Posted by AwayGrounds.com

When you consider how far soccer has come since its birth, it`s incredible to think that such a major sport can have grown from such humble origins. These days the game is played out in front of thousands of supporters with millions more watching the game at home but the early forms of the sport were very different indeed.

It`s quite difficult to pin down exactly when the game began and it`s likely that primitive forms of soccer have existed for many thousands of years. According to FIFA, the world`s governing body, the first organised versions of soccer were played out in China, around the second or third century BC.

In the 19th century, there were informal versions of soccer being played all over the world but the first attempts to standardise the sport came in England where a whole host of different rules were being used across the country. The game was particularly popular in public schools and each one seemed to have their own version of the sport and their own set of regulations.

In 1848 therefore, the Cambridge Rules were drawn up at Cambridge University and these came to be used by most of the organisations playing soccer at the time. From here, the sport really began to grow and a significant part of its development took place in 1863 with the formation of the Football Association.

Many of the clubs involved in the inception of the FA are still in existence today and these include the likes of Aston Villa and Notts County. From this period, the football league began to grow in England and organised, professional leagues started to crop up all over the world.

The next major development came with the inauguration of the FA Cup, the oldest and most famous cup competition in the world. The first tournament took place in 1872 and it also had humble beginnings with only a selected handful of teams taking part. Eventually, the final took place at Kennington Oval where the Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers by one goal to nil.

The Cup continued in fairly understated fashion until 1923 when it was first held at Wembley Stadium. The crowd was vast and took a considerable amount of time to get under control before West Ham United and Bolton Wanderers could start the historic occasion.

The first true indication that the sport had become a world game came in 1930 when the first ever world cup was held in Uruguay. The first tournament however, was a fairly quiet affair and many countries across the world didn`t actually take part. Perhaps the most notable of these absentees was England, who had formulated the first set of recognised rules.

The event finished with a win for the hosts Uruguay and from that first tournament, the World Cup has grown to the point where it is now the pinnacle of achievement for every nation that plays the game.

Football today is a multi-billion pound industry and it is more popular than ever. Across the world, football grounds are full to capacity with a huge TV audience to back them up. Meanwhile, merchandising is also big business and from those humble origins in ancient China, the game can only keep growing in popularity.