Soccer Special – A Brief History
It is a relatively well-known fact that the word “Soccer” is derived from the term “Association Football” (that’s where the “soc” part comes from). However, it is a less well-known fact that this term is, itself, a contraction of “Word Association Football”, a game in which players were only allowed to pass the ball if they first called out a word associated to the previously spoken word on the field (or “Pitch”, a word which is derived from the tone in which words were spoken in-game).
The game did not originally start with a blown whistle: the referee would start the game by shouting the first word, with which subsequent words would have to be associated. (All words spoken during play would have to be checked by the head official, who would refer to an Oxford English Dictionary – hence “referee”.)
A penalty would be called if a player hesitated or repeated a previously spoken word, at which point the opposition would be given a chance to respond with a related word themselves before being allowed a throw-in, a corner or a free kick (depending upon whereabouts on the field the penalty had occurred).
Yellow cards were reserved for players who didn’t like the attention received from shouting out words, so would mumble a response. This was considered cowardly, hence the colour of the card, unsportsmanlike and ungentlemanly.
Red cards were used for players who spent the whole game simply shouting the same word over and over and over again, infuriating the other players – and, indeed, the officials – to the point that their faces would turn red with anger and frustration. They were also used for the rare instances when blood was spilled upon the football field, so the reasons for the choice of colour are twofold.
From this it is plain to see that it is a damning indictment of modern society that “soccer” players are now so seemingly illiterate that the old practice of “word association” has been replaced entirely by whistles and grunts, thereby requiring no active creative thought processes whatsoever during the playing of the “beautiful” game (a word which is rarely spelled, or even spoken, correctly in sports today).
I hope that this brief history has given an insight, however slight, into what was once truly the Gentleman’s Sport, and I do hope that it doesn’t detract from your future enjoyment of a game which is now far removed from its origins.
