Did a War Really Stop for Football?
Allene Bradtke
2025-05-14 09:08:27
Count answers: 4
There are reports that on December 25, 1914 (precisely 106 years ago), several football matches were played between enemy lines, in what was the first major pause in one of the most bloody and brutal confrontations that man had on a global scale. Although on that day there were records of the deaths of hundreds of English soldiers (in the trenches of France and Flanders), the truth is that football worked there as a kind of pause button. Fighters scattered on the western line are said to have played “friendly matches” with those on the opposite barricade. Friendly matches played in no-man’s-land, which is like saying on neutral ground.
Ralph Dickinson
2025-05-14 06:05:31
Count answers: 3
While we cannot say for sure that there were proper games of football (i.e. the kind observing the rules), there are a number of reports detailing impromptu games between the two sides. As outlined by historian Mike Dash in the Smithsonian, "there is plenty of evidence that soccer was played that Christmas Day—mostly by men of the same nationality, but in at least three or four places between troops from the opposing armies." Perhaps the most cited example comes from a letter attributed to a British army doctor, published in The TImes on January 1 1915, that explained how "a football match [was] played between them and us in front of the trench". Another story, from the German side, suggests that a game was played between the 133rd Royal Saxon Regiment and Scottish soldiers, which the Germans won 3-2. So the evidence strongly suggests that games did take place across the front, but, given that their field was no-man's land in war-time, they were by no means official matches.