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The ball as a migrant


Football has always been synonymous with migration. As an English sport it helped to establish the modern English way of life in Europe towards the end of the 19th century. With open competition and universal rules, football was seen as a pioneer for the free market economy, parliamentarianism and internationality.

Even though there are accounts of modern football having been played in Belgium at the beginning of the 1860s; even though the oldest football club in continental Europe was the Le Havre Athletic Club in France, founded by English employees in 1872 - the organised spread of football in Europe benefited the economic elites, in particular, the student sons of British and European industrialists. People of different backgrounds and nationality played in the same team. British sailors and industrial engineers played side by side and mixed with the locals.

The first football matches took place at elite schools in Switzerland in the 1860s. Following the example of the student sons of English industrialists, their Swiss and Italian colleagues, for example, were passionate for the game and became ambassadors for it. Many English and, above all, Swiss industrialists and academics were never without a leather ball under their arm whenever their work took them abroad. The same applied to many who returned home after continuing their education in England or Switzerland.

Football as a modern lifestyle
The first players and club founders in continental Europe were migrants. These industrial nomads organised football matches as a pleasant way of spending their spare time and the preferred male meeting place for the economic and academic elites beyond national boundaries or established professions. Owing to their higher social status they found it easy to integrate. They recognised football as an expression of fair play and the philosophy of the self-made man. It was, however, also a method of practicing capitalist virtues for new blood and, in particular, for compatriot and local employees and workers. Football stood for the division of labour, individual responsibility and discipline. Football kept you fit for your daily work and in the long term football established the fetish of performance beyond the work arena.

The ball initially did the rounds in Switzerland, Denmark and Belgium, the three countries with the highest per capita gross national product at the time. In the beginning English remained the language of the game. Club colours were borrowed from the English role models. Some clubs nurture their English names to this day: Young Boys Bern, Grasshoppers Zürich or Inter Milan.

Soon, however, clubs were founded that excluded migrants. Examples include Espanyol, which was set up in 1900 in response to the internationally oriented FC Barcelona, Sampdoria, for Italians only, and Stade Francais, a national alternative to the more English Racing Club Paris.