By Matheus Doncev, special for Trivela
Can you imagine football having its beginning, basically, as a soccer match between friends in Saturday’s society? And that 150 years later, the pioneering club, which divided its athletes between married and single, would hear from King Pelé that it could only exist thanks to them? In an exclusive interview for the Doncev FC profile on TikTokDylan Ralph told a piece of the history of the team founded on October 24, 1857 by Nathaniel Creswick and William Perst, two cricketers who decided to change their sport.
READ MORE:
– The creation of rules and the expansion of football around the world
– Historians discover 1833 rulebook, marking another milestone in the evolution of football
– The oldest club in the world, Sheffield FC is one of those responsible for the separation of football from rugby
– Year by year, the main changes made to the rules of football
– The football timeline: key facts from 150 years
There are many curiosities related to Sheffield Football Club, the first football club in the world, such as, for example, who they played against when they first appeared. One of the most curious features of the history of this English club is that there are members from all over the world and the second country with the most members, after, of course, the United Kingdom, is Brazil.
Initially, Sheffield FC was made up of members who paid their dues to play for the cricket club. “The question we get most often is: if we were the first, who did we play against,” begins Ralph with his answer about the game systems of the time. “We separated teams into three different division systems: by alphabet, with teams being divided into A through M against N through Z; the best against the worst; and the married against the unmarried”. Interestingly, the latter is a classic of Brazilian naked.
Until three years later, they managed to persuade another cricket team to found a football club so they could have someone to play against: Hallam Football Club, owner of the oldest stadium in football history, Sandygate. Dylan explained that the clubs are rivals on the field in the classic called Rules Derby, but partners outside, as they like to worship the history that was written by both. “When we receive visits from tourists here in our structures, we always recommend that they get to know Hallam FC, as they are also important for football”, he says.
This importance and pride are very well translated into phrases spoken by people who live Sheffield FC on a daily basis, like Dylan, because for them, it doesn’t matter if you support Boca Juniors or Real Madrid, we should all love our great-great-grandfather. “Sheffield FC is not relevant to anyone living in Paris. But the first club in history is. So we took advantage of this exclusive brand to spread who we are to the whole world. Because there are three billion football fans across the planet, they had to come from somewhere. And that place is us”, praises Dylan.
Who agrees with this is Pelé. The King visited the club’s facilities on the 150th anniversary, which was celebrated with a friendly match against Inter Milan, leaving behind another phrase that they use with pride: “Without Sheffield FC, there wouldn’t be me!” (Without Sheffield FC I would not exist!”)
The Sheffield Rules
In the early days of this wonderful sport, many things were still not well defined in terms of football rules. The Football Association (known as the FA of London) played one way, Sheffield another until 1878, when the two were merged to adopt just one.
“We invented headers, corners, free kicks, the crossbar and we even had the first ever night game here at Bramall Lane, where we had some Sheffield FC players on the field. So when we went up against a team from London, they laughed at us for heading the ball because they had never seen that before”, says Dylan Ralph.
Ralph even makes a funny comment about one of the rules that the Sheffield players invented: “Where would David Beckham be today if there were no free kicks?”, he joked.
Lower divisions
When professionalism first appeared in football, Sheffield disliked the idea on the grounds that they played football for the love, not the money. Because of this, they were never even in the fifth division of English football. Today, Sheffield FC is in the eighth division, a league that borders on amateurism and that does not see the color of money or League Two (fourth division), even less the Premier League.
Even so, the fact that they are the first club in the history of football opens many doors in terms of marketing, ranging from sponsoring companies to associated fans, a mark that already exceeds 5,000 people around the world, with Brazil being the second country with the most taxpayers, according to data released by the club itself on Instagram and on Twitter, as you see below.
This means that the club has enough money to be a semi-professional team, paying all its football-related staff (with the exception of the secretariat, volunteers), and has a well-defined football structure, with women’s football and youth divisions.
It wasn’t always like this. At a certain point in its history, Sheffield had to sell many of the club’s historic objects to survive, which made them lose many important memories about the beginning of football, such as uniforms, the football rule book, among other things.
Indeed, Sheffield was nomadic for more than 140 years, having played matches in several locations that even include Bramall Lane, Sheffield United’s stadium, a club recently promoted to the Premier League for the 2023/24 season, and only had its first stadium called Coach & Horses Ground in 2001. Currently there is a project for the team to have a new space, what they call The Home of Football (The House of Football). It couldn’t be another name.
Despite not having many trophies at its headquarters or playing in the fifth division of English football, Sheffield FC is, alongside Real Madrid, the only team in the world to have the FIFA Order of Merit, which officially recognized the team as “dean of universal football”. Check out excerpts from the conversation on TikTok’s Doncev FC profilefocused on football stories and Football Manager sagas.
2023-06-12 12:30:00
#football #club #world #Sheffield #Football #Club #play
