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Soccer Paintings Gallery |
Little Goalie
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Goal
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Football Cats
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Enter Gallery
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Gallery Description
According to documentary evidence, a game involving kicking a ball into a small net was used by the Chinese military around the 2nd and 3rd century B.C. Greeks and Romans also used to play a game similar to the modern soccer but the number of players could be as high as 27. It is difficult to trace back how the modern day soccer originated. But games similar to it, from which the soccer as we know today originated has been played around the world for over 3000 years.
But there is no dispute to the fact that soccer or association football originated in Britain. Football – as soccer is called in Britain was a popular sport of the masses from the 18th century. But at that time, it was a very rash and rude game played between rival towns and villages involving a lot of kicking, thrashing even punching and biting. These matches became so violent that the authorities tried to ban the game. Kings and queens of the time tried as they could to stop this game and punish the players. But nothing could stop this game from becoming popular.
On 26th October 1863, eleven clubs and schools sent their representatives to a meeting to establish a set the fundamental rules to govern the matches that they were playing. This led to the formation of The Football Association.
There is an interesting story behind the coining of the term ‘soccer’. In the 1880's, there was a slang prevalent among the students of Oxford University students of using ‘er’ to the end of words which they had shortened deliberately. Rugby Football was known as rugger. Charles Wreford Brown, a student when asked if he liked to play rugger answered that he would like to play ‘soccer’. He had shortened asSOCiation (football) and added "er." And the term was born. Charles Brown went on to play soccer for England.
The English Football league was founded in 1888 with 12 clubs as the founding members and the first league match was on 8th September 1888. And from then on, there was no looking back for this sport that is currently being played on all five continents. It is also one of the sports having the largest number of spectators. The World Cup 2002 was watched by a cumulative audience of 28.8 billion!
Our gallery of soccer paintings brings to you the energy and enthusiasm of this brilliant game and also features the world famous players like Pele and Bob Marley.
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Saturday, July, 5 th
2008
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