How soccer began ?  

As far back as 2500 BCE   the Chinese played a kicking game called tsu chu . Similar   games were played by the Romans and North American Indians . In England in medieval  times "mob soccer" was wildly popular. In 1583 , Philip Stubbs said of soccer players : " sometimes their necks are broken , sometimes their backs , sometimes heir legs , sometimes their arms."

     By the mid-19th century , with the help of English   public schools , the game bad became less violent . Each school had different rules for playing the game . Problems arose when boys from the different schools went to the university of Oxford and Cambridge and wanted to continue playing . This is from the description of a match played in Cambridge in 1848.                                                                                              "...The result was chaos , as every man played the rules he had been accustomed to at his school . "

 

               

It became common to play a half a match by one side's rules, the second half by the other's . That's how half-time came about . However , this was not good enough for the university men . They decided to sort out the rules once and for all. On Monday , October 26, 1863 , they met in London . By the end of the day they had formed the Soccer Association , and a Book of Laws was on its way. The sticking point was whether a player could pick up the ball and run with it or not , and this was not decided until December 8. From this decision the games of both soccer and rugby were born .