After returning from Crete, Zeus eventually tricked Kronos into regurgitating the rest of Rhea’s children.
Zeus and his siblings then formed a rival team and faced Kronus and the Titans in the world’s first competitive fixture: the so-called Titanomachy.
According to the poets, Zeus’s team had one deciding advantage: the goalkeeping trio known as the Hecatonchires, each bearing 50 safe pairs of hands. After a match lasting ten years, the Gods won.
Following his victory, Zeus cast most of the Titans into the depths of the earth before building a squad that would reign supreme for (several) ages.
Football, however, still remained the domain of divine beings. For while humans did indeed exist, they were primitive, ignorant, and unschooled in the mastery of the high press.
Zeus feared that humans might one day usurp his power as he had once usurped Kronos’s. And so the captain of the Gods denied humanity knowledge of the game. However, he had not reckoned with a Titan named Prometheus.
Prometheus played for the Gods during the Titanomachy and loved humans. So great was this love that he defied his captain, stole a ball from the Olympians, and gave humanity the gift of football.
Zeus’s punishment was terrible. He bound Prometheus to a rock for all of eternity, damning him to watch endless replays of Switzerland versus Ukraine from 2006.
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