Football (or soccer because the game is named this in some parts of the world) features a long history. Football in its current form arose in England within the middle of the 19th century. But alternative versions of the sport existed much earlier and are a neighborhood of the football history. the foremost admitted story tells that the sport was developed in England within the 12th century. During this century, games that resembled football were played on meadows and roads in England. Besides from kicks, the sport involved also punches of the ball with the fist. This early sort of football was also far more rough and violent than the fashionable way of playing. a crucial feature of the forerunners to football was that the games involved many people and happened over large areas in towns (an equivalent was played in Florence from the 16th century where it had been called Calcio). The rampage of those games would cause damage on the town and sometimes death. These would be among the explanations for the proclamations against the sport that finally was forbidden for several centuries. But the football-like games would return to the streets of London within the 17th century. it might be forbidden again in 1835, but at this stage the sport had been established within the public schools