There are two explanations for this story, Robinho. The first is that the number would be a tribute to the 11 colleges that participated in the meeting that determined the rules of the sport in 1863, in England. The second says that 11 was the number of athletes in the Cambridge University teams, also in England, the first to publish the basic definitions of the game. At the time, each class had only ten students. The teams, however, were completed by an 11th athlete: the beadle (student inspector) of each class, who was left with the thankless task of staying in goal. “This is the version accepted by Fifa, the association that defines the rules of football in the world”, says former referee Emídio Marques Mesquita, an instructor at the entity. Before the first rules, there was no standardization: there are records of matches with up to 17 players! What is certain, Robinho, is that the number 11 was adopted in the 19th century and until today it remains among the 17 laws that govern the sport.
Other rules have changed a lot since then. Can you believe that in the early days of football there were no referees? That’s right: the fouls were settled between the two teams, in a gentleman’s agreement. The referee only appears in 1868 and, even then, he whistled little: he was out of the field and had no autonomy to mark infractions. Everything needed to be decided together with the team captains: if one of the two did not accept the appointment, nothing was done. The referee’s authority only became absolute after 1894, with the modernization of the rules of the sport. The goalkeeper’s role also changed: in the 19th century, he could hold the ball in the air anywhere on the pitch, he just couldn’t guide it with his hands. The ban on grabbing outside your area came in 1912. Even more bizarre is that other common situations in games are not provided for in the official rules.
This is the case of the barrier that protects the goal at the time of the foul. “The maximum that FIFA says is that no player can stay less than 9.14 meters away from the ball when an infringement occurs. The players decided that the best way to guard the goal was to form a compact block in front of the ball. This is very common in football: first things appear in practice and only then do they become rules”, says sports journalist and researcher Celso Unzelte, author of O Livro de Ouro do Futebol.
A very weird game Bate-bola would be very different if the rules of the 19th century remainedINVISIBLE STRETCH
In the beginning of football, goals were worthy of street matches: goals had no upper limit. It was up to the two teams to decide whether the ball had gone over or under the side posts. In 1865, a ribbon began to connect the two goal posts. Ten years later, the first wooden crossbars began to appear in games. The novelty was officially incorporated into the rules from 1878
IN THE RADIUS (AND NOT ON THE MARK) OF THE PENALTY
When tagging first appeared in 1891, the ball could be hit from anywhere within 11 meters of the goal. At that time, the penalty was considered an inelegant punishment. So much so that, at the end of the 19th century, Corinthian from England (the team that inspired the foundation of the alvinegro from São Paulo in 1910) refused to defend the infraction. The goalkeeper simply abandoned the goal and left the goal free for the opponent to fill the nets
YELLOW AND RED LOLLIPP
It seems incredible, but the yellow and red cards are quite recent: they only appeared in the Mexico Cup, in 1970. Before that, the warnings were all verbal, which caused a general mess when referee and players did not speak the same language. A few months before that Cup, nobody knew what form the cards would take. One of the suggestions was to make small colored disks to indicate the punishments. In the end, these “lollipops” were replaced by the rectangular cards we know today.