The History of the Football League

So the Football League, there, there's so much that's interesting about this.

The Football League itself, which we'll get to, is founded in 1888, but before that...

So in 1863, the laws of the game.

Laws.

If you say rules once today-

Oh, my goodness

... you can put 10p in that glass.

You admonished me so much the other day, I'm terrified.

[laughs]

Laws, laws, laws.

The laws of the game are codified in 1863 in the Freemasons Tavern in London, and a, a solicitor and an athlete plays a central role.

I assume this bloke was a Dickens character, but he is called Ebenezer Cobb Morley, and he's a solicitor and athlete.

He becomes the first secretary of the FA, and he's the sort of one who goes, "Right, this is how many a side football should be.

This is the...

This is what a goal looks like.

This is what a foul is." And at this stage, of course, football still, it's very much a public school game, it's a university game, uh, but it increasingly becomes a game played, you know, by church teams and by railways.

And then it starts to go to the, it starts to go to the north, and it's played much more in the north.

But the s- the point is, it's an amateur game.

So throughout the 1860s and the 1870s, it really is an amateur game.

But the FA Cup comes in in 1871, an amateur, an amateur game.

So it's another 17 years before the Football League itself comes in.

But by the middle of the 1880s, it's quite clear that there's some sort of quasi professionalism going on, that quite a lot of players are being paid under the table.

But it, it...

Just to stop and think about it, it, it, it seems extraordinary that you have the FA Cup, which is the world's oldest cup competition, with a load of amateur teams, with some quasi professionals.

But outside of the FA Cup, they're playing...