“Somebody said that football's a matter of life and death to you. I said, 'Listen, it's more important than that.'" An unforgettable quote by Liverpool’s legendary manager Bill Shankly sums up better than anything the grip soccer has on so many of our lives. Whether you call it soccer, football, calcio, or whatever, there are over 3.5 billion of us obsessed with the beautiful game around the globe. So where did it come from, and who can we hold responsible?
When you drill down into the story of the game, these are three main eras where we can search for the culprit responsible for inventing soccer:
