Why England failed to export the popularity of soccer to some of its colonies (but it did to Latin America and Europe)

The football It is the most popular sport on the planet.

It is a sport that was basically born in a pub in England in 1863, when some gentlemen decided to set rules for a game that was already played regularly in that country, with the idea of ​​differentiating it from another very popular game: rugby.

The truth is that in less than four decades, soccer already had a presence in several countries around the world.

And this propagation had among its reasons that soccer was born in the most powerful power on the planet at that time: the British Empire, which controlled large territories around the world.

However, soccer is currently not the most popular sport in many of the territories that belonged to this powerful empire.

In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, for example, rugby is much more popular than soccer, while in India and Pakistan, cricket is a religion.

“What happened with Australia or India is that when the British arrived the national sport in England was cricket, not football. And rugby was the favorite sport of the aristocrats who were sent to rule these places,” he tells the BBC. World sports historian Jean Williams.

Williams clarifies that soccer was a sport for the middle and working class in the UK at that time.

“The popularization of soccer in the world occurred for two reasons: one, due to the proliferation of railways built by British engineers and, two, due to the academic exchanges that took place with people from other countries, especially with Latin America and Asia”, Williams points out.

Cricket and rugby, the sports of the empire

Cricket is a ball-and-paddle sport (like baseball, but with substantial differences in mode and strategy) played on an oval pitch and where the primary objective is to score runs.

That sport, Having its roots in the Middle Ages, it became England’s national sport beginning in the 18th century and of course during the heyday of the British Empire.

Added to this was the popularity of another sport: rugby, which was considered for decades as “a sport of beasts played by gentlemen”.

“These sports were in the upper classes and leaders of that time. What they did was introduce them almost officially in territories such as Australia, India or South Africa,” says Williams.

Rugby became popular in the UK among the upper classes.

Although cricket had already been brought to India, where it is now the most practiced sport, by British merchantmen in the 17th century, it was with the conquest of those territories in the mid-19th century that it finally became what it is today.

Something similar happened with rugby, which also began to become popular in the mid-19th century, especially in Oceania and South Africa.

“Sport in the British Empire served as a unifying force, often imbued with nationalist rhetoric, and sports served as focused depictions of the climate of social and political struggle,” notes historian Patrick Hutchinson in his essay “Sports and British Colonialism.” “.

That influence makes India and Pakistan – and also Australia – cricketing powerhouses today.

In the field of rugby, the only men’s teams to have been crowned world champions have been New Zealand, South Africa, Australia (plus England), all former British colonies.

In fact, the most popular sport in Australia is Australian rules football, which is a combination of cricket, rugby union and soccer, closely resembling the early version of English rugby union.

Now, Soccer had two characteristics that distanced it from those territories: it was codified late (in 1863) and had more roots in the British middle and working class.

“By the time football became the most popular sport in the UK, cricket and rugby had already established themselves in the colonies and were still the favorite sports of the upper classes and the aristocracy,” says Williams.

However, that does not mean that football was not used by the imperial authorities as a “unifying force”, especially in the British colonies in Africa.

“In Zanzibar, in Egypt and in other colonies, leagues were established with the objective of exercising a form of control through sport. Soccer was used for this purpose,” Hutchison says.

But soccer had other ways of expanding.

It was not only the railway

Towards the beginning of the 20th century the main world power was still the British Empire, with territories that stretched across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

In Europe, the sport became popular thanks to the presence of expatriates who traveled to different countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain, among others.

However, in other latitudes, one of the main forms of influence was the construction of railways (a British invention).

“Many think that it was the railway workers who brought football around the world. But it was the engineers, because football was the sport of the middle class in England,” says the academic.

According to Williams, these professionals were influential enough not only to practice the sport, but to instruct and implement the sport in an organized way in these countries, as the aristocrats had done through the colleges in the colonies with cricket and the Rugby.

Some clubs in Latin America keep their names with the English words with which they were founded.

Towards the beginning of the 20th century, especially in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, the first clubs began to be created, many of them with names in English that they still retain: River Plate or Boca Juniors (Argentina); Club Nacional de Football (Uruguay), and Fluminense Football Club (Brazil), for example.

“What happened with soccer is that it was not divided into classes: it became popular at all levelsWilliams clarifies.

She herself points out that the railways were not the only way in which soccer spread throughout the world: students and people visiting the United Kingdom were an extensive means of propagation.

“Many of those who went from Latin America or Asia to study English at one of the English universities saw this very popular sport and wanted to take it back to their home countries,” says Williams.

There are many examples: Deportivo Cali, one of the most traditional Colombian clubs, was founded by the Nazario brothers, Juan Pablo and Fidel Lalinde Caldas, who had traveled to the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 20th century and spent about five years in England.

“Soccer, being born in England, became something aspirational for people who lived outside the British Empire and in this way many soccer clubs were founded, from people who traveled to the United Kingdom,” he says.

But there were territories that once had British influence, such as the United States or Canada, where soccer failed to take root either.

“Soccer has tried several times to get into American culture, but I think that its rules and its goal count have had to do with it not being much more popular,” James Brown, historian for the Association of Soccer Historians of the United States, told BBC Mundo.

For Brown, Americans like contact sports where high numbers can be reached.

“But the truth is that until the age of 16, soccer is the sport most practiced by young people in this country, so it has a future.”

Source: Elcomercio