The oldest football club in the world is considered to be Sheffield Football Club (1857), which today plays in the Northern Premier League, the seventh tier of English football. Its continuity is sometimes questioned, in which case Notts County (1862) counts as the oldest club still in existence. Germany’s oldest club is the Berlin side BFC Germania 88; three years later the “Germanen” became the first (unofficial) German champions, yet today the Berliners play in the Kreisliga B (the tenth tier). The second and third oldest clubs, Karlsruher FV (1891) and Wittener FC 1892, play in Baden-Württemberg and Bochum respectively, even down in the Kreisklasse C. In tradition-conscious Switzerland, by contrast, the oldest football club, FC St. Gallen, founded in 1879, is allowed to play at the top of the Super League.

When do we find the first evidence of ball games in Switzerland? At Oberwinterthur, Roman pottery has been excavated whose decorations look like playing balls – the small, round pila or the large, cylindrical follis – and there are various references to a sphairisterion, a ball-game house. One particular ball game is described not only by Berchtold Haller in 1543 for Murten; the Italian Poggio Bracciolini also observed it in 1416 in the spa town of Baden: “They did not play as we do; rather, man and woman throw one another a ball full of bells, according to whom they like best. Everyone then runs to catch it, each throws it back to his own beloved, and whoever gets it has won.” Admittedly this still has little to do with football, but it is charming to hear, is it not? Continued under the entry The English disease.

“Senor Gamper wishes to organise football matches. Those interested are asked to contact the editorial office.” This small advertisement in the magazine “Los Deportes” of 22 October 1899 can be regarded as the birth of FC Barcelona, formally founded on 22 November 1899 by Englishmen and Scots, but also by Swiss such as Walter “Gualteri” Wild, Paul Haas and Hans Gamper. He was not only coach but also captain and, as a centre forward, a goalscorer next to whom a Lionel Messi would have looked almost like a ball boy. He is said to have scored 110 goals (other sources say only 100) in 48 matches up to his retirement in 1903 at the age of 28. The colours of FC Barcelona remain an unsolved riddle. Blue and red. Do they go back to FC Basel, to which Gamper had belonged until the new association rules forbade membership of several clubs? Do they recall the “blue” canton of Zurich and, at the same time, FC Zürich, who played in red and white at the time? It was probably an international compromise: the Swiss and British factions could not agree on the club colours, until a red-and-blue pencil lying on the table by chance tipped the balance. The Swiss could read the colours their way – and so could the later club president Arthur Witty, for whom they recalled Waterloo Rugby Football Club in London.

Super Mario was one of the last real characters in the Bundesliga. His career took him from Kaiserslautern to Werder Bremen and Bayern Munich and back to Kaiserslautern again – and no fewer than 30 times into the German national team. Like Lothar Matthäus (see that entry), he never minced his words. Here are seven examples, with variants.

1a: I have always said that I am not a long-distance runner, otherwise I might just as well enter the marathon.

1b: Not for me, I only play 70 minutes anyway.
(when asked whether professional footballers would be overloaded in the new season)

2: For that, a national coach would first have to come to the Betzenberg [in Kaiserslautern]. The last one, as far as I know, was Sepp Herberger.
(when asked why he had not been called up for the national team)

3a: I had an outstanding conversation with the policeman.
(on the alleged scuffle in a Regensburg pizzeria that led to his suspension)

3b: After all, the Bundesliga and Bayern are not made up only of players who always go to church on Sundays.
(the day after his suspension)

4: Now he looks like a freshly painted write-off!
(on his shaven-headed Bayern team-mate Christian Ziege)

5: I have always said that I do not care who plays, as long as I play.

6. Well yes, you can see that something is coming, and then something comes.

7. Every side has two medals.

…reaches Switzerland

The oldest account by a Swiss of football comes from the theologian and philosopher Beat Ludwig de Muralt, who observed dreadful things in London in 1694: “Sometimes the common people amuse themselves in a disruptive, indeed impudent manner – as when they drive the football through the streets and take pleasure in smashing the glass windows of houses and of the carriages they meet.” Some thirty years later the next account by a Swiss, César de Saussure, is no better: “These fellows knock you to the ground without hesitation and laugh about it into the bargain.”

The “English disease”, as it is called, is more reminiscent of rugby than of football. Yet when the game reaches Switzerland, things are rather more civilised. It is the distinguished educational institutes, above all in French-speaking Switzerland, in which this sport takes hold. The widespread notion that it was purely a workers’ sport therefore has to be qualified even for the early phase. Football is documented as being played at the Institut La Châteleine in Geneva in 1869. The real pioneer is likely to have been the Château de Lancy, also in Geneva. There is talk of the years “around 1855” or even 1843, but this has not yet been clearly proven. The game was played with particular enthusiasm in Lausanne, at the Institut La Villa Ouchy and the later F.C. Lausanne. Football had not yet finally established itself, however. Around 1880 the Lausanne Football and Cricket Club was founded, and even at FC Basel, founded in 1893, rugby was played alongside football in the early days.

