One of the most familiar tropes—even cliches—of British colonialism is the persistent and ubiquitous theme of the relationship between sport, muscular Christianity and empire.

Yet when that trope is pursued further it invariably narrows to cricket, or occasionally rugby, within a growing literature on the role of sport in empire. Despite its contemporary global significance, association football (soccer) has been the forgotten sport of empire, perhaps too close to the masses for comfort or documentation.

Football—kicking a ball around—is basically such a straightforward and obvious form of enjoyment, exercise and competitive entertainment that there are multiple claims to its origin. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century did it emerge as a regulated activity, codified and standardised in Britain in the 1860s, and defined by widely accepted and ultimately global rules and regulations (over the number of players and their dress code, dimensions of the ground and goals, duration and, of course, the actual play). Codification was the preserve of the privileged, coinciding with the emergence of sport as a central feature of public-school education. Football became popular and achieved recognition and regulation during the first great era of globalisation, and the consolidation of colonial control in global empires.¹

Football required organisation, leadership and practice, attributes seen as valuable, even essential, by colonial powers. Football was imbued with modernity. Acquiring football skills, organising teams and competitions, travelling to play games, and also competing against the colonialists themselves, all meant the acquisition of status and the realisation of a degree of equality and acceptance for the colonised. Sport, in the minds of colonialists, promised to discipline subject societies, and acquiring a certain discipline was to be wel­comed. There is remarkably little evidence that the colonised were reluctant to take part. Colonialists regarded sport as a tool of civilisation. Since football required little technical equipment, it was more open to the participation of indigenous peoples than many other sports. Like other team sports, however, it demanded competition, opposition and there­fore rivalry. Unlike cricket, it also meant direct physical confrontation, rather than confrontation through finesse; rivalry and physical opposition sometimes posed direct challenges to colonial authorities.