While the British were important in the spread of the game, Taylor says its far more complex than that.
“One way of understanding the way in which the sport spread is a kind of openness and cosmopolitanism,” Taylor said, explaining that those who helped spread the game did so to be associated with a new frontier.
“These are fairly cosmopolitan, mobile people for whom football represents a sense of Britishness, but a kind of Britishness which is also very modern. To start a football club is kind of to associate yourself with this, this kind of very modern world and football represented that.
“That’s one of the reasons, apart from the fact that it’s an easy game to develop and a very fun game to play, that football spread so widely.”
So there you have it, a crash course in soccer and the World Cup. Now that you have the basics, it’s time to get watching.
The first game between co-host Mexico and South Africa kicks off on June 11 and the final isn’t until July 19. You’ve got 104 chances to watch a game in between those bookmarks and you now have no excuse not to.
