Offside by William P. Barrett

Author:William P. Barrett [Barrett, William P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Booktrope Editions
Published: 2014-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

“Pass out. Throw a long one. Past him. Down. Up. A short one. Pass it back. Get back.”

But back along the Pacific Rim, the Japanese developed their own version of tsu-chu. It was called kemari. Players stood in a circle and passed the ball to one another without letting it touch the ground. A similar game called sepak raga was all the rage in the islands that later became Malaysia.

Meanwhile, back in Mexico, the Mayans, Aztecs and Zapotecs had developed their batting-about-a-round-ball game into a sport called tlachtli. Players would hit the ball with their bodies with the idea of eventually propelling it through a small stone ring. That rubber coating from the latex sure made things easier.

Besides two teams and a ball, tlachtli foreshadowed two other big common elements with the modern game we attend or watch on TV. The first was extremely low-scoring matches. So low, a player who made a goal was given jewelry; it was that big a deal. The second: Tlachtli was taken very seriously. To some zealots now, soccer is akin to religion. No fooling back then, especially for the Aztecs. Priests oversaw the matches, laid out fields—and sometimes presided over the altar sacrifice of losing-team members. Call it Darwin's survival of the fittest centuries before Darwin.

Not to be outdone by their rival Greeks but nevertheless waiting centuries, the Romans stole the concept of episkros and called it harpastum. A ball was passed among teammates while opponents tried for interceptions or tackles. Kicking didn't seem to have been an element, making harpastum more like rugby. There weren’t a lot of rules, either, which made it violent like rugby.

Harpastum was played in the streets, which had one big plus—easy proximity—and one big negative—easy proximity. The famous lawyer Cicero wrote about one court case in which a ball accidentally kicked into a barber shop killed a customer getting a shave.

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