The Everton fan who invented the soccer goal has been jailed for angering a goal

It’s been a long time since football came into play England (the date of 1869 is accepted for the formation of the English Federation, the FA), place of its creation and where it became a mass sport for several years. Although the two vertical posts marking where the ball had to enter to claim the goal were implemented from the start, other developments still took some time to implement, such as the crossbar which gave its final shape in what we now call the goal.and introduced in 1882.

The game gradually evolved and today it is a sport with technology that was unimaginable before, such as VAR, and the rules are very different, such as cards, penalties or the number of changes. However, some inventions from his early years endure, as do controversies, one of the engines that has continued to drive change in the so-called beautiful sport. From one of the most repeated in the early years appeared on Liverpool a very simple invention, but one that changed football forever to the point where it has never been bettered. Such intelligence is so important in the game that even today referees check before each game whether they are correctly positioned: we are talking about goal nets.

How are goal nets made?

The origin of goal nets was caused by a controversy in a football match held on October 26, 1889 between Everton and the accrington. During the match, held at Anfield (home of the Toffees until they moved to Goodison Park in 1892 due to a disagreement with the landowner), one of the local players shot hard into the goal. The ball was lost in the back and while the local crowd celebrated the goal, the referee believed the ball had not gone in. One of the Everton fans that day was a 31-year-old civil engineer named john alexander brodie. That day, in the final 2-2, he decided to step down from work to end this kind of controversy about whether the ball went in or not, then very common.

The engineer thought of putting, according to his own words, a “pocket that can catch the ball when it passes through the goal”, so that everyone would immediately know if the ball went in or not (except, in in fact, when the ball bounces inside and it goes outside). He tried it on Stanley Park of Liverpool and the result was so good that in November of the same year Brodie filed for a patent. It was accepted on November 27 a year later as ‘nets for the purposes of soccer and other games’.

First football game with goal nets

Shortly afterwards Brodie convinced FA members to give it a try. It was on January 12, 1891 when the English football institution organized an ‘All Star’ style match between a team from the North and one from the South of England. The match was held at Town land of Nottingham and the first goal was scored, to the joy of the inventor, by the Everton striker Fred Geary. He was the first player to send the ball “behind the net”.

In March 1891, the first official game in history with goal nets was played. It was in the final of the FA Cup held at the Oval in London between blackburn rovers and the Notts County (3-1). Nets became mandatory for all league matches from September 1891 and for FA Cup matches in 1894. And since then, to the present day.

The inventor

John Alexander Brodie, a respectable engineer who lives in Bilbao

john alexander brodie (1858 – 1934) was born in Bridgnorth (England) and a keen practitioner of Rugby and Golf. After several years of training as an engineer, he worked briefly at Liverpool Department of Civil Engineering before moving to work Bilbao, where he participated in several port projects. In 1884 he returned to England and directed many infrastructures, such as the first motorway between the two cities in United Kingdom, the electric tram network and the city’s first ‘cycle’. His best known work is mersey tunnelwhich passes under the river of the same name between the city of Liverpool and Birkenhead. At the time (for 24 years) it was the longest submerged road tunnel in the world. One of the avenues in Liverpool is named after him and also a pub. Despite all of his accomplishments, Brodie says the greatest is the soccer goal nets.