Why was the British Empire unable to export the popularity of football to all the colonies?

Football, the most popular sport on the planet, was essentially born in a pub in England in 1863, when some individuals decided to establish rules for a game that was already regularly played in that country, with the idea of ​​distinguishing it from another sport that was very popular there: rugby.

The truth is that in less than four decades, football was already present in many countries around the world.

One of the reasons for this spread was that this sport was born in the most powerful power on the planet at that time: the United Kingdom, which controlled vast areas around the world.

However, football is not currently the most widely played or followed sport in many areas that were once part of the powerful British Empire.

In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, for example, rugby is much more popular than football, while in India and Pakistan cricket is almost a religion.

“What happened with Australia or India is that when the British arrived, the national sport in England was cricket, not football. Rugby was the sport of choice for the aristocrats who were sent to rule these places,” explains sports historian Jan Williams.

Williams explains that football was a sport for the middle and working classes in the UK at the time.

“The spread of football around the world happened for two reasons: first, the spread of the railways built by English engineers, and second, the academic exchange that occurred with people from other countries, especially from Latin America and Asia,” Williams points out.

Cricket and Rugby: The Sports of Empire

Cricket is a bat-and-ball sport (like baseball, but with fundamental differences in position and strategy) played on an oval field where the main objective is to score runs (points).

This sport, which has its roots in the Middle Ages, became the national sport of England from the 18th century onwards, and of course during the height of the British Empire.

Added to this is the popularity of another sport: rugby, which for decades was considered a “gentlemen’s sport.”

“These sports were concentrated in the upper classes and leaders at the time,” Williams says. “What they did was almost formally introduce them to areas like Australia, India or South Africa.”

Although British traders brought cricket to India in the 17th century, it was the conquest of these lands in the mid-19th century that finally gave the sport the recognition it maintains there today.

Something similar happened with rugby, which also began to gain popularity in the mid-19th century, especially in Oceania and South Africa.

“Sport in the British Empire was a unifying force, often imbued with nationalist rhetoric, and a climate-focused representation of social and political struggle,” historian Patrick Hutchinson notes in the article. Sports and British Colonialism (“Sports and British Colonialism”, freelance translator).

This influence has made India, Pakistan – and Australia – the current powers in cricket.

In rugby, the only men's teams to be crowned world champions other than England are New Zealand, South Africa and Australia, all former British colonies.

In fact, the most popular sport in Australia is Australian Rules Football, a combination of cricket, rugby and soccer, and very similar to an early version of English rugby.

Moreover, football had two features that distanced it from those colonial areas: it was legalized late (in 1863), and it had roots in the British middle and working classes.

“By the time football became the most popular sport in the UK, cricket and rugby had already become popular in the colonies and were still the favourite sports of the upper classes and aristocracy,” Williams explains.

But this does not mean that the imperial authorities did not use football as a “unifying force”, especially in the British colonies in Africa.

“In Zanzibar, Egypt and elsewhere, leagues were created with the aim of exerting a form of control through sport,” says Hutchison. “Football was used for this purpose.”

But sports also had other ways to expand.

Beyond the rails

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the major world power was still the British Empire, which stretched across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

In Europe, the sport has become very popular thanks to the presence of expatriates who have traveled to different countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

However, in other latitudes, one major influence was the construction of railways, a British invention.

“Many people think it was the railway workers who took football around the world,” says the academic. “But in reality, it was the engineers, because football was a middle-class sport in England.”

According to Williams, these professionals were influential enough not only to practice the sport, but also to teach and implement it in an organised manner in these countries, as the aristocrats did through cricket and rugby colleges in the colonies.

At the beginning of the 20th century, especially in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, the first clubs began to be created, many of them with English names that still survive: River Plate or Boca Juniors (Argentina); Club Nacional de Fútbol (Uruguay) and Fluminense Football Club (Brazil), for example.

“What happened with football is that it was not divided into categories, but became popular at all levels. [na América Latina]“It's a very good idea,” Williams explains.

But the expert highlights that railways were not the only means of spreading football around the world: students and visitors to the UK were a widespread means of spreading the sport.

“A lot of people who left Latin America or Asia to study at an English university saw that the sport was very popular and wanted to bring it back to their home countries,” Williams says.

There is no shortage of examples: Deportivo Cali, one of the most traditional Colombian clubs, was founded by the Nazario brothers, Juan Pablo and Fidel Lalende Caldas, who travelled to the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 20th century and spent about five years there.

Charles Miller himself, who is considered responsible for bringing football to Brazil at the end of the 19th century after studying in England, was the son of a Scottish engineer who worked on the railways in the state of São Paulo.

“Football was born in England and became something that people who lived outside the British Empire aspired to, and many football clubs were founded by people who travelled to the UK,” he says.

But there were areas where British influence was present, such as the United States or Canada, where football also failed to take root.

“Soccer has tried to enter American culture many times, but the rules and the number of goals do not help the sport's popularity,” says James Brown, of the Association of Soccer Historians in the United States.

For Brown, Americans like contact sports with dynamic results, where higher scores can be achieved.

“But the reality is that until the age of 16, soccer is the most played sport among American youth. So, there is a future for this sport in the country.”

– This text was published in https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/geral-63851563