The penalty kick was invented in 1891 by the linen manufacturer and sportsman William McCrum, goalkeeper at Milford Everton FC in the Irish Football League. At first there was no spot but a penalty line running right across the pitch, 12 yards (10.9728 m) from the goal. Only in 1902 were the penalty area and, with it, the penalty spot introduced. Until 1906 the goalkeeper was allowed to move up to 5.5 m off his line (the goal area); since 1997 he has again been allowed to move along the goal line, as was the case until 1929.

If a match was level at the end of play but absolutely had to produce a winner, that winner was initially determined by the toss of a coin. As a replacement, the penalty shoot-out was introduced and applied at first in various forms at individual national tournaments, such as the Yugoslav Cup of 1952. In 1970 today’s rule, with five players from each side shooting alternately, was invented in parallel in Israel and Germany. The first major tournament to be decided by a shoot-out was the 1976 European Championship in Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia prevailed over Germany when Uli Hoeness shot over the bar and Antonin Panenka converted his penalty with a gentle chip into the middle of the goal.

Anyone who knows this without cheating may henceforth call themselves “professor of football ULH” (Uli Forte homepage). It was, in the 1898/99 season, the Anglo-American Club Zürich, which disbanded at the end of the second season. The AAC lies 51st in the all-time table of the top division and thus ahead of three Zurich and three Lausanne clubs, all of which were dissolved ages ago: Fire Flies Zürich, Kickers Zürich, Lausanne Football and Cricket Club, Villa Longchamp Lausanne and Racing Lausanne.

As coach of Grasshopper Club Zürich and BSC Young Boys, Uli Forte helped both teams to lead the all-time table of the Swiss top flight. But, honest as we are, we do not want to overrate that contribution either. Since GC collected a total of 5,088 points in 115 years and YB a good 4,684 in 113 years, the points won under any single coach do not weigh all that heavily. The other Swiss U. F. clubs follow in 5th place (Zürich with 4,173 points in 110 years) and 42nd place (Wil with 70 points in two seasons). The Red Stars of Zurich never played in the top division – that was the Blue Stars, who with 21 seasons between 1900 and 1934 and 389 points still lie 29th, ahead of well-known clubs such as Schaffhausen, Vaduz or Kriens.

The Chinese novel “The Water Margin”, written around 1130, describes among other things the rise of a poor but talented footballer from Kaifeng, who confidently renamed himself from Football Gao to Gao God of Football. Happening to witness a football match at the imperial palace, Gao impressed Prince Duan with what, according to Helmut Brinker’s literal translation, is called a mandarin drake and duck twist (yuanyang gual), apparently a two-footed sideways overhead kick out of a turn. Crowned Emperor Huizong (1100-1126) shortly afterwards, he was able to sign Gao God of Football on a free transfer for his team Heaven-Earth United in the regular cloud league.

Switzerland’s most significant footballer? Köbi Kuhn? Alain Sutter? Stephan Lichtsteiner? No, it is surely Hans “Joan” Gamper (1877-1930). He was at home in several sports, played rugby, raced bicycles and in 1898 set Swiss records over 800 metres (2:21) and 1,600 metres (5:16.4). But his love belonged to football: wherever his work took him, he joined the local football club, such as FC Excelsior Zürich, FC Basel and FC Lyon. And if there was none, or if for some other reason it had to be so, he founded one himself together with like-minded friends – FC Zürich (1896) and FC Barcelona (1899). In 1929 he lost his entire fortune in the world economic crisis and took his own life in 1930, probably also because he, several times club president, had been forbidden any contact with his FC Barcelona on account of his support for Catalanism. Not all the riddles surrounding Hans Gamper have been solved. It is therefore to be hoped that by 2027 at the latest, on the occasion of his 150th birthday, a comprehensive biography will be devoted to him. See also the entry Barcelona.

As the world football federation, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association is a respectable body, yet in terms of its name a rather odd construction. Founded in Paris in 1904, it did not simply adopt the complete French designation “Associations de Football” into its official name, but the English proper noun “Association Football”, which in the motherland of football served to distinguish the game from rugby football or American football. The correct translation is therefore “International Federation of Association Football” or, at a pinch, “International Union of Association Football”.

