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Soccer Script
Hi. Good morning. How are you today? I hope you are having a good week. Today, I want to talk to you about football … soccer. Before that though, don’t forget, as always, if you click on the link in the description below here, you can find the script for this talk, you can find questions and you can find answers. You can practice your listening, your reading, your writing and your speaking, if you do the answers out loud.
Today, football … soccer. Where does football come from? Well, ball sports are very very natural. Humans kick naturally and there are many many round objects in the world. It is natural for us to kick round objects, so it’s quite natural that ball sports would develop. China had a sport called “cuju” from about 250 BC. Cuju basically means kick ball. Japan had one as well, Kemari, which again was a ball sport. Greece had “episkyros” in 250 AD. And Rome of course, had a game called “harpastum”. These were all played with inflated sheep or a pig’s bladder. Basically, you would take the bladder from the animal, you would fill it with air and you would seal it up. And it holds the air pretty well of course. The difference I suppose, in Asia these games were mostly ceremonial, whereas in Greece and Rome there was a large amount of violence in the games as well. They were probably more like today’s rugby than football. But, still, ball sports are very natural.
So, as we go through history, ball sports spread out across the world and they came into central Europe and up of course into England, where I’m from, and from about 8 … 900 AD, we have basically mob football. Now, this again uses an inflated pig’s bladder but the difference here is that rather than having a few players on each side, and a goal at each end, you basically have two towns or two villages against each other. You have hundreds of people on each side, and these games can last an entire day. Basically, the ball starts in the middle, and each team uses whatever methods they want to get the ball to the other end’s goal. They’re basically part of a celebration, part of a festival, and there are no real rules. Anything short of murder is allowed. Occasionally people have been killed in these games, but hopefully not so much these days. These games are still played. Some places in England still have an annual town versus town football match, which can be quite interesting to watch. I don’t know if I’d recommend taking part in it.
Anyway, so, we have a game of football. It’s very very different to modern football of course, and that game continues until 1835. In 1835 England decided to standardize its roads and to do that they brought out the Highway Act of 1835. They basically brought out a list of rules that you had to follow for every road and one of those rules of course, was no ball sports to be played on a public highway. If you have private roads that’s fine, but if you’re playing on a public road, you cannot play. So, these mob football games came to an end. They couldn’t play anymore. Plus, also, at that time, from about the 1770s onwards, after the industrial revolution basically, the working people who live in the cities, they don’t have time to keep playing. They’re working six days a week, twelve hours a day. Even the children are working. So, there’s no time for them to play, or take up a game like football.
So, how does football go from being a “Mob Rules” game, played by poor people, to the game it is today? Well, of course, it was taken up by wealthy people. From about 1500 onwards, many of the public schools in England started to play organized ball sports games similar to modern football. In the 1500s, there weren’t that many public schools, but as we go through the next two, three hundred years, and as you get more and more wealthy people, you have more and more public schools. And, as we get more and more public schools, we get more and more different types of football. We’ll talk about that in a second. There is some evidence that football was being played in the 1500s. William Horman, the headmaster of Eton public school at the time, in 1519 he actually wrote a Latin textbook for his students. And, one of the sentences he had the students translate from Latin into English was, “we will play with a ball full of wind,” which is pretty much the first reference we have to football in England.
So, as we go into the 1800s, we have more and more and more public schools, and each one of these schools is playing their own version of football. And that’s fine, as long as they keep within the school there’s no real problem there. Of course, in the 1840s, the rail network in Britain starts to be developed. We have trains that now run between the major industrial centers of England. Now, because we have these trains, the people from these public schools can travel to other public schools and we can have inter school competitions. That sounds like a great idea, unless of course you consider that each school is playing by their own set of rules. When you have two schools meeting, how do they play a game? They have to spend the first few hours deciding which set of rules to follow. “So, should we take some of your rules and some of our rules and mix them? What should we do?” So, of course, having no standardized form of football does start to present problems.
