In the International Journal of the History of Sport article “On Bosworth Field or the Playing Fields of Eton and Rugby? Who Really Invented Modern Football?” One quote stuck out to me far above the rest. Authors Peter Swain and Adrian Harvey wrote “In the period up until 1850, there were at least thirteen teams playing football in Lancashire” (Harvey, 1432). While this didn’t encompass all the teams playing “football” at this time, It really shows the size of teams playing “association football”. 150 years later, there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of teams playing in England alone.

Every corner of the world has been touched by a football, and the game is still growing larger every day. As a comparison, it took christianity twice as long to be adopted by a single country (my mother’s Armenia in 301 A.D.). The point of this actually has nothing to do with soccer, but rather with globalization. Ideas spread exponentially quicker in the world we live in, whether it is the word of god or how to play the beautiful game. The reasons behind this are different for every region and area, but largely come down to the categories we discussed in class today (Trade, Education and Immigration). If soccer is the religion of the modern world, it is an accurate measure of the world we live in compared to the spread of religion thousands of years ago.