However, football is currently not the most popular sport in many territories that belonged to this mighty empire.

In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, for example, rugby is far more popular than football, while in India and Pakistan cricket is almost a religion.

“What happened with Australia or India is that when the British came the national sport in England was cricket, not football. And rugby was the favorite sport of the aristocrats who been sent to govern these places,” he told the BBC. John Williams.

Williams points out that football was a sport for the middle and working class in the UK at that time.

“The popularization of football around the world happened for two reasons: one, because of the proliferation of railways built by British engineers and, two, because of the academic exchanges that took place with people from other countries, especially with Latin America and Asia,” Williams said.

Cricket is a ball and paddle sport (like baseball, but with substantial differences in mode and strategy) played on an oval pitch and where the main objective is to score runs.

This sport, which has its roots in ANDdad media, became the national sport of England from the 18th century and of course, at the height of the YoBritish Empire.

Added to this is the popularity of another sport: rugby, considered for decades to be “a beast sport played by gentlemen”.

“These sports were in the upper classes and the rulers of the time. What they did was introduce them almost officially in territories like Australia, India or South Africa,” explains Williams.

If cricket had already been introduced to India, where it is today the most practiced sport, by British merchants in the 17th century, it was with the conquest of these territories in the middle of the 19th century that it finally became what it is today.

Something similar happened with rugby, which also started to become popular in the middle of the 19th century, especially in Oceania and South Africa.

“Sport in the British Empire served as a unifying force, often steeped in nationalist rhetoric, and sport served as a focused representation of the climate of social and political struggle,” notes historian Patrick Hutchinson in his essay “Sports and British Colonialism”.

This influence makes India and Pakistan, as well as Australia, cricket powerhouses. currently.

In the field of rugby, the only men’s teams to have been crowned world champions are New Zealand, South Africa, Australia (plus England), all former British colonies.

In fact, the most popular sport in Australia is Australian rules football, which is a combination of cricket, rugby and soccer, closely resembling the early version of English rugby.

Now, Football had two characteristics that distanced it from these territories: it was codified late (in 1863) and had more roots in the British middle and working class.

“By the time football became the most popular sport in the UK, cricket and rugby had already established themselves in the colonies and were still favorite sports of the upper classes and aristocracy,” says Williams.

However, this does not mean that football was not used by the imperial authorities as a “unifying force”, especially in the British colonies in Africa.

“In Zanzibar, Egypt and other colonies, leagues were created with the aim of exercising a form of control through sport. Football was used for this purpose,” says Hutchison.

But football had other ways to develop.

Around the beginning of the 20th century, the main world power was still the British Empire, with territories that stretched across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

In Europe, the sport has become popular thanks to the presence of expatriates who have traveled to different countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain, among others.

However, in other latitudes, one of the main forms of influence was the building of railways (a British invention).

“A lot of people think it was the railway workers who went around the world with football. But it was the engineers, because football was the sport of the middle class in England,” explains the academic.

According to Williams, these professionals were influential enough not only to play the sport, but to instruct and implement the sport in an organized manner in these countries, as the aristocrats had done through the colonial colleges with cricket and rugby. .

Around the beginning of the 20th century, especially in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, the first clubs began to be created, many of them with names in English that they still have: River Plate or Boca Juniors (Argentina) ; Club Nacional de Football (Uruguay) and Fluminense Football Club (Brazil), for example.

“What happened with football is that it was not divided into classes: it became popular at all levelsWilliams clarifies.

She herself points out that the railways were not the only means by which football spread around the world: students and people visiting the UK were a vast means of spread.

“Many of those who came from Latin America or Asia to study English at one of the English universities saw the sport very popular and wanted to bring it back to their home country,” says Williams.

The examples are many: Deportivo Cali, one of the most traditional Colombian clubs, was founded by the Nazario brothers, Juan Pablo and Fidel Lalinde Caldas, who had traveled to the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 20th century and spent around five years in England.

“Football, being born in England, became something of an aspiration for people who lived outside the British Empire and that’s how many football clubs were founded, from people who traveled in the UK,” he said.

But there were territories that once had a British influence, such as the United States or Canada, where football also failed to take root.

“Football has repeatedly attempted to enter American culture, but I think his rules and number of goals have to do with him not being much more popular,” US Soccer Historians Association historian James Brown told BBC Mundo.

For Brown, Americans love contact sports where high numbers can be achieved.

“But the truth is that until the age of 16, football is the sport most played by young people in this country, so it has a future.”

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