Football Association Founded

In October 1863, representatives of a dozen or so London-area clubs and schools met at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street and founded the Football Association, the first governing body of its kind in the world. Over the following weeks they agreed on a single set of rules for the game. These "Laws of the Game" laid the foundation for association football, or soccer, and drew a clear line between that sport and the handling and carrying game that became rugby.

Football in various forms had been played in Britain for centuries, often as a rowdy, loosely regulated contest between neighboring villages. By the early nineteenth century, public schools such as Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Winchester had adopted versions of their own, each with local customs about handling the ball, tackling, and the shape of the pitch. Problems arose when former pupils went on to university or formed clubs and found they could not agree on how to play. An earlier attempt at compromise, the Cambridge Rules of 1848, influenced later drafts, and Sheffield FC, founded in 1857, developed its own code.

The 1863 meetings were organized largely by Ebenezer Cobb Morley, a London solicitor who captained a club in Barnes and pushed for a universal code. Over several sessions the delegates debated two main questions: whether players could run with the ball in their hands, and whether they could deliberately kick opponents in the shins, a practice known as "hacking." Supporters of both ideas, led by Blackheath's representative, lost the argument, and Blackheath withdrew from the association. The clubs that remained adopted rules that largely banned carrying the ball and hacking. In 1871, Blackheath and other clubs helped form the Rugby Football Union, making the split permanent.

The first rules were not identical to modern soccer. There was no crossbar at first, only tape between the posts, and the offside law was far stricter in some respects and looser in others. Goalkeepers' handling privileges and the role of the referee developed gradually. The FA Cup began in 1871–72, creating a national competition, and the spread of railways helped teams travel to matches. Professionalism, tolerated from the 1880s, transformed the game from a gentleman's pastime into a mass spectator sport, especially in industrial northern England.

The FA's influence extended well beyond Britain. British workers, sailors, teachers, and merchants carried the game abroad, and national associations followed in many countries. FIFA was founded in 1904, and the International Football Association Board, formed in 1886 by the British associations, still maintains the Laws of the Game. The 1863 meetings are therefore widely seen as the moment modern football began, even though the sport kept evolving long afterward.