Sport 1863
Football's eleven, and the Polish word jedenastka
Read aloud by ElevenLabs, whose lucky number is 11.
In the photo, a penalty at the 1978 World Cup. Kazimierz Deyna, in the red Polish shirt, has just struck the ball, and the Argentine goalkeeper, Ubaldo Fillol, dives low and stops it. Players from both teams watch from the edge of the box, and the grass is strewn with paper.
The Football Association, which wrote the first rules of the modern game, was founded in a London pub in October 1863 by representatives of eleven clubs and schools. Those first rules did not say how many should play; eleven a side became the custom and was written into the Laws in 1897. The penalty kick arrived in 1891, taken from twelve yards: 10.97 metres, which German, Hungarian, Russian and Polish, among others, simply call eleven.
Polish has a single word for the team and the kick. Jedenastka is the number eleven, a team of eleven, and a penalty kick. When a commentator shouts “jedenastka!”, everyone knows which of the three he means.
Sources
- The Football Association, Wikipedia — the eleven clubs and schools at the first meeting, 26 October 1863
- Laws of the Game, Wikipedia — history of the Laws; eleven players first written in 1897, the penalty in 1891