11 Fun Facts about Football

Playing sports and attending sports events is one of humanity’s greatest entertainment sources. Many of them date back to ancient times, while some are rather new to the sports fans.

Football, in particular, is quite a wide spread sport, as there’s rarely a country in the world that’s not represented by its national team. We’ll find out how much wide spread soon enough. This sport has developed many different championships and associations throughout the years, keeping it as fresh as if it were born yesterday. Was it? We’re about to find out.

Over time, many interesting facts about football have appeared in public. Although some are plain funny, others can also be informative, as this sport has been around enough to carry a long history on its shoulders. So here we go, eleven interesting facts coming right up!

 

• The game dates back to ancient China, in the year 476 BC, meaning that it’s been around for more time than most human civilizations. When it first appeared, it was referred to as Cuju.
• The first balls the Chinese used were made of leather patches sewn together, and then pushed through a small hole of a silk patch.
• English neighboring towns and villages were first to play football alike the one today. They introduced the practice of ‘moving’ the ball to a certain ‘area’. However, their footballs lacked disposable silk materials, so instead, they used an animal bladder.
• A final fact about ‘firsts’ in football history is about the first football club which was founded in 1857 by two British Army Officers, Colonel Nathaniel Creswick and Major William Priest. It bore the name English Sheffield Football Club.
• You might assume its popularity, but just to be precise, did you know that over one billion people watch the World Cup Football. This popularity caught up with latest betting trends, as the sport has become a number one target for such predictions.
• To mix it up a bit, did you know there are 27 pro teams whose nickname is a Beatles song? How about the Yellow Submarines of Villareal?
• From older to younger, to youngest! The youngest footballer ever who got signed by a professional club was only 20 months at the time. The mentioned club was from Belgium.
• To add an educational note, read on about a football-related protest which brought about the highest score of 149-0. A team from Madagascar, Stade Olympique de L’emyrne, did that to themselves in a sign of protest against the referee’s unfair judgment from the past match.
• On an even darker note, in 1998, a lightning strike managed to kill an entire football team in the field, somewhere in Congo.
• Despite changing fabric, professional football hasn’t changed the ball’s circumference of 28 inches, or 71 cm, for 120 years.
• A fact from the famous Premier League stats –only two players have scored penalties with both feet – Bobby Zamora and Obafemi Martins.