Some 3,500 years before fans gathered in local pubs enthralled by World Cup frenzy, ancient Mesoamerican peoples kicked around a heavy rubber ball on stone courts in a ritual game later known to the Aztecs as ōllamaliztli. 1,200 years later, early Chinese athletes stitched together a leather ball filled with feathers in a sport called “cuju,” which is documented as the earliest rules-based football game. This was football, often called soccer, in its infancy, and is the bones of the game we know today. It’s evidence that the sport is not bound by region or even intervals of time. Human beings yearn to play. 

But how is this evidence measured today? Photographer Sam Robles has dedicated 10 years of his life to this very idea, traveling to 18 countries in pursuit of capturing football in its essence. Available this May via Assouline’s Classics Collection is Robles’s Football Roots: The Spirit of the Game, with a foreword by Brazilian footballer Marta Vieira da Silva and contributions from Antony, Endrick, Adriano Imperador, Giovanna Waksman, and Kauan Basile. In this series, Robles photographs children around the world in diverse neighborhoods varied by geography, culture, and economic status. Often hindered by language barriers, Robles connects using the shared, unspoken language of football, culminating in an anthology of innocence and grit.

Born in São Paulo, Robles felt the reverence for football long before photography. Absorbing the sounds and sensations, the movements of the feet, and the feelings in the body, Robles harbours remnants of the game throughout his current works. 

His book is an exploration of freedom and endurance, exposing how excellence and joy have existed long before sold-out stadiums. They exist in alleyways and dirt roads, and barefoot in the grass. Robles proves that football is the great equalizer. It transcends race, class, religion, and ideology, and at its roots rests on the universal love of the game.