Oldest football clubs

The history of the formation of the oldest football clubs is of interest to sport historians in tracing the origins of the modern codes of football from casual pastime to early organised competition and mainstream sport. The identity of the first or oldest football clubs in the world, or even in a particular country, is often disputed or claimed by several clubs, across several codes of football. Many early clubs did not use the word "football" in their names because the terms "football club" and "FC" are were associated with association football (known as "soccer" in the United States and other countries such as Australia or Canada), early rugby clubs also referred to themselves, or continue to refer to themselves, as simply a "football club", or as a "rugby football club". Similarly, almost all Australian rules football teams have also referred to themselves as football clubs as have Canadian football teams.

"Club" has always meant an independent entity and, during the historical period in question, very few high school or university teams were independent of the educational institutions concerned. Consequently, school and university football teams were seldom referred to as "clubs". That has always been the case, for example, in American football, which has always had ties to college sport in general. Conversely, however, the oldest still-existing "football club" with a well-documented, continuous history is Dublin University Football Club, a rugby union club founded in 1854 at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, although there exists some record of Guy's Hospital Football Club being founded in 1843.

...
Wikipedia