This content was published on
The rules of modern football were codified in England in 1863 by adopting rules from Cambridge University and formed the basis of the first Football Association. But how did football and rugby become different? It was down to the quality of the pitch, the Frenchman Philippe Villemus wrote in Le Dieu football (The Football God)…
This content was published on
A football match that leads to a feature film doesn’t happen often. But that is the result of the 1954 World Cup final at the Wankdorf stadium (later renamed Stade de Suisse) in Bern. While the German team was beaten in the first round by Hungary 3-8, fortunes were turned around for the final. Germany…
The 1954 World Cup in Switzerland: records and new ideas
This content was published on
The 1954 World Cup in Switzerland will go down in the annals of football history for one figure: 140 goals scored during 26 matches in the final stage! That’s an average of 5.38 goals per game, a figure never matched and never likely to be. The Hungary team were largely responsible for the record, racking…
This content was published on
We are so used to it that we don’t even notice it anymore: footballers – and various other sportsmen and women – are numbered like ping-pong balls in a lottery. But it hasn’t always been the case. The wearing of numbered jerseys started in 1912 for a match between two teams in Sydney, Australia. It…
This content was published on
“Soon your man is going to openly start cheating on you again … Don’t panic … He is not going to abandon you for a blonde ten years your junior. He is going to forget you for 11 hairy men dripping in testosterone. You know, those ridiculous types with shiny shorts and hairy calves who…
This content was published on
Landing in Vienna offers a suggestion that the city is all about modernity: giant windmills dominate the landscape, the result of Austria’s decision to drop nuclear power. Vienna’s western railway station however comes across as cold, dirty and sad. “Vienna’s stations are ugly,” admits Christina Zurbrügg, a Swiss singer, actor and director who has lived…
This content was published on
In 1969 El Salvador and Honduras were fighting for a place in the 1970 World Cup within their qualifying zone. The political climate had been strained since the early 1960s. A Salvadorian supporter had committed suicide, Honduran supporters had died and there were riots, fires and incidents at the border … and a final victory…
This content was published on
Even more than being the king of sports, football is the king of games. All the great games involve a ball, whether it is tennis or billiards. In life the ball is what is outside the laws of life … Football owes its universality to how it has been able to maximise the effect of…
This content was published on
It is worth knowing that ball games, although practised everywhere, are sun cult symbols. The ball represents the sphere of life and the fertility that it is necessary for one to conquer and acquire. Around the ball that is the sun, this sacred and supreme centre of the world … an invisible cosmogony, a ritual…
This content was published on
Football has developed in many countries, like other sports, because it is part of the politics of the pursuit of power and the ideologies it serves. The more extreme the political regime, the more it develops an important sports politics and style and the more “official” sports possess far-reaching statutes (e.g. fascist Italy, Nazi Germany,…
