It is not necessary to go very far to know how far some English are able to arrive when what is at stake is the king sport. Just 24 hours ago the Europa League final left in the city of Bilbao scenes barbaric that remembered other times with empires in between. Therefore, the last archaeological discovery should put Europe on guard. What would happen if the English discover that in the end they were not the inventors of football?
Worse, what would happen if they discovered that they were their neighbors?
The invention of football (and its rules). The truth is that the last finding adds to others that have questioned the authorship of the sport of the ball over the English. We have already told it before, the Maya played football, or something very similar, and the same could be said of China thousands of years ago or Florentine calcium (in terms of modern rules).
Be that as it may, the last of the possible “inventors” is, perhaps, the one that can hurt the English. The friends Scots are behind.
The beginning: pig. Let’s first go with English theory. For more than a century and a half, the official history of football has been unequivocally of them. The roots of the so -called “beautiful game” have commonly tracked to the chaotic and brutal games of the so -called Mob Football in medieval England, where crowds of peasants pushed and beaten in collective struggles without clear rules for the control of an inflated pig bladder.
Over time, and to order chaos, a young London lawyer drafted in 1863 the first formal sport regulation, adopted by the Association Football, which consolidated England as the recognized cradle of modern football. That narrative, however, has now been questioned by an archaeological finding in Scotland that could force the symbolic foundations of football as known.
Mossobin’s field. The discovery, led by Ged O’Brien, founder of the Scottish Soccer Museum, and a team of archaeologists of the Archaeology Scotland, consists of what could be the oldest organized football field ever found: a rectangular extension of flat land in an old seventeenth farm in Anwoth, Kirkcudbrightshire.
The key, apparently, is in a written letter between 1627 and 1638 by Reverend Samuel Rutherford, presbyterian pastor of the local parish, where he regretted that his parishioners played Foot-Ball on Sundays in the afternoon, instead of attending religious offices. As a deterrent, Rutherford ordered to lift a row of stones to prevent the games, which archaeologists interpret as a kind of precarious sign of “forbidden to play.”
Physical tests and context. The team excavated and analyzed the land, discarding any agricultural or livestock use for the line of stones found, and determined that it dated about 400 years ago. Alignment, field configuration (about 85 X 45 meters) and documentary evidence support the hypothesis that the closest football was played there in a regular and organized.
O’Brien insists that this was not Mob Football, but a more civilized and recurring version, practiced every Sunday with implicit social rules, such as avoiding excessive violence so as not to prevent players from working the next day. The continuity and function of the field suggest a sports practice with structure and periodicity, which, if confirmed, would move south of England as the only legitimate origin of organized football.
National pride and shock. No doubt, the reaction from England has not been waiting. Steve Wood, representative of the Sheffield Home of Football organization, has responded with skepticism, claiming that you cannot know what type of “foot-ball” was played in Mossobin or establish a direct connection with modern football coded in 1863.
From that point of view, the Sheffield FC Foundation in 1857 (recognized by FIFA as the oldest club in the world) would continue to be the true starting point. But for O’Brien, that attitude is one more manifestation of English chauvinism, a subtle way of belittling the history and scottish cultural contributions. “We weren’t too poor or too small or too stupid to play football,” he said. “What was played in Mossobin was the grandfather of modern football. And he was Scottish,” he settled.
Rewriting a legend. The New York Times told that, although it is unlikely that this finding immediately replaces the official narrative accepted by global football institutions, its symbolic value is enormous. It offers an alternative look at the evolution of king sport, showing that the impulse of kick A community ball was not a sudden invention of English boarding schools, but a more widespread and old cultural expression of what was believed.
If you want also, the dispute goes beyond the pitch: a battle for the historical identity of a worldwide phenomenon, in which a small but proud nation demands its place in history books. Thus, in the 21st century, the debate on the origin of football not only faces fans or historians, but becomes a more land between two visions of greatness diametrically opposed within the British islands.
That trembles Europe.
Image | James Kirkup
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