We did not actually want to talk about the name, but about two rules introduced in 1904: the direct free kick and shorts that leave the knee free. Perhaps the direct free kick will one day be abolished again, because far too many matches are decided by these admittedly beautiful set-piece efforts. But shorts will surely never be given up. Of course there are fashionable variants: in the 1970s the hemlines crept steadily upwards, just as fashion did, until they could go no further and the hem began its retreat.

7x (plus Beni’s encore)

The Swiss, too, know that the round thing has to go into the square thing. And they know that football also needs a bit of fun. Which is why some players are happy to raise a smile with their pointed one-liners.

• At the 2016 European Championship the Swiss national team experienced a genuine shirt-gate. After shirts were torn against France as well, Xherdan Shaqiri commented: “I hope Puma does not make condoms.”
• “We have to try to make our mistakes even better next time.” Captain Gökhan Inler after Switzerland’s 2-5 defeat by France at the 2014 World Cup.
• In the run-up to FC Zürich’s Champions League play-off against Bayern Munich (2011), Admir Mehmedi was asked whose shirt he would like: “I am a professional footballer and I am not here to swap shirts.”
• “Da isch doch ä Gränni” (“now that really is a cry-baby”), said Thun coach Hanspeter Latour in 2002 after a dive by a Servette Geneva player – and became a cult figure for it.
• Television commentators are sometimes true footballers as well. At any rate Dani Wyler once said: “A huge chance. The goal was empty – apart from the goalkeeper.”
• “The pitch looks old and worn, somehow it reminds me of the Kelly Family’s clothes.” Bernhard Beni Thurnheer. And a little more from Beni the national institution: “Everyone is talking at the referee, but McCurry could not care less” or “That foul by Simic was not good for the image”.
• And finally the legendary referee Urs Meier, in his role as a ZDF pundit, on Köbi Kuhn (1943-2019), national coach from 2001 to 2008: “Köbi Kuhn was Swiss of the Year two years ago. You do not manage that just like that. For that you really do have to be Swiss.”

When the England under-21 team went out in the semi-final of the 2017 European Championship, the Evening Standard reported: “It was an all too familiar story.” From 1990 up to that point, the “real” England team had had to face a penalty shoot-out at major tournaments seven times and had won only once – in 1996, in the quarter-final of the European Championship on home soil against Spain, only to go out in the semi-final against Germany on penalties after all. At the 2018 World Cup in Russia the curse was broken in the round of 16 against Colombia – for good, until the next occasion when English nerves start to jangle and English knees to tremble once more.

Seven German footballing truths from seven German football sages

1. Sepp Herberger: The ball is round and the game lasts 90 minutes.
2. Andreas Brehme: If you have got muck on your studs, you have got muck on your studs.
3. Otto Rehhagel: Sometimes you lose and sometimes the others win.
4. Franz Beckenbauer: The reason was not the cause, but the trigger.
5. Berti Vogts: I believe the team at the top of the table can beat the league leaders at any time.
6. Paul Breitner: Then came the penalty shoot-out. We were all bricking it, but for me it all flowed nicely. (Paul Breitner)
7. Uwe Seeler: Well, an ordinary foul is not unfair as far as I am concerned.

Germany’s most-capped international and World Footballer of the Year 1991 was – like Mario Basler (see that entry) – always good for a snappy line of not always intentional comedy. Here are seven particularly successful examples:

1. The advantage in chances was even.
2. We must not stick the sand in our heads now!
3. Being a referee is out of the question for me, more likely something to do with football.
   (when asked what he would do after his career)
4. We are a well-intrigued squad.
5. I noticed straight away that it is a pressure pain when you press on it.
6. Yes, the back is the Achilles heel of the body.
7. It is important to think about the next match with full concentration for ninety minutes.

Is the term “Penalty”, so often used in Switzerland, and with it “Penaltyschiessen”, really correct? A penalty kick is indeed the punishment of an infringement by a defender inside the penalty area. Things are different with the shoot-out, which serves to determine a winning team quickly and yet as fairly as possible. The neutral term “penalty shoot-out from the spot” does better justice to that. But perhaps the odd player does feel punished by fate when, dog-tired, he has to take responsibility for the decisive spot kick.

