The rules of soccer (or football, or more specifically "association football") are, as in every sport, ever changing and evolving. Substitutions, the offside rule, methods for breaking ties: over time, the organizations (first the FA, then the International Football Association Board) governing the sport have made changes as the need arose. Many of those rules, the ones so ubiquitous in the sport today, are taken for granted; to wonder where they originated, or how the game itself started is beyond the concern of most fans.




But I'm history buff; for me, understanding how something came to be is almost as enjoyable to appreciating the way it is. To that end, the pocket-sized book The Rules of Association Football, 1863 is a fascinating glimpse at just how "the beautiful game" loved the world over came to be.


The book includes a brief but biting foreword by Sir Bobby Charlton, as well as in introduction to the history behind the book by Melvyn Bragg. Bragg lays out the coming together of men representing some of England's prominent universities to codify the rules of "football", a set of meetings which was in fact the creation of the Football Association. These men, after rejecting several rules which would later became a part of the evolution of rugby, laid out thirteen basic rules to govern the game.


Recreations of the rules as they were handwritten at the final meeting are accompanied by typed versions. Individually, each rule itself isn't of particular interest (save for rule thirteen; I won't ruin the surprise); but collectively, the rules as a group are an interesting peak at the birth of the game.


The Rules of Association Football, 1863 isn't much; but it's worth a look because it illustrates just how humble the origins of soccer/football/futbol were, and how something as small as writing down a few rules would give birth to a all-encompassing game with its rich sporting history that dominates so much of the world today.