Los orígenes del fútbol

Last update 6 April, 2024 por Alberto Llopis

When football was born?, ¿dónde?, How many centuries ago? In Colgados we can not ignore the origins of what we think is the sport par excellence. For it, Today we'll look back - way back - to enter the prehistory of football and try to learn the history of this noble and passionate sport.

Beginning lesson, the first question would be What is the true story of football? Como no podría ser de otra manera, we find opinions and reasoning fit for everyone: from those who think and sentenced its origin "is diluted in the origins of the times" ( phrase that does not commit any football scholar), even those who are able to determine - without blushing - the day, date, time and place of birth of football.

Desgraciadamente, the study of documentation and books that mention the origins, does not disclose nor shed light on this matter, Although there have been many interested, but very few have been able to give a response solvent. We try to look back through time to the places where we have found traces of this game. We will travel and we will move in time to China and Japan. Curiously, the main references found people playing with a ball are women.

In ancient Japan he was already kicking a ball

It is known from ancient documents, what in Japan over a thousand years before J.C.. , women who were considered at that time, ladies of high society of clans and tribes inhabiting the Japanese islands, were the ones who killed their leisure time playing with a large ball, throwing him from one to another, contesting the ball with enthusiasm and ardor; por supuesto, we can always review, What you will have to do these very ancient football games!, obviously not our intention to link these accounts virtually unprovable contemporary football.

China already played Tsu-Chú also had a ball

No obstante, over time and from ancient China we get more reliable news, a game the Tsu-Note with many more similarities, where two teams contesting a kind of balloon that was to enter through a hole practiced in the center of a large silk frames about ten meters high were.

Tse tse and Tao Yang mentioned in his writings this game during the era of the Chinese emperor Cheng Ti, a century before our era. This game or sport of that time, It was practiced to commemorate and celebrate popular events and social, Emperor ephemeris, important victories of the imperial armies.

In classical Greece and Rome and playing with balls

Let the old Asians to get into the time of our Greek ancestors, Homer in Greece. Who is not aware of the famous "Odyssey "of Homer?, Total affirms categorically that "Ulysses" on the island of the Phaeacians, He was awakened by the cries of the lovely and beautiful Nausicaa playing with her friends to the ball.

The testimonies of this story of Homer have been in graphics on amphorae and papyri, where ancient Greeks were playing ball in the 776 before J.C., date of the first Greek Olympics in which there are reports. At the time this game was called "Episkyros".

Leaving behind Ancient Greece, we enter the Imperial Rome, and re-ask the same question what is so practiced games like these do more than 2000 years with football today?, Evidently there is little resemblance, but arguably these manifestations of which we have news (SPORT IN GRECE AND ROME Escritor. Harold Arthur Harris), where a number of people collectively and interest group have a simple ball, can be considered - with all the reserves in the world - as a kind of what we now know as football.

Needless to say, without hesitation, the known fact that during the splendor of the Roman Empire, Imperial legionnaires use their free time between battles trying to hit some kind of ball (possibly round) low weight, hand and clenched fist in a kind of metallic leather glove. This game called him “haspartum”, He is played with a kind of balloon inflated, it is said that Julius Caesar was one of its most committed practitioners.

In this sense, It has already been voices that have marked this game, which was later practiced by Germanic tribes (the Francos) when they formed part of the Roman Empire, and?, mas adelante, passed north of Spain, but highly evolved and what we now know as "play ball", or call, the pediment. In future articles we will continue to advance the Middle Ages , Francia, England until our days.