English Football History: Violent Peasants to Multi-Million-Dollar Stars.

English football history is a survival, a passion, and a spectacle. From its raw and violent peasant beginnings on England's mud fields, the game has now evolved into a billion-dollar spectacle watched by millions of people all over the world. From medieval origins in England where soccer is carnage and gore to today when hundreds of millions of pounds are spent in bringing the players across, the history of English soccer is as affluent as that of the society and that of the sport.

The Origins: Medieval and Early Modern Beginnings

The English origins are uncertain, but the sport dates back to the Middle Ages.

Back then, football was a nasty, violent sport that was sometimes fatal. Village teams also contested other villages at festive occasions, like holidays, and played games with massive numbers of players, minimal organization, and occasionally no rules. They were games of muscular strength rather than cerebral exercises wherein folk kicked and punched attempting to haul a ball from point to point — usually two church steeples or hamlets within the region. Physical as was the football in its infancy, violent as it was that the local authorities sought to prohibit it. It was prohibited by England's King Edward II in 1314, astonished at the trouble it was creating. Football was a game of peasants, a men's game played by men who had nothing to lose and perhaps something to win. The violent games were being arranged in the earliest centuries because medieval English life was violent.

The game gradually became more formalized. Football was being played more and more in schools and colleges when the Tudor monarchy came to power in the 16th century. Football was violent but was becoming more organized. This is the kind of game that would fall into the more formal types of soccer that exist today.

The Industrial Revolution and the Development of Modern Soccer

Society in England in the mid-19th century was undergoing an unimaginable change.

The Industrial Revolution was transforming everything from technology to work patterns and even leisure patterns. Due to the urbanization, there was growing and growing need for recreation organized in the city. Soccer was becoming an excellent means of bringing people together in the city. Schools and clubs started to implement regulations in the 1860s, and in 1863 the FA was established in England and hence organized football started. The game subsequently evolved into an organized competition rather than a disorganized activity due to the establishment of the FA.

Men no longer merely kicked the ball around until it was too much. Proper rules meant that now there could be a society where soccer could go on to become better ordered and more appealing to more. The first professional clubs and leagues also began to appear, especially in industrialized northern urban areas like Manchester, Liverpool, and Sheffield.

The Golden Age: 20th Century and Globalization

The golden age of English football was the early twentieth century.

The game was in business on a full scale with the Football League running already since 1888. The 1920s witnessed the game being brought to the masses by broadcasting and stadiums like Wembley beginning to keep pace with the status of the game as a cult phenomenon. Football was no longer the man's game—it was a spectacle that brought communities together and turned footballers into stars who were geniuses at it. English football during the football decades of the 1960s and 70s continued to be popular abroad, and the national team triumphed in the 1966 World Cup in front of their supporters. The success did help to harden the solid name of the game and transform it into an international fan following.

The times were not, though, a free ride. English football since World War too contained hooliganism, and violent fan conflict between opponents was the general state of play. Stadium catastrophes like the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy are an evil on the sport, yet a stimulus for a re-think of the security and safety machinery of the sport.

The Premier League Era: Internationalization and Commercialization

English football revival as the billion-dollar game of today started in the 1990s. The formation of the Premier League in 1992 witnessed English football awaken at the dawn of a new era. The biggest single driving force that enabled the Premier League to succeed was to spend the TV money. The new TV contracts for the league brought millions of unimaginably vast sums of money into the clubs, making them equal to the world powers yet to come.

Premier League was an open field for the world's best players. Overseas stars like Eric Cantona, Thierry Henry, and Cristiano Ronaldo were superstars, luring new superstars and drawing benefits from the popularity of the league among football fans worldwide beyond the UK. The money also allowed English clubs to recruit class-class managers and build brand-new state-of-the-art stadiums, raising new standards of football globally.

And the clubs themselves were on the rise by leaps and bounds as well. It is not the sport of the working man anymore, but a sport in which the players are paid wages almost akin to corporate bosses. David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, and Mohamed Salah are world stars with endorsement contracts, sponsorship deals, and fans worldwide.

Soccer is a world away from the violent, sloppy game it once was. The hard, rugged games of the past are no more, replaced by a game of strategy, speed, and touch. And its players are no longer just jocks, but celebrities and suits, with millions following their every step.

And in the midst of all the change for the sport, the passion of the fans has not diminished.

The fans' ululation, the hanging suspended state and yet to be determined by the penalty shootout, and the yearning for glory are all classically English football sensibility. The history of English football from blood-thirsty peasants upwards to multi-millionaire heroes is one of conquest and imperialism, world domination and narration of guts, glory, and regained glory.