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1863: Football Association founded in London, England
There had been rules in the past. Too many and often conflicting - that was the problem. With its origins in mob football, an often violent game played on holy days in English towns and villages in which an anything-goes philosophy was adopted to get the ball to designated ends, differences early on centred on the amount of handling and hacking involved.

From the early 19th Century, games were first contested on the pitches, playgrounds and cloisters of England’s public schools, but Eton’s way of playing would differ to Harrow’s, theirs to Winchester’s, to Charterhouse’s and so on to the ultimate extreme at Rugby. Frustrated, undergraduates at Cambridge attempted to unify the rules in the mid-to-late 1840s and those rules would largely be accepted on a blustery autumn morning on 26 October 1863. At London’s Freemason’s Tavern, between a pie and a pint, sandwich and whisky, representatives from 12 clubs and schools from the London area met to bang out a code for the game.

One school, Blackheath, refused to accept the non-inclusion of hacking (kicking below the knee) and walked out but the 11 others agreed to form the Football Association. Under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley, 14 laws were penned to a game that would in the following century break its little England origins to become the most played, watched and talked about activity on the planet.

1872: First International: Scotland 0 – 0 England (Partick, Scotland, attendance: 4,000)
On a rain-soaked cricket pitch on Saturday, 30 November (St. Andrew’s Day), Scotland entertained England in the first football match between two countries. In the year preceding the formation of the Scottish FA, Queen’s Park represented Scotland and wore blue shirts, white “Knickerbockers” (shorts) and blue-and-white hooped socks, while England wore white shirts and knickerbockers and socks according to the colours of their public school. Both teams employed what might today be considered rather attacking formations – Scotland (2-2-6), England (1-1-8) – but back then the game still retained many of the mob-football characteristics of kicking and rushing and, in tactics at least, probably more closely resembled modern day rugby than football.

Although the new game was more developed in England where the first football competition, the FA Challenge Cup, had been contested the previous year among a growing number of club sides, it was Scotland’s revolutionary passing tactics that proved the more effective. No goals were scored on the day but the number of paying spectators meant the fixture would continue and the country north of the border went on to claim eight victories in the first 12 England-Scotland encounters.

1886: First meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB)
Despite the unification of the rules and the creation of the Football Association in 1863, disputes, largely involving Sheffield clubs who had announced their own set of ideas in 1857, persisted into the late 1870s. However the creation of the International Football Association Board finally put an end to all arguments. Saturday holidays, the banning of blood sports, the sprouting railway system and a growing working class, both moneyed and passionate about the game, all contributed to the rise in football’s popularity.

It meant a body to protect and preserve the rules had become a necessity. Made up of two representatives from each of the four associations of the United Kingdom (the FAs of Wales and Ireland had been founded in 1876 and 1880 respectively), the IFAB met for the first time on 2 June 1886 to guard the Laws of the Game. Then, as today, a three-quarters majority was needed for a proposal to be passed.

1891: Referees, penalties and nets
There was no such thing as a penalty up until 1891. Born in England’s public schools of Victorian England, a gentleman, it was assumed, would never deliberately commit a foul. Although the advent of professionalism in 1885 had served to increase the growing number of working-class men to the sport, the inclusion of the penalty, or as it was originally called “the kick of death”, was more likely a consequence of increased competition and a commitment to fairness. It became one of a number of dramatic changes to the Laws of the Game in 1891.

Penalties, of course, had to be awarded by someone and following a proposal from the Irish Association, the referee was allowed onto the field of play. True to its gentlemanly beginnings, disputes were originally settled by the two team captains, but, as the stakes grew, so did the number of complaints.

By the time the first FA Cup and international fixture took place, two umpires, one per team, were being employed to whom each side could appeal. But it was not the ideal solution as decisions, some more favourable than others, were only arrived at following lengthy delays and several appeals. The referee, at first, stood on the touchline keeping time and was “referred” to if the umpires could not agree but that all changed in 1891. From that date a single person with powers to send players off as well as give penalties and free kicks without listening to appeals became a permanent fixture in the game, while the two umpires were made linesman or “assistant referees” as they are called now.

