Genesis of Glory: FIFA's Inception

On May twenty one, nineteen oh four, the Federation of Internationale de Fudebor Association is founded in Bardi, France, sorry for my accents, better known as FIFA, featuring founding members Belgium, Denmark, France, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland and kind of Germany. We'll dive into all this and how it began and how it became one of the biggest sporting organizations in the world today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history and today, our trivia question that you can find the answer for by listening or waiting till the very end is what two countries had the very first international soccer match? Now to the day, FIFA is huge, and how I all began kind of revolves around a secretary. But before we get into him, let's get into international soccer in general. Now for the remainder of the show, I'm going to refer to soccer as football as it is referred to in other countries. If you're in the United States, please try not to get confused. I'm saying football as in soccer. I know it gets confusing sometimes, as we have American football. But let's focus on this. I'm just gonna say football, as most of the research into this topic says football now in England and Scotland, and they had the first official national England team and national Scotland team based off in eighteen seventy two in Glasgow, finishing and a draw. Now the following year they would face off where England would win four to two and this was the start of two of the first football organizations. And as the name Football Association was for the England team and Scotland Football Association was for the Scotland team. Now, these two associations didn't really have a whole lot international feel to them. They mainly focused on the UK and Britain. This is where football was the most popular sport. Then in Walks a man named Robert Gurin who was Robert Duran well in reality his real name was Maurice Robert who hailed from France and was in love with the sport of football. Now through his education, this actually allowed him to join the Society of Propagation for Foreign Languages as he knew French and English and this would help him at least become the very first president of FIFA. As he joined multiple sports clubs in the late eighteen nineties into the early nineteen hundreds, he found himself enjoying the sport more as a spectator than actually participating, and he actually joined the USFSA, which was the organization for France's football and he became the secretary and they not only did France football, they did many other sports for the France and he became the treasurer and secretary of this group, and he realized how much football was growing across to Europe and he had the idea to put an organization together, as it was huge in the UK at the time, but Europe was slowly catching up. And he actually went to go meet with the Football Association based in England to see if they would be willing to start branching out into Europe, and he couldn't make it even past their secretary, and it seemed like they didn't really care, as the secretary just said they passed on the message and he never got a response. A few years later he would go on to meet with Lord Kinnard, who was the head of the Football Association, but he was very noncommittal and didn't really see the merits of them branching out. So by that point Robert had had enough and he was ready to move on and start his own. So he gathered a group together of different nations in Europe that wanted to grow football, and they got together on May twenty first, nineteen oh four, and in this included France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. And Germany was on their way but their delegate got caught up and missed the ferry to make it to the appointment, but did send a telegram announcing their support. But because Germany wasn't there, they are often left off the list of founding members. But there they put together a list of statues for the Federation of International Football Association better known as FIFA, and they said only the representative of a national association can be recognized. Two players can only play for two national associations at a time, and three if a player is suspended by one association, he cannot go play for another. For the matches are to follow the laws of the game that they have put together. This organized the game and made them all run by the same rules. Five each nation would pay fifty French francs a year to be part of the organization and if they did not pay their dues then they could not compete. And number six, the final one is only FIFA can organize international matches. And these are still roughly held true today, these first initial statues of the FIFA. They have added even more and there's so much more that goes into it as it has grown year after year after year. Now, at this meeting, they actually voted to make Robert Gurin the very first president of FIFA. Now he didn't want this, he just wanted to put them together in the room and have them take over, but he reluctantly agreed and he started the process and the next year England actually joined and England's representative, Daniel Burrell Wolfall would take over the presidency later. Now, what FIFA is best known for is their World Cup, and they actually didn't put this together until nineteen thirty. They had participated in some Olympics, putting together different events for the Olympics, but in nineteen thirty they decided to put on their own international tournament separate from the Olympics, as the Olympics was every four years and they wanted to have something in between, So the next Olympics was to be in Los Angeles in nineteen thirty two. So in nineteen thirty they put together their very first World Cup in Uruguay. Now, at the time, the world was experiencing the Great Depression and so many countries didn't feel teams to go take part in this, and only thirteen nations actually took part, seven from South America, four from Europe, two from North America. And in the first final of the World Cup in nineteen thirty Uruguay defeated Argentina four to two in front of a crowd of ninety three thousand, giving Uruguay the first ever World Cup. Now, FIVA is headquartered in Switzerland with a council of over thirty seven individuals and has over two hundred nations associated in the FIFA organization, and they have a staff of over seven hundred people. And though recently they've had a lot of allegations of bribery, it is still one of the leading organizations to this day. And I think what we can take away from Robert Geeran's idea is that he didn't give up even though there was an organization that was large and could easily take the helm. He didn't give up. He's like they didn't listen to him, they didn't take him seriously. And guess what happened. He took it into his own hands to put these nations together to start this organization that has gone on to be one of the leaders not only in football but in sports in the world. So hearing no doesn't mean it's over. So never give up. And we don't want to hear you say no. We want to hear you say yes by leaving a five star rating wherever you're listening, because it puts us mile on my face whenever I see that. And come back tomorrow for more daily sports history and the answer today's trivia question. Who were the first two Internet? First two nations to have an international football competition? England and Scotland h