Games revolving around the kicking of a ball have been played in many countries throughout history. According to FIFA, the "very earliest form of the game for which there is scientific evidence was an exercise of precisely this skilful technique dating back to the 2nd and 3rd centuries B.C. in China."[3] In addition, the Roman games Harpastum may be a distant ancestor of football. Various forms of football were played in medieval Europe, though rules varied greatly by both period and location. Whilst football has continued to be played in various forms throughout Britain, the English public schools (fee-paying schools) are widely credited with certain key achievements in the creation of modern football (association football and the rugby football games - rugby league and rugby union football). The evidence suggests that during the sixteenth century English public schools generally, and headmaster Richard Mulcaster in particular, were instrumental in taking football away from its violent "mob" form and turning it into an organised team sport that was beneficial to schoolboys. Therefore, the game became institutionalised, regulated, and part of a larger, more central tradition. Many early descriptions of football and references to it (e.g. poetry) were recorded by people who had studied at these schools, showing they were familiar with the game. Finally, in the 19th century, teachers and former students were the first to write down formal rules of early modern football to enable matches to be played between schools. The rules of football as they are codified today are effectively based on the mid-19th-century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played at the public schools of England. The first ever set of football rules were written at Eton College in 1815. The Cambridge Rules were a code of football rules, first drawn up at Cambridge University in 1848, which have influenced the development of Association football (also known simply as "football", or soccer) and subsequent codes. The Cambridge Rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1848, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury schools, but they were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world to play various forms of football. Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club (formed by former pupils from Harrow) in 1857, which led to formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules.[4] These ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association (The FA) in 1863 which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemason's Tavern in Great Queen Street, London.[5] The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse. The Freemason's Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between October and December, which eventually produced the first comprehensive set of rules. At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath, withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting, the first which allowed for the running with the ball in hand and the second, obstructing such a run by hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Other English rugby clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA but instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union. The eleven remaining clubs, under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley, went on to ratify the original thirteen laws of the game. The Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s. The laws of the game are currently determined by the International Football Association Board (IFAB). The Board was formed in 1886[6] after a meeting in Manchester of The Football Association, the Scottish Football Association, the Football Association of Wales, and the Irish Football Association. The world's oldest football competition is the FA Cup, which was founded by C. W. Alcock and has been contested by English teams since 1872. The first official international football match took place in 1872 between Scotland and England in Glasgow, again at the instigation of C. W. Alcock. England is home to the world's first football league, which was founded in 1888 by Aston Villa director William McGregor.[7] The original format contained 12 clubs from the Midlands and the North of England. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the international football body, was formed in Paris in 1904 and declared that they would adhere to Laws of the Game of the Football Association.[8] The growing popularity of the international game led to the admittance of FIFA representatives to the International Football Association Board in 1913. The board currently consists of four representatives from FIFA and one representative from each of the four British associations. Map showing the popularity of football around the world. Countries where football is the most popular sport are coloured green, while countries where it is not are coloured red. The various shades of green and red indicate the number of players per 1,000 inhabitants. Map showing the popularity of football around the world. Countries where football is the most popular sport are coloured green, while countries where it is not are coloured red. The various shades of green and red indicate the number of players per 1,000 inhabitants. Today, football is played at a professional level all over the world, and millions of people regularly go to football stadia to follow their favourite team,[9] whilst billions more watch the game on television.[10] A very large number of people also play football at an amateur level. According to a survey conducted by FIFA and published in the spring of 2001, over 240 million people regularly play football in more than 200 countries in every part of the world.[11] Its simple rules and minimal equipment requirements have no doubt aided its spread and growth in popularity. In many parts of the world football evokes great passions and plays an important role in the life of individual fans, local communities, and even nations; it is therefore often claimed to be the most popular sport in the world. ESPN has spread the claim that the Côte d'Ivoire national football team helped secure a truce to the nation's civil war in 2005. By contrast, however, football is widely considered to be the final proximate cause in the Football War in June 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras. The sport also exacerbated tensions at the beginning of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, when a Red Star Belgrade-at-Dinamo Zagreb match devolved into rioting in March 1990

Football-like games predate recorded history in all parts of the world.

Nobby Charlton

Probably China (they seem to have invented everything) the modern game was invented in England, and the first league was formed in the late 19th century. The oldest club is Notts County

A great article on how to play soccer from eHow.com.

me. and i was quite sad that kagome's article didn't have any mention of it.

well i have seen in a Greek archeological museum an ancient Greek playing with a ball but i doubt that they were playing with the same rules:P

The English after they beheaded the enemy and started kicking the head around

In short, the English laid down the rules of what was to become the game of Association Football..... them most popular sport in the world. Incidently the word that the English hate so much...... soccer actually derives from 'soc' in association football.

Someone somwhere started playing with a can.

Who?

How do you know it was England, i thought it was SCOTLAND!

china invented football however association football was formalised by england in 1646.

in uk people started a game by picking up a soccer ball and running with it, with a few tweaks it became rugby. Rugby was later introduced to America and became very popular but some wante the game to be more methodical so by stopping play every time the ball carrier was tackled led to the birth of American football

i was tought that back thousands of years ago they played to the death who ever lost the game got slaughtered but idk who started that guess i should have paied more attenchion in history lectures

The Chinese, though the modern game of football, or soccer if you prefer, was invented in a place called the Freemasons Tavern in London, founded in 1863.

The beautiful game of football was invented and first played in Aberdeen, Scotland. A pocket sized book called Vocabula which was written in Latin in 1633 is the earliest recording of a game of football. It was written by Aberdeen Grammar School teacher and school-master David Wedderburn. The book was translated in Hungary in the 1950s. The original football game was not quite the civilised game that is played today - it was more a free for all with no set rules and that got unruly at times. However the Vocabula book shows that the game had the structure of the first laws of football from 1863. For example one passage of the book read: "Let us pick sides. Those who are on the outside come over here. Kick off, so that we can begin the match...Pass it here." Other passages describe ball passing and goal scoring. The book was written over 200 years before the English Football Association (FA) claim to have invented the game and set the rules in 1863.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans are known to have played many ball games, some of which involved the use of the feet. The Roman game harpastum is believed to have been adapted from a team game known as "επισκυρος" (episkyros) or phaininda, which is mentioned by a Greek playwright, Antiphanes (388–311 BC) and later referred to by the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215 AD). The Roman politician Cicero (106-43 BC) describes the case of a man who was killed whilst having a shave when a ball was kicked into a barber's shop. These games appear to have resembled rugby football. Roman ball games already knew the air-filled ball, the follis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football#History

Apparently England lost getting the venue for the Football World Cup because the English used a promotional slogan that really annoyed a number of other nations. The slogan was: Football's Coming Home.

Games like soccer has always existed in different ancient cultures. It's not a game that was invented on one single day like basketball.

The Chinese are generally considered to have invented it.

England invented football (soccer). End of story.

Soccer was first played in an ancient form in China during the 2nd and 3rd Century BC. The Romans also played a distant representation of the game. But it was in Britain where soccer as we know it today was played mainly by public school students.

the person who invented football was called jordan barron he is ginger and lives in greencroft which is in county durham he was born on 5th of feb 2008 and he is very gay!!