Perhaps one of the most contentious foul in all of football is tackling. Though good tackling is almost an art, comprised of speed, skill, and agility, the fact that it can be easily embellished (by the person being tackled) and is subject to the referee’s interpretation put the foul on a sliding scale, thus creating room for error and debate. Still, before arguing over what is or isn’t a tackle, how often do we stop and think what the word itself actually means or how it came to be associated with sports?
Anyone familiar with American football, soccer, or even rugby will understand the term as stopping an opponent and/or taking the ball from him, but the origin of the word is quite far from the world of sport. The action of tackling, meaning ‘entangling, involving,’ comes from the mid-14th century. However, a century earlier, the maritime noun tackle, meaning ‘gear or equipment,’ was already being used (think bait and tackle). Though these meanings are vastly different, the proximity of their origin isn’t: the Middle German takel (for the maritime usage) is most likely related to the Middle Dutch taken (for the physical holding usage).
Further evidencing this multi-linguistic amalgam, we can see that the word’s first use in English in 1486’s Naval Accounts & Inventories of Henry VII refers to the Germanic definition: “The same Ship so tackled & apparelled was delivered..to Rauf Astry.”, while the first use of it in a physical sense appears in Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language: “A wrestler tackles his antagonist…”.
Going back to football, the word was first used in this context in 1884, when The Daily News stated that a player: “He..tackled well, kicked judiciously, and as captain of the team gave every satisfaction.”
Tackling is difficult, just try to take a ball from a moving player whilst usually coming from behind or beside him. And it is made even more difficult considering that any tackle perceived as dangerous, any contact with the player before the ball, or any resulting tripping can be considered a foul and is called based on the discretion of the referee.
Soccer can be a beautiful and exciting game, but when the game slows down and becomes hard to watch, it is, unfortunately, most likely the result of calls relating to tackling.
