(Yicai Global) July 26 -- On its website, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) states that the "very earliest form of the game for which there is scientific evidence was an exercise from a military manual dating back to the second and third centuries BC in China". Fifa does not identify the "military manual", but Records of the Grand Historian, completed around 94BC, mentions that during the Warring States period (475-221BC), the people of the rich and powerful state of Qi (in present-day Shandong) engaged in all manner of leisure activities, one of which was cuju, literally "kicking a ball".

By the Han period (206BC-AD220), cuju had developed into a professional sport. Played on special grounds – with stands for spectators – where two teams of 12 players each tried to kick a leather ball stuffed with animal hair into a goal, it was popular among the elite and soldiers, who played the game as a form of exercise.

During the Yuan and Ming dynasties (1279-1644), cuju remained popular among aristocrats and officials, although it gradually became associated with vice because brothels began promoting the game to attract customers.  The subsequent Qing dynasty (1644-1911) also banned the game among the nobility and officials in an attempt to prevent them from slacking off at work.