Who invented football and how is it packaged?

Football is one of the most popular sports worldwide. According to FIFA, more than 265 million people played football in over 200 countries in 2006. Of these, 38 million play in over 325 000 clubs worldwide. The game owes its worldwide popularity mainly to the simple rules, which are the same all over the world, and the small amount of equipment, so that football can be played almost anywhere in the world. In Germany, about 6 million people are active in about 27,000 football clubs. In addition, there are numerous hobby footballers.

Who invented football?

Football is not only popular as an active sport. Millions of people around the world regularly go to football stadiums to watch matches. Especially in Europe and South America, football dominates news coverage. Even more follow football on television. Women’s football is also increasingly popular, mainly thanks to multiple successes of the women’s national teams in the United States and Germany.

As early as the second millennium B.C., China had a game similar to football, which was played with a ball and served as a training programme for soldiers at the time. During the Zhou Dynasty, it also spread among the people and rules were introduced to limit violence. The ball consisted of a piece of leather as well as feathers and animal hair. The game became more popular and the first football rules with a goal, goalkeeper and captain were introduced. Between 220 and 680, the air-filled ball was invented. However, the game was forgotten again after about 100 years.

The first precursor of today’s football was invented in England. The aim was to get a ball into the opponent’s goal. The playing field was therefore between two villages, which could be several kilometres apart.

How to pack balls?

Thousands of footballs are sent out, and not just for the World Cup. Here the question arises: How does the round fit into the square?

There are even more things than footballs that are shipped every day that do not correspond to the standard dimensions of a shipping box. Actually, only printed matter, CDs and the like have typical “box dimensions”. Probably 99% of all other goods are insanely shaped and have to be stuffed with a lot of filling material so that they don’t slide around in the package or break.

What doesn’t fit is made to fit – cubic cardboard boxes are ideal at this point. Of course, the box itself is not round. That would still be it! But why hasn’t anyone thought of that yet? After all, you also have to pack round things. Probably because the post office wouldn’t play along – oh dear, if you imagine how round boxes would roll around in a DHL car like that. So you need a box in which such strangely shaped objects fit perfectly without sliding around and breaking. At the same time, however, the box should be able to be shipped and stacked. And this was realised with the cubic boxes: The cubic corrugated cardboard folding boxes are available in 1- or 2-corrugated versions, thus holding products of different weights. They also have an outer layer of kraft paper, which makes them very stable. And on top of that, these boxes are made from 75% recycled paper and are recyclable themselves. But that’s not the only thing that makes them environmentally friendly: the many different inner dimensions mean you can buy exactly the size you need. This also saves on filling and impact protection material. So this is thought to be doubly environmentally friendly.

The round fits into the square! 🙂