Every four years, human­i­ty under­goes a great increase in its num­ber of soc­cer fans — or rather, foot­ball fans, depend­ing on what part of the world we’re talk­ing about. That’s not to imply that the world oth­er­wise suf­fers from a dearth of enthu­si­asts of that par­tic­u­lar sport. Nor is foot­ball an obscure sec­ondary term: the lan­guage of most every coun­try obsessed with the thing itself has local­ized that name for it, result­ing in a vari­ety of words from fút­bol to fut­bol to fute­bol to Fußball. There remains the mat­ter of cal­cio, but then, Ital­ians have always done things their own way. So do Amer­i­cans, as this year’s World Cup has empha­sized, but you’ll find that soc­cer actu­al­ly turns out not to have orig­i­nat­ed as yet anoth­er awk­ward cus­tom exclu­sive to the Unit­ed States.

In fact, it derives from a few let­ters of the full British name of the game, “asso­ci­a­tion foot­ball.” Com­mon­ly heard in the U.K. up until the nine­teen-sev­en­ties, soc­cer even­tu­al­ly came in handy on the oth­er side of the pond to dif­fer­en­ti­ate it from what most of the world calls “Amer­i­can foot­ball.”

As explained in about 20 min­utes in the Geo His­to­ry video at the top of the post, the his­to­ry of soc­cer, foot­ball, fút­bol, or what­ev­er you may call it is full of facts that will sure­ly sur­prise those of who only pay it any atten­tion when the World Cup comes around — and may occa­sion­al­ly sur­prise the die-hards who live and breathe the game even dur­ing the off years. For a much deep­er (and more humor­ous) dive into a nar­row­er slice of the past, we also have this two-hour his­to­ry of the World Cup from foot­ball YouTu­ber Vizeh.

If you want to avoid a name spe­cif­ic to any one nation­al lan­guage, you can always refer to “the beau­ti­ful game,” but even if that adjec­tive applies to the action on the field, at least on a good day, it sits less eas­i­ly with the pol­i­tick­ing, back­bit­ing, and not-always-above-board deal­mak­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of its busi­ness and admin­is­tra­tion at a glob­al scale. The whole enter­prise has come to rep­re­sent all the glo­ries and ugli­ness of moder­ni­ty, reduced to a rigid­ly stan­dard­ized bat­tle­field on which increas­ing­ly many nations of the world aspire to achieve first pres­ence, then dom­i­na­tion. For exam­ple, South Korea, where I live, has made its seri­ous­ness on the pitch suf­fi­cient­ly known over four straight decades of World Cup par­tic­i­pa­tion that you might want to learn the Kore­an word chukgu — at least if the com­ing match with South Africa goes its way.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Restored Footage from the First World Cup: Uruguay, 1930

Pelé’s Great World Cup Goals (RIP)

Albert Camus’ Lessons Learned from Play­ing Goalie: “What I Know Most Sure­ly about Moral­i­ty and Oblig­a­tions, I Owe to Foot­ball”

The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Soc­cer Match: The Ancient Greeks Ver­sus the Ger­mans

Why Jorge Luis Borges Hat­ed Soc­cer: “Soc­cer is Pop­u­lar Because Stu­pid­i­ty is Pop­u­lar”

The Rules of 100 Sports Clear­ly Explained in Short Videos: Base­ball, Foot­ball, Jai Alai, Sumo Wrestling, Crick­et, Pétanque & Much More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Olympic Games have their ori­gins in antiq­ui­ty, but their mod­ern revival has also been going on longer than any of us has been here. Even the fifth Sum­mer Olympics, which took place in Stock­holm in 1912, has passed out of liv­ing mem­o­ry. But thanks to the tech­nol­o­gy of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, we can call up sur­pris­ing­ly crisp footage of its com­pe­ti­tions any time we like, much as we’re doing with that of the cur­rent­ly ongo­ing thir­ty-third Sum­mer Olympics in Paris. One espe­cial­ly fas­ci­nat­ing use of these resources, for those invest­ed in sport­ing his­to­ry, is to com­pare the per­for­mances of Olympic ath­letes over time: we know they’ve improved, but it’s one thing to see the num­bers, and quite anoth­er to see a side-by-side com­par­i­son.

Take the ven­er­a­ble men’s 100 meters, whose 1912 and 2020 finals both appear in the video above. 112 years ago, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca’s Ralph Craig won the day (after sev­en false starts, and arguably an eighth as well) with a time of 10.8 sec­onds. Three years ago (Tokyo 2020 hav­ing been delayed by COVID-19 to 2021), the vic­tor of that same event was Italy’s Mar­cell Jacobs, who crossed the fin­ish line at 9.8 sec­onds. 

An even greater evo­lu­tion man­i­fests in the javelin throw, in which the Swedish Eric Lem­ming’s 60.64 meters in 1912 becomes Neer­aj Chopra’s 87.58 meters in 2020. (Nor has Chopra fin­ished set­ting records, at least judg­ing by the media fan­fare in his home­land that attend­ed his recent arrival in Paris’ Olympic vil­lage.)

Pole vault­ing, too, has under­gone a great leap for­ward, or rather, upward. Just above, you can see the 1912 record of 3.95 meters set by Hen­ry S. Bab­cock of the Unit­ed States, then the 2020 record of 6.02 meters set by Armand “Mon­do” Duplan­tis of Swe­den — or tech­ni­cal­ly, of both Swe­den and the U.S., hav­ing been born and raised in the lat­ter, but able to rep­re­sent the for­mer due to his moth­er’s being Swedish. In recent decades, such cas­es of nation­al­ly mixed parent­age (the Amer­i­can-born Ital­ian Jacobs being anoth­er) have become more com­mon in the Olympics, which in that and oth­er respects has long reflect­ed changes in the wider world. And though whether human­i­ty is improv­ing on the whole remains a mat­ter of heat­ed debate, we’ve unde­ni­ably been get­ting a lot bet­ter at run­ning, throw­ing, and jump­ing with the aid of big sticks.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sci­ence of the Olympic Flame; Ancient Style Meets Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Black Pow­er Salute Pho­to at the 1968 Olympics in Mex­i­co City

Did Joe Strum­mer, Front­man of The Clash, Run the Paris and Lon­don Marathons?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.