So, people sit down, and they think, “OK. We’ve got to have some kind of rule system!” So, 1848, Cambridge University, a few people sit down, and they make the Cambridge rules. Now, these rules have some properties that we still use today, but also quite a lot of differences. One of the major ones being of course that you could carry the ball with your hands and also that you could tackle players. You could sweep their feet out from under them, which of course you’re not allowed to do today. 1848, the Cambridge rules. They were not taken up by many schools, so we still have the same problem continuing. 1863, Ebenezer Cobb Morley. He is known as the father of modern football. He’s known as that for a good reason. He basically founded the F.A. The Football Association. He sat down in his house and he said to himself, “we have all these schools playing football! We need a proper standardized set of rules.” So, he made them. He wrote down his laws of the game. That’s why he’s known as the father of modern football.
Incidentally, I said at the beginning of this talk I was going to talk about football, and then I paraphrased it soccer. Why is that? Well, in America, of course, people call this game soccer. In England we call it football, and we always say to Americans, “this game is called football! You play it with your feet! It’s not called soccer!” But, I found out, researching this talk, that the word soccer didn’t come from America, it actually comes from England. In the beginning, with the F.A. … well, what does FA stand for? Football Association, the game was called Association Football. Now, British people are very lazy. We like to shorten words. For example, rugby is quite often shortened to rugger. Association. What would you shorten that to? Soc? Soc’s hard to say. Soccer, rolls off the tongue much more easily. So, in the 1860s, 1870s, this game was called soccer. And then, of course, the word soccer went across to America with the game, and they kept it. However, in England, after the Second World War, we decided that the word soccer was too Americanized. Of course, in America, they have their own game of football: American football. They kept soccer to refer to football and they used football to refer to American football. So, we decided the word soccer was too Americanized. So, we stopped using it. So, after the Second World War, we reverted from soccer to football. So, now most people when they meet an American and they say, “No, the game’s called football, you play it with your feet,” they should think that actually, originally, in England, we called the game soccer. So, Americans are not at fault. In fact, Americans are staying truer to the tradition of the sport.
So, Ebenezer Cobb Morley, he comes up with the F.A. rules. He comes up with his code of conduct. Now, you need more than one person, you need more than one school, to take up these rules of course. So, on the 23rd of October 1863, in the Freemasons Tavern, Covent Garden, which is in London, we had the very first F.A. meeting. About six of the main teams came together for that meeting, and in that meeting they decided which rules to stick with. However, the first point of contention came up with some people wanted to stick with the Cambridge rules and some people wanted to use the new F.A. rules. Now, the Cambridge rules remember, meant you could carry the ball while you run, and they also meant you could tackle. The people that liked the Cambridge rules, they had a split with the other group of teams, and they went off on their own and they actually formed Rugby Union. So, today, we have the games rugby and soccer, but they have the same root. They come from the same place. They split in 1863 when rugby players went off wanting to carry the ball and tackle and be violent, which they do, and soccer players wanted to be more elegant, I suppose.
So, 1863, we have the F.A. Cup rules. So, in the 1860s, we start to get the growth in teams. We have, of course, all the public-school teams. We also start to get some nonpublic school teams developing. However, there are no professional players until 1885, there are only amateur players. In fact, the F.A. actually banned any professional players from playing the game. Now, of course, that meant that no working-class people could play. Only wealthy people could play because if you were working class, you had to work. You didn’t have time to play football. However, in 1885, they finally loosened that rule and they allowed professional players. That meant a team could pay its players, which meant the working-class people could now play soccer. However, they stipulated that all these players must have lived within ten kilometers of the home team’s ground for within two-years. So, they were quite strict, unlike today where we have players from all over the world. Whoever can pay the most gets the best players.
So, the 1860s we get more teams. 1867, we have the very first soccer competition. It’s called the Youdan Cup, and it comes from Sheffield. And then, 1872, we have the first F.A. Cup. Now, this was instrumental in bringing together all of the soccer teams and introducing the F.A. Cup rules because the F.A. Cup was very very popular. However, if you wanted to join in the F.A. Cup, if you wanted to take part, you had to abide by their rules. So, thanks to the F.A. Cup, all these teams came together, and they started to take on the F.A. Cup rules, and once the majority began to follow them, it snowballed. We had a tipping point, and then more and more teams took it up until the F.A. rules governed the entire soccer body. In 1888, the first league was developed. In 1895, the first women’s match was played. In 1930 we had the first World Cup. And, of course, now we have soccer as you see it today. There have been a few changes since the original rules, a few things have been modernized and adapted and cut. Players have changed as well of course. The uniforms have changed, the level of pay … of salary has also changed as well. These days, soccer players are basically superstars.
