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The book that launched the world’s biggest sport 153 years ago could fetch more than $5 million on the auction block, the highest price ever paid for sports memorabilia, experts said.
Among likely buyers of the oldest known rule book governing soccer are a group of oil sheiks in Qatar — eyeing the treasure as a centerpiece for the World Cup games there in 2022.
The oil-rich emirate is pulling out the stops, hosting the huge event in hopes of scoring points in the changing landscape of the Middle East, where soccer is often more powerful than politics.
Sotheby’s is auctioning the rare rules book along with two handwritten drafts of the evolving rules and minutes upon which soccer was based.
Bidding kicks off at $2 million but is expected to climb quickly to break the $4.4 million sports memorabilia record for basketball’s oldest rules book (1891), which sold here in December for a display at the University of Kansas.
The rare soccer documents, which go on public display today through Thursday, were composed in elegant Victorian-era penmanship by rich young sons of England’s upper classes, who had a “lot of leisure time on their hands,” said Sotheby’s manuscripts expert, Richard Austin.
The papers arrived here yesterday after a private viewing for the Qatar royal family. The auction is in London July 14.
The rules book and drafts of the world’s first football club the rich lads founded — Sheffield Football Club — span soccer’s growth from 1858 through 1878, when Sheffield played its first night match.
Soccer’s original rules numbered just 11 and were gentlemanly, with five referees at sidelines for disputes. They even chipped in for beer and repairs to the club’s required six footballs.
Bashing was out, but “pushing with the hands is allowed but no hacking [elbowing] or tripping-up is fair under any circumstances whatsoever,” said Rule 5. Rule 7 declared, “No player may be held or pulled over.”
Despite genteel manners on the field, rowdies began showing up early on, after numerous rival clubs of other rich scions sprang up in the 1860s for showdown matches.