The oldest football team in the world is semi-professional and plays in the English eighth division. This is the Sheffield Football Club, founded in 1857 by two college students to the fledgling amateur ball game that made history without knowing it : Nathaniel Creswick and William Perst.
These two boys drew up statutes and rationalized the regulations, which already included many similarities with the current one, such as the number of players per team, the duration of the match or the use of the crossbar (before it was played with goals similar to those of rugby), although there were differences with respect to the current one, such as the use of the hand by outfield players in certain circumstances or the absence of offside.
Over the years, professionalism would come, and Sheffield FC would be relegated by bigger clubs, including two in their city: Sheffield Wednesday, founded in 1867, and Sheffield United (1889), both professionals.
The oldest soccer team in Spain is Recreativo de Huelva, founded in 1889 by Huelva and English fans. The British working for mining companies in the area had introduced football a few years earlier and the game quickly took hold among the local population. Its first official headquarters was the Velodrome Stadium, built in 1892.
A little history
This team’s honors are limited to a 1904 FA Amateur Cup success, and they also finished as runners-up in the 1977 Football Association Challenge Cup.
As we say, the Sheffield Cricket Club organized an informal football game in 1855 without rules and two of its members, Nathaniel Creswick and William Priest, later decided to form the club.
The setting for the meeting was a greenhouse on East Bank Road, and the first matches were ‘Married vs. Single’ among the members themselves. At this time there were different variations of the game and no official set of laws, just a handful of rules set by its two founding members.
The funny thing is that the citizens of that time did not understand why adult men jumped and tried to pass a ball made of leather between two sticks. It did not make sense. But the club kept pushing for a full introduction to the game of “soccer”, and soon their wish came true.
Creswick and Priest designed the “Sheffield Rules”, which were the first official set of regulations for American football, dating back to 1794.
The South Yorkshire club was founded in 1857 and played a key role in providing the rules of modern football.
The game began to expand little by little and by 1904, soccer clubs had already begun to sprout up throughout the country, and also in the rest of the world.
Sheffield FC celebrated its 160th anniversary in 2017.
Richard Tims, president of Sheffield FC, said the club had “played football without a permanent home or ground of its own for more than 140 years.” “Now is the time to bring the club home to Olive Grove,” he added.
Photo: The Sheffield Football Club squad in 1876.
