A tale of clubs, pitches and men. How association football took root in the Lake Geneva region (1860s–1910s)

'Tomorrow, Thursday, at 3pm, a football match will take place on the Plaine de Plainpalais, between 11 English from Lausanne and Geneva'. This brief notice, published in January 1869 in Le Journal de Genève , may be one of the earliest mentions in the area's press of a new ball game - football. Although the chronology of association football's 'cultural transfer' to Switzerland and the conditions that facilitated the game's introduction to the country are well-documented, the game's adoption by the local population remains under-researched. Based on extensive empirical research combining original archive materials and articles from contemporary generalist and sports newspapers, the present study explored the factors that led young men in Geneva and Lausanne to embrace a foreign game. It also examined two less-well studied aspects of the game's early history in Europe: the difficulty of finding places to play football in urban areas and the profiles of football's first leaders. The results extend previous research on the creation of the first football clubs (association or rugby) outside Great Britain and on the history of associations in Switzerland

Archaeology · Art history · Football · Linguistics · Political science · Engineering · European history and politics · History · Philosophy · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society

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