So two more points with soccer, I suppose. The first one is, wealth. I just touched on that. These days soccer players are paid very large sums of money. Ronaldo, probably the world’s most famous soccer player, is currently worth about 350 million dollars. Some people would argue he doesn’t deserve it. Some people would argue he does. That’s entirely your opinion. I’m not going to talk about that. However, one of the things about soccer is, that a lot of people living in poor areas, a lot of children living in slums, living in poverty, they see soccer as a way out of the slums. They see that if they become very good at soccer and they get picked up by a talent scout, they can find a way to fortune, to success. However, of course, the amount of soccer players that are actually chosen from those slums is a minuscule amount. It’s nought point nought nought nought one percent, I suppose. But, it does give a dream to these poor people, as it did in England back in the early 19th century when poor people became professional soccer players. They had a way out of poverty. So, if you go to countries like Brazil, countries with a lot of poverty, you do see a lot of people playing soccer. It’s also a very easy game to play and you don’t need to buy much equipment. As long as you have a ball, you can basically play soccer.
The second thing. We can’t really talk about soccer without talking about hooliganism. Soccer hooliganism. I’m from England, which of course was famous for its hooligans. Not so much these days. Other countries have taken the mantle from us, but up until about ten, fifteen years ago, England was very very famous for its soccer hooligans. So, why do we have hooliganism associated with soccer? Well, firstly, it’s not because of the soccer. The soccer is the excuse for the hooligans. They’re basically using this as an excuse to fight. There is no inherent thing in soccer that makes people want to fight. However, unlike other teams, and I’m not sure why this is, people invest much more of their sense of identity into their soccer team. If your team are doing well, or if your team are losing, it affects you as a person. You don’t see people supporting cricket or people supporting rugby being that invested in their team. Maybe they are. I don’t know. But with soccer, it becomes almost as though your team is your country, and to defend your country, to be patriotic, to defend your country, to defend your team, is almost the same thing. So, when two teams come together, it’s not the same as two sports teams coming together, it’s almost as though two countries are coming together. It’s a very interesting condition.
And, of course, most of the hooligans are men. I have never ever heard of women being hooligans. I mean, it may happen, probably does happen, but because it’s basically ritualized male violence you only really get men committing these acts of hooliganism. And something that came out in the 1980s, 1990s, was that these groups of hooligans were actually being organized. They had central committees. They had organization, almost like a paramilitary organization. They would target matches, they would target groups, they would meet at certain times, they would go there with the intention of fighting, not for the soccer, not for the match, they would go there with the intention of fighting the opposing team and the opposing team would do the same. So, the actual match, the soccer match, becomes second place, it becomes unimportant, it’s just a reason for these two armies … “armies” to come together to fight each other.
England … I became very embarrassed to be English during the 2000s or so, when its hooliganism was spreading across Europe. It became very very embarrassing, but it’s dying down, of course, these days. Why is that? Well, one reason is football is now more expensive. It’s much more expensive to get a season ticket to go watch a match, so your average person can’t afford to go anymore. These hooligans have been targeted by the police. They’ve been given life bans. They’ve been given travel bans. Even before international matches they have their passports confiscated, or they’re banned from travelling. Better policing. The police are much more on the ball, they’re much more interested in the hooligans. They use face recognition software. They … basically they can target hooligans before they even get to the match, which of course has reduced the amount of hooliganism.
So, that’s basically soccer. I hope you enjoyed that. Thank you for watching. Don’t forget, if you click the link below here, you can find the script for this, you can find some questions, and you can find some answers. You can practice reading, you can practice writing, you can practice your listening. If you liked it click like. If you want to subscribe, that’s over here, looks like my head. Thank you. I’ll talk to you again next week. Bye.
Soccer Questions
- Which of these sports came from Greece?
A: Harpastum
B: Cuju
C: Episkyros
D: Kemari
- Which of these statements about mob football is not true?
A: There are hundreds of players.
B: It is ok to kill other players.
C: Games can last a whole day.
D: It was usually part of a festival.
- What stopped the games of mob football?
A: Too many people were killed.
B: The price of balls became too expensive.
