Goals for real soccer fans

Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro is a shrine for any soccer afficionado. Picture / Reuters

To kick off, where did it all begin? Man has been using his feet to play with a ball for thousands of years, and since at least the third century BC has found ways of measuring his skill. Relics from China's Han Dynasty record the kicking of a leather ball through a small opening into a net, as part of military training.

The game was probably brought to Britain by the Normans, but throughout the Middle Ages it was seen as a magnet for undesirables and a focus of social unrest. Sound familiar?

Football was banned by the Lord Mayor of London in 1314, but its advance was unstoppable.

It was the English Victorians who brought the ruffians' sport to heel, by standardising the rules and, in 1863, setting up a governing body to oversee its development.

The Football Association banned tripping, shin-kicking and handling, leading to the historic split with rugby football, the self-styled "gentleman's" sport which approved of such practices. The first English club, Notts County, had already been formed.

In Scotland the Glasgow amateurs of Queen's Park pioneered the organised game, developing the previously unseen skill of passing. Queen's Park provided all 11 players who turned out against England in the first international match in November, 1872. It was a goalless draw.

Queen's Park play, confusingly, at Hampden Park, the Scottish national stadium, which contains an excellent museum tracing the origins of the game north of the border (www.scottishfootballmuseum.org.uk).

Hampden, inaugurated in 1903, is the oldest international football ground still in use, and for most of the 20th century had the largest stadium in Europe. Nearly 150,000 watched Scotland and England clash in 1937.

The museum has a cap and ticket from that first international game, and a trophy awarded to Renton of Dunbartonshire in 1888 when they beat West Bromwich Albion 4-1 in a one-off game somewhat grandly known as The Championship of the UK and the World.

There are four stadium tours every day, including a walk down the players' tunnel, buffeted by a recording of the "Hampden roar" that once intimidated visiting teams.

The museum is open daily and costs $12.50 for adults, with an extra $7.50 if you do the stadium tour as well.

The nearest equivalent in England is the National Football Museum (www.nationalfootballmuseum.com) at Preston North End's home ground, Deepdale.

It has a large collection of football memorabilia, and lots of film, photographic and interactive exhibits. Admission is free, although you may find it hard to resist paying for the laser penalty game that tests your shooting abilities under pressure.

Sold as a tour of two halves, the "first half" is a time capsule tracing the development of the sport, and the "second half" features great players and coaches showing how the skills of the game have been refined. It is open every day except Mondays.

Many English clubs have museums of their own. At Anfield (www.liverpoolfc.tv) there is an evocative tableau that brings to life Bill Shankly's mid-1960s Liverpool squad gathered in the dressing-room.

Manchester United (www.manutd.com) offers a virtual reality tour of Old Trafford and a tribute to the Busby Babes, destroyed in the Munich air disaster of 1958.

In, London, Arsenal (www.arsenal.com) and West Ham United (www.whufc.com) have museums and collections worth exploring.

The Hammers' museum at Upton Park has the World Cup winners' medals treble earned by Bobby Moore, Sir Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, who scored all the goals on that overcast day in the summer of 1966 when England, for the only time, conquered the world.

The oval ball has always taken precedence over the round in Wales, so perhaps it's understandable that the Welsh Football Collection (www.wrexham.gov.uk) is tucked away in a corner of the County Borough Museum at Regent St in Wrexham.

It's only five minutes from the racecourse ground where Wales played their first international match in 1876, resulting in a 4-0 defeat by Scotland. But as the exhibition points out, the Scots had the advantage of four years' extra practice. The museum is open Monday to Friday and on Saturdays from April to September.

Wales' profile in the footballing firmament has been given a huge lift by the FA's decision to play English Cup finals in Cardiff while Wembley is being rebuilt.

The Millennium Stadium is Britain's finest, with a retractable roof and 72,500 seats.

Wembley should be ready in time for the FA Cup Final in May 2006, so Cardiff's finest football hours may be in the past - but don't count on it. The FA is provisionally booking Cardiff in case things go wrong at Wembley, as has happened so often.

Official tours of the ground are held daily and cost $14 for adults. The tour includes a fascinating demonstration of the roof mechanism (www.millenniumstadium.co.uk)

Across the Channel, the home of French football is the magnificent Stade de France (www.stadefrance.fr) in Paris, the country's biggest stadium and scene of its triumph in the 1998 World Cup.

This imposing 80,000-seater is in the heart of the Saint Denis district and has rejuvenated the once poor area. The stadium is where Les Bleus, the French national team, play their home games.

A daily guided tour called Au Coeur du Stade (In the Heart of the Stadium) will take you to the changing-rooms, VIP stand and museum, costing $17.50.

Appropriately, France's second-biggest city, Marseille, houses its second-biggest stadium, the Stade Velodrome, which is no longer used for cycling.

With a capacity of 60,000, it is the home of Olympique de Marseille (www.om.net), the only French team to have won the Champions League, back in 1993.

In Marseille, football is followed with a passion only the Italians can match.

A giant poster of the city's favourite son, Zinedine Zidane, who first kicked a ball around in the backstreets, can be seen from several kilometres out at sea.

Games are played every two weeks, and there are tours on weekdays for $12.50.

Few would dispute that Barcelona and Milan are continental Europe's two main football cities.

Barcelona's Nou Camp stadium (www.fcbarcelona.com) is the biggest in Europe, with seating for 98,800 and an atmosphere that makes you quake.

The museum upstages its counterparts by devoting much space to art - not only of football, but with works by Dali, Miro and other leading Spanish painters.

Daily tours of the museum and the ground cost $19.

San Siro stadium, home of rivals Inter and AC Milan, is an extraordinary futuristic structure with a retractable roof that hovers over the field like an alien spacecraft. The museum (www.sansirotour.com) opens every day. Admission $22.

But the greatest of all lies on the other side of the world.

For more than half a century, the colossal Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro has been the shrine of Planet Football. As well, Brazilian sides have carried off the World Cup a record four times.

The stadium was built for the 1950 tournament, when the official capacity was 200,000, although it's believed 250,000 squeezed in for the final match between Brazil and Uruguay, which the home side lost.

Another unforgettable moment was in 1969, when Pele scored his 1000th goal.

These days, the Maracana is a bit tatty. There are tours daily, except on match days. Admission is $1.75, which also gives you entry to the Garrincha Sports Museum, which pays tribute to Brazilian football and the great players who raised a simple game to an exalted level.

- INDEPENDENT

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Ticket scramble

Touring football museums and grounds is one thing, but a true fan wants to watch teams play. But when it comes to the most popular clubs it isn't always easy to find a ticket.

You may be able to buy direct through club websites or you could try a specialist website such as www.ticketcity.com.

If you are going to be in Britain, there are agents who sell weekend packages for European games for about $1000.

Have a look at www.footballencounters.co.uk.

The World Cup finals are less than eight months away. Twelve cities will be hosting games, with the opening ceremony and match in Munich on June 9 and the final in Berlin on July 9. Tickets are being made available in phases, and early indications are that most of the 64 games will be sellouts. But there are always a few "dead" matches towards the end of the first round.

If you're determined to see at least one World Cup football match, then were, say, Iran to be drawn against Paraguay at Gelsenkirchen you could almost guarantee to buy a ticket on the day.

For bigger games, expect a huge surge in demand immediately after the draw on December 9.

The likeliest source at this stage is the main ticketing centre in Frankfurt.

See the official website (www.fifaworldcup.yahoo.com) for details of how to enter the ballots.