Diagram from Beadle's Dime Book of Cricket and Football. "The lines, a, b, are the goal lines, and those on each side, c, d, at right angles with them, are the touch lines; while the centre dotted line is marked on either side (s. p.) by side-posts."

Let us allow Chadwick to take us through soccer in 1866.

Many of the rules are the same as they are today:

The goals are to be defined by two posts, eight yards apart ...

No player shall carry the ball.

Neither tripping nor hacking is allowed, and no player may use his hands to hold or push his adversary.

No player shall throw the ball, or pass it to another with his hands, or otherwise than by a kick.

No player shall take the ball from the ground with his hands, while it is in play, under any pretense whatever.

But there were some pretty major differences, too.

Those goals didn't have crossbars, by rule, and goals could be scored as long as the ball was kicked between them at any height.

As noted in the Freeman article, teams traded sides after each goal scored. Also, there weren't any guidelines for the number of players on a team, hence the 22 vs. 25 match in Waukesha.

If the ball was played into touch, the first player to touch the ball would win the throw-in, which had to be at a right angle to the boundary line.

As the diagram shows, play continued behind the goal line, much like present-day hockey. If the ball went over the line and was first touched by a defending player, his team got a free kick from the goal line. If an attacking player got to the ball first, his team got a free kick at goal from 15 yards – with the defenders having to stay on the goal line until the ball was kicked.

The original offside rule was very limiting. "When a player has kicked the ball, any other player, on the same side, who is nearer to the opponent's goal-line, is out of play, and may not touch the ball, nor in any way prevent any other player from doing so, until the ball has been played by one of the other side; but no player is out of play when the ball is kicked off from behind the goal-line."

Perhaps the most glaring difference was the fair catch. Any player on either team could grab the ball when it was in the air and get a free kick for his team at that spot, as long as he made a mark in the grass with his heel after coming down with the ball.

Chadwick also notes that each team should have a "safe player stationed just inside the goal" – the earliest goalkeepers, if you will, but without permission to use their hands.

As far as how the game played out, he wrote: "Sometimes the players advance in a compact body, shoulder to shoulder, so that it is nearly impossible for the ball to pass beyond them; or occasionally both sides form into a ring and tussel and scramble for the ball till one contrives to kick it away to a distance; and so hotly is the contest pursued, that often a goal is not won during two hours' play."

Of course, there's only so much you can get out of a book, as Chadwick noted in closing the section.

"Written instructions can do no more than give readers general information as to a game like football. More will be learned in an hour's play than can be acquired from a week's teaching on paper," he wrote.

"Therefore we hope that our friends – whom we number by tens of thousands among all the boys of America – will profit by our advice and the hints here thrown out, and speedily organize football matches in the fields about the neighborhood of their homes; for the game is a thoroughly good and health-giving one, played anywhere."