Hello and welcome everyone to soccer 101.

My name is Taylor Rockwell, and on this week's show, we're going to be taking a look at a pretty basic question without that basic of an answer.

Why are there 11 players on a soccer team? We've done Soccer 101 episodes on certain rules and how they came to be,

what the numbers on the shirts themselves signify, but I've honestly never thought about the

number of players on the field until about two days ago when I decided this should be a topic.

It's a thing even the most casual of soccer fans know, soccer is 11 on 11.

Gary Lineker would argue it's 11 on 11 and then the Germans win.

I would amend that to more modern times and go with it's 11 on 11 and then whoever employs

Killian Mbapay wins.

But why is it 11? How did that seemingly random number become the bedrock upon which the

sport is built? It's definitely not a burning question. It's not even a particularly

useful question, if I'm being honest, but it is the type of question that someone, usually

my wife, maybe one day my daughter, will ask and I will sort of start to answer thinking I know and then realize I do not.

So, hopefully by the end of this episode, you will be able to have a concise answer. Hopefully I will as well.

Let's start in the early days of the game. Football in its earliest forms was a little like the Wild West.

There were some general guidelines for behavior, no hard and firm rules, violent behavior

was not necessarily a problem, and mustaches were everywhere.

But even in those days, 11 versus 11 seemed to be the norm.

In fact, the first attempt to play a game with standardized rules took place in 1846 and featured 11 old Horovians playing 11 old Etonians.

Football of the 19th century was incredibly localized. In London, it was played in boarding schools and in universities where each school would have their own set of sort of guidelines

as opposed to hard and firm written down rules.

This, however, changed in 1845 when the first set of rules was produced by rugby school.

...