The Foot-Ball Club was a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

club, in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

, Scotland, formed in 1824. The club met in the summer months to play a form of football that did not resemble

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

. Nevertheless, the organisation can claim to be the earliest recorded club playing football of any kind. A modern

club with the same name was formed in 2007, in an attempt to revive the legacy of the old club.

History

The Foot-Ball Club of Edinburgh is thought to be one of the oldest recorded football clubs in the world with records going back to 1824. Membership lists and accounts of the club between 1824 and 1841 are held in the National Archives of Scotland (NAS). Founded by John Hope in 1824, the club played its games in the city's Dalry Park until 1831, when they moved to Greenhill Park. The club appears to have met and played every summer, but there is no record of it after 1841. In 2017, a brief set of handwritten rules was found on the back of the club's 1833 budget statement. This has been described as the earliest known written rules of football.

Reformation

In 2007, an association football club with the same name was formed by Kenny Cameron, a community coach at

Spartans Sparta (Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referred t ...

, after a tour of the

Scottish Football Museum The Scottish Football Museum is Scotland’s national museum of association football, located in Hampden Park in Glasgow. The Museum The museum houses over 2000 objects of football memorabilia, including the world's oldest cap and match ticket fr ...

. The club's men play in the Edinburgh Sunday Premier League and the Ladies play in the Scottish Women's Football League Second Division South East Division.

References

Sources

* ''1824: The World's First Foot-Ball Club'', John Hutchinson and Andy Mitchell. Andy Mitchell Media, 2018. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Foot-Ball Club Edinburgh Football clubs in Edinburgh Sports clubs established in the 1820s 1824 establishments in Scotland History of football in Scotland History of rugby union in Scotland Defunct Scottish rugby union clubs