club in the history of football. The world's most popular sport, at least in its modern form as we know it, dates back more than 150 years! And if we're talking about the simple game of kicking a ball around, then we can go back even further in time. But among all these years of existence, where was football really born and, above all, who created the sport?
The origins of football in ancient times
Far from being the football we know today, traces of similar games can be found in ancient civilisations.
As in ancient Greece, in the 9th century BC, there was a ball game called Episkyros, which was played by teams of 12 to 14 players. Episkyros tournaments were organised, particularly in the city of Sparta, making it one of the first known organised football competitions. However, this game allowed the use of hands. Years later, Episkyros spread beyond national borders, with the Romans adopting it in their own way and naming their new version Harpastum. Harpastum was very popular with legionnaires and spread throughout Europe following the conquests of the Roman Empire.
Cuju can also be described as one of the oldest forms of football, at least according to Joseph Blatter, former president of FIFA. Cuju originated in China and was a training exercise practised by soldiers, who would pass and juggle the ball. This game, which originated between the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC, was intended to keep soldiers physically fit.
Soule, the ancestor of medieval football
In 1147, the first written mention of Soule in France appeared, a ball game played with feet and hands in teams, with rules varying according to the regions where it was practised. Nevertheless, we know that teams had to put the ball in a goal to win. This sport was also played in England, where the first written records date back to 1174. Soule, often played violently, was banned several times by local authorities and even by the king.
The first documented use of the word ‘football’ appears in a decree issued by Nicholas de Farndone, Lord Mayor of London, in 1314, banning ‘football’ because of the damage caused by the sport. Soule was renamed folk football by English-speaking sports historians to distinguish it from modern football. The sport was indeed very popular among the ‘common people’, as highlighted in the book Reminiscences of Eton (Eton is an English college) published in 1831. This book bears witness to the presence of folk football in English schools.
The birth of modern football
In 1863, an Englishman named Ebenezer Coob Morley, then captain of the Mortlake-based club, suggested in the British newspaper Bell's Life that rules for football should be created, following the example of cricket. At that time, the rules still varied between sports associations and schools. This led to a meeting in a London pub on 26 October 1863 with representatives from 12 London clubs. Eleven of them agreed to form the Football Association (FA). The aim was simple: to standardise the rules of the sport nationally and internationally.
Here are the 11 founding clubs of the FA:
Barnes
Blackheath
Blackheath Proprietary School
Civil Service Football Club
Crusaders
Crystal Palace (Not to be confused with Crystal Palace Football Club, founded in 1905.)
Kensington School
Forest Football Club (in Leytonstone) which would later become Wanderers Football Club
No Names Club (or N. N. Kilburn)
Percival House (Blackhealth)
Surbiton
Ebenezer Cobb Morley was the first secretary of the English Football Association (1863–1866) and its second president (1867–1874). He wrote the first draft of the rules of the game, the ‘Laws of the Game’, a set of rules that notably prohibited carrying the ball with the hands, which definitively distinguished football from rugby. This codification marked the true beginning of football as we know it today, also known as ‘association football’ or “soccer” (short for ‘association’).
Football officially became professional in England in 1885, after years of tension between working-class clubs in the north and amateur elite clubs in the south. This allowed players to be paid, and led to the creation of the Football League in 1888, the first regular professional competition.
Structured football quickly spread beyond England's borders, spreading throughout Europe and then around the world thanks to British sailors, railway workers, labourers and colonists. Clubs were formed, competitions were created (such as the FA Cup in 1871), and national federations were established, culminating in the founding of FIFA in Paris in 1904. Football thus became a global phenomenon, codified and organised.
How football became what it is today
The contemporary era of football is the one we know today. It began at the turn of the 1990s, with major transformations that brought the sport into the era of globalisation, business and new technologies. In 1992, the creation of the Premier League in England marked a turning point: for the first time, a league was conceived as an attractive audiovisual product, supported by significant television rights signed with the private channel Sky Sports.
In 1995, the Bosman ruling paved the way for the complete liberalisation of the player market in Europe: players are free to change clubs at the end of their contracts, and nationality quotas have been abolished within the European Union.
In the years that followed, football saw the arrival of major foreign investors, the development of club marketing, the widespread use of technology (VAR, data, GPS, etc.), and an explosion in salaries and transfers. Football then entered a new era, where spectacle, profitability and global visibility took centre stage. The new version of the FIFA Club World Cup in 2025 is a good example of this: creating a highly profitable global event with international sponsors, global broadcasters and maximum exposure. And, above all, heavily criticised by players, coaches and supporters.
Football has evolved considerably and bears little resemblance to its earlier versions, even the one created by the FA in 1863. Over the years, football has become the number one sport in terms of popularity and revenue generated. FIFA reports that there are approximately 265 million active players worldwide, and the European market grew by 8% in 2023/24 to reach a record €38 billion.
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