Professionalism of Modern Football

The development of modern football was closely linked to the processes of industrialization and urbanization in Victorian Britain. The majority of the new working-class inhabitants of the industrial towns and cities of Great Britain redirected themselves in their bucolic pastimes, like the bait of badgers, and look for new forms of collective leisure. From the 1850s on, industrial workers were increasingly likely to have Saturday afternoons without working, and many turned to the new soccer game to play or play. Urban institutions, such as churches, unions and schools, the organization of men and women of the working class in recreational football teams. The growing adult literacy stimulated journalistic coverage of organized sports, while transport systems such as railways or urban streetcars allowed players and spectators to travel to soccer games. The average attendance in England was 4,600 in 1888 to 7,900 in 1895, increased to 13,200 in 1905 and reached 23,100 in the First World War. The popularity of football eroded public interest in other sports, especially cricket.
The leading clubs, especially those of Lancashire, the winners and winners of the 1870s and the regret of the amateurism rule of the FA. Qualified, many of them come from Scotland. Working class employees and clubs in the North of England are looking for a professional system that provides a financial reward to cover their "broken time" and the risk of injury. The FA has become an amateur policy that protects the influence of the middle and middle class on the game.
The problem of professionalism came to a crisis in England in 1884, when the FA expelled two clubs for using professional players. However, player pay has become the same place as the one that has no more options than in practice in the following year, despite initial attempts to restrict professionalism to reimbursements for lost time. The issue was that the northern clubs, with their large supporters and their ability to attract the best players, stood out. As the influence of working-class players is focused on football, classes took refuge in other sports, particularly cricket and rugby. The professionalism also led to further modernization of the game through the establishment of the Football League, which in turn a dozen leaders from the North and the Midwest systematically compete with each other from 1888 onwards. A further second division was introduced in 1893, and the total number of teams was centered at 28. The Irish leagues and schools were formed in 1890. The Southern League began in 1894 but was absorbed by the Football League in 1920. However, soccer has not become an important lucrative business during this period. Professional clubs became limited liability companies primarily to secure the ground for the gradual development of stadium facilities. Most clubs in England were owned and controlled by entrepreneurs, but shareholders received very low, if any; its main reward was an improved public status through the management of the local club.
Later, the national leagues abroad followed the British model, which included league championships, a less important cup competition, and a hierarchy of leagues that sent the clubs to finish at the tables until the next highest division (promotion) and clubs in the bottom down to the next lower division (decline). A league was formed in the Netherlands in 1889, but professionalism came only in 1954. Germany completed its first national championship season in 1903, but the Bundesliga, an integral and fully professional national league, did not evolve until 60 years later. In France, where the game was introduced in the 1870s, a professional league did not begin until 1932, shortly after the adoption of professionalism in the South American countries of Argentina and Brazil.

By: Preeti Narula
Content: https://www.britannica.com/sports/football-soccer/Professionalism