Also during that meeting in Scotland the goal net was accepted into the laws, completing the make-up of the goal after the introduction of the crossbar to replace tape 16 years previously.  

1902: The pitch makes its mark
Many of the markings we see today in pitches throughout the world are as a direct result of those and other laws as the game quickly began to find its legs. From village fields to parks and cricket pitches, the size of the playing area had gradually reduced over the years. Originally, of course, there were no markings, but with the introduction of rules and specific football stadiums came the white lines.

The kick-off required a centre spot; keeping players ten yards from kick off, brought the centre circle; a game of two halves, meant a centre line; throw-ins, two-handed from 1882 were taken behind the sidelines; goalkicks (1869) and corners (1873) fashioned the goal line and corner arc. When the penalty came in in 1891, it was not taken from a spot but anywhere along a 12-yard line before 1902.

The 1902 decision to award penalties for fouls committed in an area 18 yards from the goal line and 44 yards wide, created both the penalty box and penalty spot. Another box “goal area”, commonly called the “six-yard-box”, six yards long and 20 wide, replaced a semi circle in the goalmouth. However it was not for another 35 years that the final piece of the jigsaw, the “D” shape drawn at the end of the penalty area, was brought in to allow the penalty-taker a clear run up.

1904: FIFA founded
By the turn of the 20th century, the new sport was having just as dramatic an effect in other parts of the world as in the United Kingdom. News of the game rippled across the seas and spread quickly into European lands, while British sailors found plenty of willing playmates on their journeys to the four corners of the globe. Football associations and federations sprang up all over the world and in May 1904, FIFA was founded in Paris with seven original members: France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain (represented by Madrid FC), Sweden and Switzerland.

There was some initial disquiet in the United Kingdom to the idea of a world body governing the sport it had created rules for, but this uncertainty was brushed aside within a couple of years and the former FA board member Daniel Burley Woolfall replaced Frenchman Robert Guérin as FIFA President in 1906 - the year the FA joined. Up to 1918, the year the First World War ended, the Englishman strove to promote a unified football code throughout the planet.

1913: FIFA joins the Board
While kings and politicians were forming a defensive alliance system that would eventually lead to global war, football was helping to make friends. Many more European associations joined the FIFA ranks before South Africa (1909/1910), Argentina and Chile (1912) and USA (1913) became the first non-European members.

enin may have seen football as a diversion to dull the political consciousness of the proletariat but the game was kicking off in nations just as the new concept of leisure was giving populations free time. There were firsts in North America, where Canada defeated the U.S. 1-0 in New Jersey in 1885, in South America where Argentina and Uruguay played out a 0-0 draw in Buenos Aires in 1905 and in Asia where the Philippines overcame China in Manila in 1913.

As a consequence of the evolution of the game and the expanding number of associations (20 by the end of WW1), FIFA was welcomed onto the IFAB and given the same voting powers as the four U.K. associations put together. There remained eight votes and the same 75% majority needed for a proposal to be passed, but instead of two each, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland now had one, while FIFA was given four. Balanced so football’s world governing body needed the support of half the original associations to approve a change, while being able to block a proposal alone, it was felt the Board would retain its necessary conservatism while maintaining a progressive attitude to the game.

It was largely thanks to this philosophy that despite a turbulent next three decades bringing two world wars and social upheaval, football not only survived but prospered with the dream of an international competition finally realised in 1930 in Uruguay.

1925: from all to 3 to 2, offside comes of age
Just like expressions such as attack, defence, winger, forward and shoot, the term offside has military roots. “Off the strength of your side” or “off your side” meant an attacking player ahead of the ball was in an illegal position. The offside rule, similar to that used in rugby today, formed part of the original rules in 1863.