“Who am I, who lack hands, feet and head, and who am therefore held by all to be dead? I have a long breath, I move to and fro, up and down – high and low. Alas, what a hard lot I bear: though guiltless, I am despised by great and small. They strike me and kick me: to south, west, north and east, yet I harm no one. Only when my air runs out and I can go on no longer do they finally let me be.” The answer, which we give under the entry Shakespeare, is relatively easy in this context. But for anyone who read it in 1580 in Humphrey Gifford’s poetry collection “A Posie of Gilloflowers”, it may well have been rather harder, for it really does not have much to do with gillyflowers…

Of course the differences between the roll of honour and the all-time table are minimal, but as the former coach of three successful traditional clubs one may well take pleasure in the similarity: 1. Grasshopper Club Zürich 27 titles (most recently 2003), 2. FC Basel 20 titles (most recently 2017), 3. Servette FC 17 titles (most recently 1999), 4. BSC Young Boys 14 titles (most recently 2020), 5. FC Zürich 12 titles (most recently 2009) and 6. FC Lausanne-Sports 7 titles (most recently 1965). Three-time Swiss champions are FC Lugano, FC La-Chaux-de-Fonds, FC Aarau and FC Winterthur; FC St. Gallen, FC Sion and Neuchâtel Xamax won the championship twice, and one title each went to FC Luzern, FC Biel, AC Bellinzona, Cantonal Neuchâtel, Etoile Sporting La-Chaux-de-Fonds, SC Brühl St. Gallen and the Anglo-American Club Zürich.

The most appearances in the Swiss top flight were made by Urs Fischer (*20 February 1966). Fischer played 545 matches, 302 of them for FC Zürich (1984-87 and 1995-2003) and 243 (1987-95) for FC St. Gallen. In doing so, Fischer, who won four caps, scored a total of 15 goals. Considerably more prolific than defender Fischer was the striker Peter Risi (1950-2010). For La-Chaux-de-Fonds, Winterthur, Zürich and Luzern, the 15-times international scored a total of 216 goals in 359 matches between 1970 and 1984 and was top scorer in 1976, 1979 and 1981. The next best scorers are Fritz Künzli (1946-2019) with 201 goals in 313 matches and Rolf Blättler (*24 October 1942 in Uster) with 174 goals in 332 matches.

It occasionally causes red faces and can decisively influence the course of a match, since the player shown the red card may go for an early shower while his team has to get by with one man fewer. The red card was introduced on a trial basis in 1968 at the Olympic football tournament in Mexico and definitively in 1970 at the World Cup in the same country. In the year this website went online, the red card is exactly 50 years old; but since we assume that both the red card and this website will continue to attract attention afterwards, we shall refrain from speaking of an anniversary.

At the English private schools and universities, football and rugby – and mostly a mixture of the two – became ever more popular. The oldest known rugby rules date from 1845, those of football from 1848. Yet the inconsistent rules prevented contests between the individual universities. In 1863 the English Football Association (FA) was founded with the aim of standardising the still highly varied football rules. Because of disputes over the rules, several clubs founded a rival association in 1871, the Rugby Football Union (RFU).

According to legend, rugby is said to have come into being during a football match in the town of the same name. In 1823, when William Webb Ellis’s team faced defeat, he grabbed the ball with his hands and placed it in the opponents’ goal. Although there are justified doubts about the truth of the story, the trophy of the Rugby Union World Cup is named after William Webb Ellis (the Webb Ellis Cup).

Switzerland’s best footballers have been honoured since 1973. The first winner was Basel’s Karl Odermatt. Since 1998 the best Swiss footballer in the national team has been honoured as Credit Suisse Player of the Year, regardless of whether he plays in Switzerland or abroad. In addition, the best players in the Super League, irrespective of nationality, are voted Axpo and later Raiffeisen Player of the Year.

The most awards went to Heinz Hermann (5x, most recently 1988) and Alex Frei (3x Credit Suisse Player of the Year, most recently 2007, and 2x Axpo Player of the Year, most recently 2012), as well as Umberto Barberis (3x, most recently 1980) and Kubilay Türkyilmaz (3x, most recently 1998). Two awards each went to Stéphane Henchoz (2001/02), Stéphane Chapuisat (2001/04), Hakan Yakin (2003/08), Diego Benaglio (2009/13), Xherdan Shaqiri (2011/12) and Yann Sommer (2016/2018).

In the women’s game, the best player of the year has been chosen since 1998. Lara Dickenmann won this award 8 times (most recently 2018), Ramona Bachmann 3 times (most recently 2019) and Marisa Brunner twice (2005/07). In addition, nine players have been honoured once each.

“Football is all the sport nowadays”, we read in an English play of 1633. That the popular game of football could be dangerous is shown by an incident in Norfolk in 1321, in which even Pope John XXII of Avignon became involved. “While the canon William de Spalding was kicking the ball during a game, one of his friends, likewise called William, ran into him and injured himself so badly on the knife the canon carried in its sheath that he died six days later. William de Spalding is granted papal dispensation, since no blame attaches to him and he deeply regrets the death of his friend.” The accident did have an aftermath, however: the synod of 1364 forbade English priests to take part in the game of football.

