The Second Eleven, who were twelve, and who some called the Titans, had Kronos – son of Ouranos and Gaia – as their captain. And it was Kronos who challenged his father and the supremacy of the First Eleven. He cut off Ouranos’s genitals with a scythe1 and threw them out across the sea, where they gave rise to Aphrodite.
Aphrodite, who the Romans called Venus, would become the Goddess of those who wear their socks above their knees, but that is a story for another time.
And so, with the violation of Ouranos, power shifted and the Titans came to dominate.
Kronos could not rest easy, though, for Ouranos cursed his son to suffer a similar fate: to fall at the hands of his own children. And so Kronos consumed all the offspring of his union with Rhea before they could learn the offside rule.
One day, however, Rhea tricked Kronos into swallowing a stone instead of her youngest child, named Zeus. She gave birth to the boy in Crete, leaving him there for safekeeping and training. Zeus would go on to build a third team: the football Gods who would eventually come to be called the Olympians (coming soon).
1We see echoes of this momentous event in today’s language. Ouranos’s tackle gave its name to a challenge between two footballers. And a scything tackle is a particularly dangerous attack on an opposition player.
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