In early tactical systems, teams would field as many as eight forwards as the only means of advancing the ball was by dribbling or scrummaging. However, there was strong opposition to this approach from Sheffield, whose rules did not include offside. Differences were eventually resolved in the late 1860s when the FA made the momentous decision to adopt the three-player rule, where an attacker would be called offside if positioned in front of the third last defender.

It is perhaps the most radical change in the way the game has been played and from that moment on, passing became an integral part of football and to many the beautiful game was born. The number of goals increased, aided by the 1912 rule preventing goalkeepers from handling the ball outside the penalty area and another in 1920 banning offsides from throw-ins. In 1925, the three-player offside rule became a two-player one, representing another radical change that propelled the game further forward.

1938 and 1997: Cleaning off the cobwebs
With the original Laws penned in the language of Victorian England, coupled with more than half a century of changes and amendments, it was felt that the Laws of the Game, now totalling 17, needed a bit of a makeover in 1937.

Stanley Rous, a member of the IFAB and the official who first employed the diagonal system of refereeing, was chosen as the ideal man for the gargantuan job. The Englishman, who would become FIFA President in 1961, began cleaning off the cobwebs and drafting the Laws into a rational order. So painstaking was Sir Stanley’s work and so few the changes to the game’s rules in a period when the game really took off that only in 1997, almost 60 years later, was the need felt to simplify the text further (by 30%) and modernise the language.

1990s: “For the Good of the Game”
By the time the 1990s came around the game had developed into a worldwide phenomenon equalled by no other sporting activity. Together with national championships, continental competitions and World Cups were created to satisfy the demands of fans that had identified with their club and country.

Television only intensified spectators’ seemingly insatiable desire and as well as making global stars out of many players and transforming those pitch markings into one of the most recognisable designs on the planet, it brought millions more to the game and to an instant comprehension of rules set down in the back room of a small London pub many moons ago.

From its embryonic beginnings in the mid-to-late 19th Century through to its adolescence at the turn of the 20th Century, the Laws of the Game had grown up remarkably well. Their simple and clear logic made them palatable to one and all and the rules’ emphasis on sportsmanship was found to be an equally seductive ingredient.

However perhaps for the first time in football’s long history, there were signs in the 1980s that audiences were beginning to turn off. Tribal rivalry and nationalistic fervour had been a by-product of the sport’s social and emotional impact and occasionally high passions spilled over into violence.

Popularity and money led to greater professionalism in football and on the field of play with so much more riding on results, defensive tactics had largely gained the upper hand, with the spectacle suffering. By the late 1980s, there was general agreement that the Laws of the Game should be fine-tuned in light of these developments.

These major amendments, often referred to as for the “Good of the Game”, were designed to help promote attacking football. They began with the offside law in 1990. The advantage was now given to the attacking team. If the attacker was inline with the penultimate defender, he was onside, instead of off. And in the same year, the “professional foul” - denying an opponent a clear goalscoring opportunity – became a sending-off offence.

Despite these changes, tactics during the 1990 FIFA World Cup Italy™ suggested something more needed to be done. And two years later, the IFAB made one of the most dramatic moves in its history when it banned goalkeepers from handling deliberate back passes. The Board had proved it could be progressive when called upon as well as conservative. And although the new rule was greeted with scepticism by some at first, in the fullness of time it would become widely appreciated. Referees had already been stamping down on simulation or cheating by handing out yellow cards to offenders and in 1998, the fierce tackle from behind became a red-card offence. With all these amendments along with the promotion of sportsmanship and return to its gentlemanly roots, the 1990s commitment to forward thinking football was complete.

And so with football breaking new boundaries, the IFAB, a body seldom recognised by the public at large, convened on 28 February, and just as it has done for each year since 1886, contemplated the game to ensure football continues to achieve the same success in the 21st Century as it had in its first two.

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