Guarani Indians invented ‘football’
Guarani Indians invented ‘football’
‘We just want to highlight curious historical fact’
ASUNCION, Sept 10, (AFP): South America’s Guarani people played a football-like game two centuries before the modern sport emerged, the Paraguayan government says in a new documentary based on Jesuit texts. The film, “The Guarani Invented Football,” retraces Catholic missionaries’ 17th-century descriptions of an indigenous game played with a rubbery inflatable ball that players had to control with their feet.
But despite its title, the film stops short of claiming the Guarani invented modern association football, a sport that grew out of various games dating back to ancient times that was first codified into a widely used rulebook in 19th-century England. “We’re not here looking to stake a claim on behalf of the Guarani,” Paraguayan Culture Minister Mabel Causarano told AFP.
“We just want to highlight a curious historical fact, which is that they were already playing a ball game with their feet when the Jesuits arrived shortly after 1600.”
When the first Europeans arrived in South America, the Guarani inhabited a territory that stretched across parts of present-day Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
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