The Beautiful Game
nickname

- the game of football

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PHRASE ORIGIN

“The Beautiful Game” is a nickname for association football. Stuart Hall, an English football commentator, used it as far back as 1958. Hall admired Peter Doherty when he went to see Manchester City play at Maine Road and used the term “The Beautiful Game” to describe Doherty’s style of play.

Brazilian footballer Pelé is credited with popularising the phrase. In 1977, he named his autobiography “My Life and the Beautiful Game”. The book’s dedication reads “I dedicate this book to all the people who have made this great game the Beautiful Game.”

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FOOTBALL HISTORY

For all the evidence of early ball sports played elsewhere in the world, the evolution of football as we know it today took place in Britain. The game that flourished in the British Isles from the 8th to the 19th centuries featured a considerable variety of local and regional versions. Games often involved hundreds of players and compared to today’s standards were relatively violent.

Football was eventually introduced to the English public school system as a form of physical education. A turning point occurred in 1848 when a meeting was organised at Trinity College in Cambridge. The participants created the so-called “Cambridge Rules”, which loosely defined how the game should be played.

Ball kicking continued to develop until several clubs met in 1863 to form a set of organised rules. The group named itself the Football Association. The “soc” in the word association is the origin of the word soccer, which is used in some parts of the world such as the U.S.

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POPULARITY

Globally, association football is played by over 250 million players in over 200 nations, and has the highest television audience in sport, making it the most popular in the world.

American football, with 1.1 million high school football players and nearly 70,000 college football players, is the most popular sport in the United States, with the annual Super Bowl game accounting for nine of the top ten of the most watched broadcasts in U.S. television history.

The NFL has the highest average attendance (67,591) of any professional sports league in the world and has the highest revenue out of any single professional sports league. Thus, the best association football and American football players are among the highest paid athletes in the world.

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QUOTE

“Football is the ballet of the masses” - Dmitri Shostakovich

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

“My father’s favourite sport was always THE BEAUTIFUL GAME.”

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HERZLICHEN DANK to all readers helping me keep OWAD alive with single or monthly donations at:

https://donorbox.org/please-become-a-friend-of-owad-3

and,

Paul Smith, IBAN: DE75 7316 0000 0002 5477 40