5 football games that altered the course of history
Few would contest the fact that football is the world’s real global sport. No other sport is as intensely followed, played, debated, loved, and reviled from Baghdad to Buenos Aires as soccer.
Its widespread use also confers a great deal of authority. Since the beginning of time, dictators and politicians have attempted to use football’s ability to unite people and foster a sense of pride in their country for more sinister political ends. Examples include the Argentine junta’s use of the 1978 World Cup to inspire the kind of loyalty that its regime had failed to do, and current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who both feared and respected football’s capacity to inspire change.
Melvyn Bragg nominated the 1863 Rules of Association Football, football’s first official regulation, in his list of the “Twelve Books That Changed the World,” stating that “[football] has caused at least one war and numerous conflicts, often sad, off the pitch.”
On the other hand, significant social and political transformations have occasionally been sparked by a single match. CNN lists some of the games that influenced history before to the 2011 AFC Asian Cup.
1. Secretary’s XI vs President’s XI (1864)
Nobody could have predicted the global sporting revolution that would occur when 22 men met in Battersea Park in London in the winter of 1864 to play a game of football. This was the first match played under the Rules of Association Football, which were established by the fledgling English Football Association in an effort to unify and regulate the sport’s various, not to mention conflicting, strands.
Despite the lack of the forward pass, crossbars, and the offside rule (which would not be implemented for another three years), the British Victorians’ desire for order and approval made it simple to export the 13 laws that made up the streamlined, simplified regulations. Which the British carried out fervently in their colonies and the rest of the world.
Charles William Miller was one of these football missionaries. In the middle of the 1890s, he travelled to Brazil with a football and a copy of the regulations, where the sport took off like wildfire.
“I learned that football was created by Charles Miller from a Brazilian cab driver. That is to say, he is a legendary character in Brazil, but the specifics of the legend are unknown, according to Josh Lacey, author of “God is Brazilian, “a Miller biographical work.
“He has a square in Sao Paulo named after him. The place where Corinthians play is the square outside the stadium.”
And the actual match? Charles William Alcock, who would eventually organise the first-ever international match between England and Scotland seven years later, scored both goals as The Secretary’s XI won 2-0.
2. West Germany vs Hungary (1954)
Germany after World War II was a damaged, divided, and haunted country. Germans were in a soul-searching funk over their role in the Second World War, despite the fact that nation had been financially decimated by the folly of Nazism and divided into east and west by the rise of the Iron Curtain. The nation’s new, despised flag was rarely seen, and singing the national anthem was intentionally discouraged. Then the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland saw the “Miracle of Bern.”
West Germany advanced to the World Cup final to play the same team despite losing 8-3 to Hungary in their opening game. Only amateur football players made up the roster, but Hungary, the finest team in the world at the time, included players like Ferenc Puskas. Nobody gave them a chance, but they managed to win 3-2, inspiring scenes of joy across West Germany and the first constructive display of collective nationalism since the war.
German historian Joachim Fest stated that it was a form of emancipation for the Germans from everything that had been pressing down on them following World War II.
In some ways, the German Republic was founded on July 4, 1954.
3. Rangers vs Bucks (1966)
Nelson Mandela was the most admired prisoner on Robben Island, making it notorious. However, the prison, which housed the political inmates that the apartheid South African state deemed to be the most dangerous, also gave rise to an unexpected football league.
A group of inmates looking to escape the routine of prison life founded the Makana Football Association. From 1964 onward, a prisoner would request permission to play football every week, and the authorities would subsequently punish him for his audacity. But in 1966, the jail warden gave up, and a football league was established using the FIFA rule book, one of the few books in the prison library.
There are no records of the final score between the Rangers and Bucks in the first-ever game, but scores, leagues, disciplinary records, and even the outcomes of disciplinary hearings following on-pitch infractions were recorded.
The Makana FA had a more significant effect than just giving the prisoners hope during difficult times: it helped South Africa’s future leaders hone their administrative abilities. The current president, Jacob Zuma, was a hard-hitting Bucks defender and a future Makana FA referee.
4.Dinamo Zagreb vs Red Star Belgrade (1990)
When Serbia’s Red Star Belgrade played Croatia’s Dinamo Zagreb at the latter’s Maksimir Stadium, Yugoslavia was already on the verge of disintegrating. Recent elections in Croatia were previously won by parties in favour of independence. But many believe that the events of March 13, 1990, marked the start of the most brutal European conflict since the Nazis were overthrown in 1945.
During the game, Zvonimir Boban, a future captain of Croatia and AC Milan, delivered a kung-fu kick at a police officer who was assaulting a Zagreb supporter. Riots broke out between Red Star’s “Delije” and the savage warlord Arkan’s “Bad Blue Boys” extreme group in Zagreb.
He primarily recruited among the Delije for Arkan’s Tigers, the paramilitary organisation he oversaw during the conflict. Arkan himself was charged with war crimes by the UN, but he was killed in 2000 before he could go to trial. Boban later revealed what had been going through his mind.
Here I was, a public figure willing to jeopardise his life, career, and all fame could have offered in the name of the Croatian cause.
It was a significant moment for the rest of the soon-to-be-gone nation. Bosnia-Herzegovina: The End of a Legacy author Dr. Neven Andjelic says, “It was the most significant game in Yugoslav history.”
The International Center for Transnational Justice estimates that 140,000 people died during the five-year conflict. Its repercussions may still be seen today, not the least of which is a statue of soldiers outside the Maksimir Stadium. “To the club fans who initiated the war with Serbia at this ground on May 13, 1990,” is written on it.
5.Iraq versus Saudi Arabia (2007)
Younis Mahmoud sprinted the length of the field to join the few spectators who had travelled far to the big, empty stand at Jakarta’s Bung Karno stadium in the celebration.
On July 29, 2007, the captain of the Iraqi national team—a group of Kurds, Sunni, and Shia Muslims—scored the lone, crucial goal in the Asian Cup final against Saudi Arabia, but it meant much more than the “Lions of Mesopotamia’s” first major trophy.
Back in Baghdad, tens of thousands of Iraqis flooded the streets, shooting celebratory bullets into the air while many held the Iraqi flag, which had not been widely seen since Saddam’s downfall.
A appearance of national togetherness was something that football had accomplished that no politician or general had been able to do. In June 2007, there were 1,700 sectarian attacks in Baghdad alone, according to the American military. By the end of August, that had practically decreased in half since the final, to 960.
However, the victory had a cost. In the semifinal, shortly after South Korea had been defeated by Iraq on penalties, a suicide bomber detonated himself amid jubilant spectators, killing 50 people.
Mahmoud recounted to the press that “one of the victims was a 12-year-old child” at the time. “When his body was placed in front of his mother, she made the following statement instead of sobbing: “I submit my son as a sacrifice for the Iraqi national team.” We must succeed.”
The rest is history because they decided to go on.