Not exactly a football fan was Sir Richard Maitland (1496-1586), who says in his poem “The Comfort of Age”: “When the young men come from the field where they have played football – with a broken shoulder, I thank God that I am almost blind: so old am I.”

One need not like football, but there is no avoiding it, not even as a poet. Even Shakespeare (1564-1616) proves his topicality with football: in “King Lear” he has the Earl of Kent exclaim in anger: “You base football player!” And in “The Comedy of Errors”, the servant Dromio complains to his mistress Adriana: “Am I so round with you as you with me, that like a football you do spurn me thus? You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither. If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.”

And now the answer to the riddle as well (see that entry): a football made of a bladder.

(seven British footballing truths)

1. Football is a game of 22 people running around, and in the end Germany always wins. – (Gary Lineker)
2. Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I do not like that attitude. I can assure you it is much more serious than that! (Bill Shankly)
3. I spent a lot of my money on drink, birds and fast cars… the rest I just squandered. (George Best)
4. To stay number one, you have to train as if you were number two. (Maurice Green)
5. They have not changed the positions, they have just lined up differently. (Terry Venables)
6. I do not believe in luck, but I am sure we are going to need it. (Alan Ball)
7. If you want to throw a big party at Wembley, then whatever you do, do not invite the Germans. (Alan Shearer)

Despite video assistance and yellow and red cards, the whistle remains the referee’s most important companion. It was introduced in 1878, four years after the referee himself. For eleven years the British Football Association regarded a referee as superfluous. In the spirit of fair play, the English were obliged to settle infringements amicably. At least two umpires helped them do so. The referee was at first only a kind of appeal body, who was promoted to match official in 1873/74 and from 1877 was even allowed to step onto the pitch. In 1891 the umpires were defined as linesmen in today’s sense. Oh yes, the whistle. It was used for the first time in the match between Nottingham Forest and Sheffield.

Sending a round object to another place with the hand or the foot is a human thing to do. Accordingly, early forms of handball – or, of more interest to us, of football – have existed since time immemorial. We get to the bottom of the beginnings in the motherland of football under the entry Shakespeare. Yet as early as the second millennium BC there was a football-like game in China called Cuju (to kick with the foot – ball). The rules are not known, but the game formed part of the military training programme (see also Gao, god of football). The Turkish scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari (1008-1105) reports on the (foot)ball game Tepük (kick) played by the Turkic peoples in the 11th century. A French chronicle records for the year 1137 that a boy taking part in a popular football game died from kicks, and to the Florentine Antonio Scaino da Salò we owe a description of the Calcio Storico written in 1555: “For the runner who crosses the field with the ball in his hand, some strong men shall clear the way so that their man has free and unhindered passage. But if he sees himself attacked by a large crowd, he shall slow his run and … kick the ball, and he will be able to do so more quickly with a kick of the foot than in any other way, since a kick in this manner is safer.” One understands, then, why we supply further pointers to the history of football under the entry Rugby.

The best footballer of all time? If that “all time” begins in 1991, then it is either the Argentine Lionel Messi or the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo. Since 2008 the vote for world footballer of the year, cast by national team coaches and captains, has gone to another player only once: the Croatian Luka Modrić (2018). The honour of being the first world footballer of the year went to the German Lothar Matthäus. Elected more than once: Lionel Messi (6x, most recently 2019), Cristiano Ronaldo (5x, most recently 2017), Zinédine Zidane (3x, most recently 2003), Ronaldo (3x, most recently 2002) and Ronaldinho (2x, most recently 2005).

These world stars played above all for FC Barcelona (12) and Real Madrid (9), but also for Juventus Turin (4) as well as Inter and AC Milan (3 each). The remaining clubs can be listed just as easily. There are only three: Manchester United, PSV Eindhoven and Paris St-Germain.

World women’s footballers of the year have only been chosen since 2001. The honour has gone most often to Brazil’s Marta (6x, most recently 2018), Germany’s Birgit Prinz (3x, most recently 2005) and the Americans Mia Hamm (2x, most recently 2002) and Carli Lloyd (2x, most recently 2016). Named world women’s footballer of the year once each were the Americans Abby Wambach (2012) and Megan Rapinoe (2019), the Germans Nadine Angerer (2013) and Nadine Kessler (2014) and, as the only ones from their countries, Japan’s Homare Sawa (2011) and the Netherlands’ Lieke Martens (2017). Players from 1. FFC Frankfurt (4x) and from Sweden’s Umeå IK (3x) have been honoured particularly often.