Origin Stories: The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World

by Chris Lee

Origin The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World charts the growth of the game in each major footballing country, from the very first kick to the first World Cup in 1930. Football's global spread from muddy playing fields to colossal, purpose-built stadiums is a story of class, race, gender and politics. Along the way, you'll meet the people who established football around the world and discover the challenges they faced. Featuring interviews with leading historians, journalists, club chairmen and descendants of club founders and players, Origin Stories tells the fascinating country-by-country tale of how football put down its roots around the world. The sport's early growth includes a cast of English aristocrats and 'Scotch professors', French tournament pioneers, international merchants, keen students, raucous rebels and more. Origin Stories shows that football's early development was a truly global team effort.

Genres: Football

384 pages, Paperback

Published July 15, 2021

Reviews

[Max Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting but starts becoming repetitive and I feel misses out some interesting footballing areas such as the Balkans. The author also tends to jump between points but it was still a fascinating read.

[Paul Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic read, so much that I never knew about, a really interesting book for anyone, like myself, who loves the historical side of the game.

The Bibliography is like a treasure trove of what to read next.

[Tom Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book written by Chris Lee the creator of the great football podcast Outside Write. Packed full of nuggets of football stories, stitching together accounts of travels of British industrial workers, soldiers and missionaries who used the football to integrate with local communities around the world who then made the game their own.
Off the back of reading this I learned Thomas Donohoe, one of the founders of Brazilian football, worked in a dye factory where my childhood house stands and that Hugh MacColl, founder and first Captain of Seville FC - oldest club in Spain, is buried a mile from my front door!
This book made me quite proud of the role other Glaswegians, Scots and British people made spreading the beautiful game!
If you like football, if you enjoy social history, you should definitely read this book!

[John Bingham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth a read. Author can’t go into great detail due to the amount of nations covered, but a good, well informed read nonetheless that encourages the reader to carry out further research