C: Rules for football were developed.
D: The laws of the roads were changed.
- Why couldn’t working people who lived in the city play football?
A: They couldn’t afford to.
B: They didn’t have any footballs.
C: They had no way of travelling to the match.
D: There was nowhere for them to play.
- Why did more public schools appear by the 1800s?
A: Because there were more wealthy people.
B: Because people wanted to play soccer.
C: Because they were a good place for people to live.
D: Because of the rules of football.
- What does the development of the rail network reveal about English football?
A: That it is not easy to travel a long way for competitions.
B: That the industrial revolution increased the need for trains.
C: That soccer was becoming more and more popular.
D: That each school had its own set of rules which made competitions difficult.
- Which of these rules was NOT cut after the Cambridge Rules of 1848?
A: Teams must have 11 players.
B: Players can carry the ball.
C: It is permissible to tackle.
D: Sweeping a players’ feet out is allowed.
- Why did people in the UK say “soccer”?
A: Many American words entered the UK after World War 2.
B: The world is becoming very Americanized.
C: It is a shortened form of association.
D: To differentiate it from rugby.
- Steven says, “However, they stipulated that all these players must have lived within ten kilometers of the home team’s ground for within two-years, so they were quite strict, unlike today where we have players from all over the world.” Which of these words is closest in meaning to stipulated?
A: Allowed
B: Refused
C: Discouraged
D: Required
- What event played the largest role in spreading the FA rules?
A: The Youdan Cup
B: The FA Cup
C: The League Cup
D: The World Cup
- What do many poor children see soccer as?
A: A way out of poverty.
B: A way to stay fit.
C: A way to lose weight.
D: A way to meet famous people.
- Which of these is NOT a reason why the amount of hooliganism has been reduced?
A: The police have confiscated passports.
B: Rival groups fight each other and cause too many injuries.
C: Hooligans have been identified before matches.
D: The price of admission has increased.
- Are top soccer players worth the amount they are paid?
- Face recognition software and CCTV cameras have cut down on the amount of hooliganism. Is our privacy a price worth paying for our safety?
- How will the advances in face recognition software affect society?
- Explain a sport in your country.
- Is the rich poor gap in the world widening or narrowing? Explain your reasons.
- How will sports change in the next fifty years?
Soccer Answers
- C 2. B 3. D 4. A 5. A 6. D 7. A 8. C 9. D 10. B 11. A 12. B
- Are top soccer players worth the amount they are paid?
The worth of anything is decided by the people who are buying or selling it. You cannot say something is not worth what people pay for it because, if they are paying that much, it is worth it. Recent paintings have sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Are they worth it? Yes, they are. Someone has decided that they want to spend $400 million on a painting so, to them, it is worth it. Will they be able to sell it? That is a different question. Gold, as another example, is worth what people are willing to pay for it. If people want to pay more, the price goes up. If people don’t want to pay so much, the price goes down. So, for the time being, sports players, actors, musicians and famous paintings are worth a lot of money. If society suddenly decides they are not worth it, their salaries will go down.
- Face recognition software and CCTV cameras have cut down on the amount of hooliganism. Is our privacy a price worth paying for our safety?
The governments of the world would like us to think so. The old argument goes: “You would only object to cameras if you had something to hide. An innocent person would have no reason to complain.” And, that is an argument that you cannot argue against. Why do you need privacy if you are not doing anything you shouldn’t be?
Studies have shown that the presence of CCTV cameras doesn’t reduce the amount of street crime. CCTV does reduce planned crimes, such as bank robberies, in the areas it is located, but it does not reduce basic street crime. Generally, people who commit street crime are not overly concerned with being caught. Face recognition software, on the other hand, could have more of an impact as it would easily allow the police to name people. As the software isn’t yet that prevalent, studies have yet to be carried out.
So, is safety more important that privacy? The implication by people who ask this question is that you cannot have both at the same time. That is what our governments would like us to believe, but as lack of privacy doesn’t guarantee safety, it is increasingly difficult to argue.
However, we have ceased to be concerned about our lack of privacy and have accepted the situation. The UK has 6 million CCTV cameras, which equates to about one for every ten people, and the amount of public discussion has long since died out. People walk past these cameras without giving them a second thought. It feels as though the battle for privacy has been lost.
