Tag Archives: British Football

Gabriel Maletta PCQ 3

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The Business of Soccer

Swain’s article reflects on the progression of football from a private school boy’s game into a professional sport in the later half of the 19th century in the region of Lacashire, England. Towards the middle of the 19th century rules were set in place to cement what is today known throughout in soccer. One of our early class discussions and readings focused on the various factors that led to the development of football in Brazil, specifically into a very technical and free-flowing style. A question posed by a member of the class asked why only in Brazil was this style invented. Swain seeks to answer the same question as to why in Lancashire, England was soccer able to take hold and fully evolve into a professional sport. Swain brings up many reasons, varying from the regions private schools to the Lancashire team’s easy attitudes toward player recruitment. Continue reading →

British Origins of Football and Decline of Parisian Clubs (Seth Browner PCQ 1/8/13)

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On Boswoth Field or the Playing Fields of Eton and Rugby? Who Really Invented Modern Football?, by Peter Swain and Adrian Harvey

I think it is important to begin this PCQ by acknowledging how the ascension of football to athletic prominence in the British Isles follows a trickle down pattern. Originally a sport for gentlemen, the lower middle class are largely responsible for introducing football as a spectator sport and popularizing it nationwide. This trend is similar to the trends that football followed in Brazil. Played by the landed nobility in their bucolic settings, it spread to the lower tiers of society with the arrival of immigrants and factory sponsored teams.

I think it is not ironic that the patterns of British soccer are very close to that of Brazil. First of all,  soccer’s early proponents were young educated individuals in or finishing school. In England, football “stemmed from public schools” (Swain and Harvey). To elaborate on further parallels, there was some ethnic tension in recruiting athletes. Like black people in South America, Scots were often met with obstacles when attempting to play in English clubs and their admittance on to a team was contentious. Overtime, this prejudice diminished; the same deterioration occurred in Brazil.

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