The military of the Tang Dynasty improved polo and football, and the sticks in their hands can be regarded as cavalry swords or waist knives.
During the game, it is basically a group of heavy infantry or heavy cavalry fighting each other.
However, it is precisely because of this fighting atmosphere that the two sports improved by the Tang Dynasty shine and become popular.
The Holy Emperor Li Xuan likes to watch these two improved games, especially the polo game. Under the influence of Li Xuan, the royal family, especially many princes, are polo masters, and most of the powerful children outside also play polo.
Ball.
The Tang Dynasty court would organize polo matches and football matches every year on some special festivals. Although these games were relatively large for viewing and ceremonial purposes, their influence gradually emerged.
It is very enjoyable to watch a group of golfers running around on the field, swinging and hitting balls, using their cleverness and wisdom to defeat their opponents with various tactics.
Gradually, in addition to the military, people began to have performance polo teams or footstep teams, mainly footstep teams. There were very few polo teams. Only a few colleges and universities organized polo teams.
.
Folks mainly engage in football. They hold performance matches in a club style, attracting spectators to watch, and make money by collecting tickets or selling some snacks and other ancillary products.
When Lin Ziran learned this, he felt that if the current folk amateur performance team could develop further, it would be basically the same as the clubs of various sports in later generations.
After realizing this, Lin Ziran casually gave some advice two years ago, asking the Ministry of Rites to pay more attention to the promotion of sports, enhance people's physical fitness, and enrich people's spare time life.
Within the Tang Dynasty, the Ministry of Rites was mainly responsible for education, etiquette, culture and other matters. It was their business scope to encourage literary and artistic creations such as literature and drama, and it was also their business scope to promote sports.
After careful consideration by the Ministry of Rites, although it is believed that polo is more enjoyable to watch and more popular among the people, it is too professional and is not conducive to popularization. This is because today's polo players are almost all active cavalry or retired military cavalry.
The cavalry can tell that ordinary people can't play this thing.
Moreover, this thing is too dangerous. Even if the military's professional cavalry is trained to play this, they have to be careful, otherwise they may be killed or injured.
Even if you are wearing armor, it is still too dangerous to perform various actions on a high-speed horse, not to mention frequent collisions. The impact of the horse is too great.
The polo incident during the Mid-Autumn Festival last year is still remembered by the Ministry of Etiquette!
In the end, we settled for the second best and chose football for civilian promotion. Although Datang's football was improved by the military and allowed reasonable collisions, it was quite dangerous, but this was without armor.
If you are physically strong, undergo certain training, and wear protective equipment, the competition between pacers may seem fierce, but in fact it will not be too dangerous.
It is less dangerous and more conducive to promotion. After all, people will not play sports that are too dangerous.
But people also like excitement. If you let them watch an extremely boring game, such as a slow and non-confrontational game, they won't bother to watch it.
Therefore, step balls that may seem dangerous but are actually protected by adequate protective gear have become the best choice for popularization.
In addition, football pays more attention to tactics than polo. This tactic is not a sports tactic, but a military warfare tactic.
Because of the way Buqiu is played in the Tang Dynasty, you might say it is a sport, but in fact it is a war. You can see this when you see that the number of participants in the Buqiu team is fourteen.
This is the number of people in Datang’s standard infantry squad!
During the game, in fact, although there are individual technical requirements for golfers, the requirements are not too great. As long as the body can bear it and have basic skills, it will be enough.
Datang Buqiu pays more attention to tactics. Generally, the football teams within the military are all composed of officers. For no reason, just because their tactical literacy is high enough.
In particular, the captains of each infantry team within the military are basically the best young commanders in each unit. Being able to serve as the captain of an infantry team in one's own army is a huge affirmation for young officers.
This also resulted in Datang Buqiu, a sport that integrates physical confrontation and tactical confrontation, making the audience's blood boil.
After the Ministry of Rites decided to promote football, it took the lead in starting a pilot project in Jinling City. The Culture Department under the Ministry of Rites integrated more than a dozen amateur football teams in Jinling City and the football teams of various universities, and then specified complete and unified rules.
, and following the example of the military, regular competitions between multiple teams began.
Instead of requiring these football business teams to contact the organization themselves as before.
After trying a league-style round-robin competition the year before last, it continued to improve last year. Starting this year, the Ministry of Rites is preparing to add another fire and prepare to issue high bonuses to the winners of the league to stimulate the professionalization of each team.
In order to arouse the attention of public opinion and attract more people's attention, just the first place is close to reaching 100,000 Hengyuan!
One hundred thousand dollars, which is no longer a small amount for most teams with a business performance nature, and other rankings also have smaller bonuses.
This was the first attempt by the Cultural Department of the Ministry of Rites of the Tang Dynasty to professionalize football under the guidance of the Holy Emperor Lin Ziran.
Not only this, but the more professional Polo Culture Department is also considering trying to professionalize it.
Because they found that even if ordinary people cannot play polo, compared to football, people still prefer to watch polo, which is more competitive and more enjoyable. The demand for people to watch polo has always been very large.
Whenever polo teams organized by several universities compete, the demand for tickets exceeds supply. Not only students watch, but ordinary citizens also run over to watch.
This is also quite a contradictory situation. People do not play or cannot play polo themselves, but they like to watch polo.
However, since there is such demand among the people, the Department of Culture is also happy to see the results and is planning to take the lead in contacting several universities this year to allow their polo teams to compete on a larger scale, and then contact a few children of powerful people as the center.
A private business polo team was formed.
The attempts to professionalize football and polo are the result of several years of promotion by the Department of Culture, but this is not what the Department of Culture values most.
What the Secretary for Culture values in terms of sports is not just the establishment of a few professional leagues, the development of certain sports, or other things.