- How will the advances in face recognition software affect society?
I think there will be three major effects on society. It will reduce the amount of crime, it will introduce the idea of guilty until proven innocent, and it will commercialize our lives.
CCTV cameras have been proven to have little to no effect on the amount of crime in a city. Face recognition on the other hand is more about being proactive to crime instead of reactive. What is the difference? With CCTV, police watch a camera, see a crime happen, investigate and apprehend the criminals. With face recognition, police would be identified of the presence of a known criminal or terrorist before a crime happened. They would have time to prepare and would be in the area, ready to step in as the crime commenced. As in the talk, known troublemakers could be prevented from attending sporting fixtures.
However, being proactive on crime in this way would change the legal idea of innocent until proven guilty on its head. The police would assume that the criminal is about to reoffend, and they would step in at the right time. The assumption would be that, because the person has committed crimes in the past, they will do so in the future. This will harm the concept of rehabilitation. The next level, of course, would be to arrest people before they committed the crime. This is currently only in the realm of Science Fiction, but it is logically possible.
The third way it will affect society is with the commercialization of our lives. In today’s world, our Google searches follow us across the web. If I search for running shoes on my home computer, I get adverts for running shoes on my phone, my work computer, and any other device I happen to log onto. Once face recognition is prevalent, it would not take long for commercial organizations to get their hands on the database. Imagine walking around town and having adverts for running shoes appear everywhere you went? That would be the future.
- Explain a sport in your country.
I am in Japan, so I’ll try to explain Japanese archery. Archery came to Japan from China a few thousand years ago. After the introduction of the gun in the 16th century, the use of the bow and arrow in warfare gradually faded away. Archery became a highly ritualized sport, almost an artform, carried out by the samurai class. Once the samurai were made illegal in the Meiji restoration, it became a sport continued by the general public. These days, most schools have an archery club.
The idea behind archery, and indeed any Japanese martial art, is the journey more than the destination. In western archery, the goal is to hit the center of the target. In Japanese archery, the goal is to have a perfect life, which will lead to perfect form, which will lead to you hitting the center of the target. Hitting the target is simply the effect of being one with the bow, the arrow, your body and the surroundings.
- Is the rich poor gap in the world widening or narrowing? Explain your reasons.
Although the number of people who live in extreme poverty has been decreasing over the last few decades, the rich poor gap is widening. Recent figures show that the top 1% of the world’s population hold almost 50% of all the money. That obviously means that the other 50% of the money is spread out over the remaining 99% of people. To make it even clearer, the top 0.1% hold as much wealth as the bottom 50%. Now, there are two reasons for this: the rich are getting richer and the world population is increasing.
The wealth of the top 0.1% has increased dramatically over the last decade. The old adage that money makes money is evidently true. The more money you have, the more money you will make, and, it seems, at an almost exponential rate. On the other hand, huge population growth in poorer countries around the world means that there are far more people who fit into the poorer category. So, while relative wealth may be slowly rising in developing countries, there are far more people that fit into the band between extreme poverty and relative comfort.
There are obvious solutions to the problem. Higher tax. Increased investment in education. Wealth distribution. Will they happen? Perhaps.
- How will sports change in the next fifty years?
I believe that technology is going to bring the next change to sports in general. With soccer specifically, soccer went through quite an evolution, but the rules are pretty much set now. The only two changes to the game that I can see will come from technology.
The first will be the referee. Referees do their best but they are, of course, human. They make mistakes and they cannot be everywhere all the time. A series of networked and automated drones can be everywhere all the time. Even today, referees sometimes make use a system called VAR (Video Assistant Referee). This computer aided system has an accuracy rate of 98.9%. Many people would appreciate that. However, some people say that the referee’s human fallibility is part of what makes the game fun.
The second, and this will apply to all sports, not just soccer, will be technological adaptations to the human body. We are probably reached the limit of human evolution. People cannot grow any taller, stronger or faster than they are. And yet we crave taller, stronger and faster. We want to see world records fall. The only possible next step must be technological. With robotic inserts in the body, or nanotechnology in the blood, humans could do more. We complain when somebody uses drugs to go faster, but we don’t complain when they have new hi-tec shoes that can give them an advantage. Cybernetic technology is the way of the sporting future.