FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, is the institution that governs all the football federations around the world. FIFA oversees 208 football federations and associations from different countries. FIFA is also a member of the FA Board International, the institution that determines the laws of the game of association football. The federation is composed of a legislative body, executive committee and an administrative body and has a staff of 280 people from 30 different countries.

FIFA was founded on May 21, 1904 and its headquarters are in Zurich, Switzerland after football associations from France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Spain, Sweden authorised the founding act. The first FIFA Congress took place on May 22nd 1904, with Robert Guerin being elected as president. The priority of the new federation was to have new members join.

Two years later the first FIFA Executive Committee was elected in order to fix the problems which the federation was experiencing, including the failures of the first FIFA competitions and internal problems that football associations such as the FFF were having. Modeled after the successful Olympic Football Tournament, the FIFA committee came up with the idea of staging its own international competition, called the World Cup. This new football tournament being held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, turned out to be of huge financial success and also helped football gain popularity all around the world.

Ever since that point on The Fédération Internationale de Football Association has grown to become the leading football organisation. Every country that has a national football tries to join the federation in hopes of winning one of the tournaments which FIFA holds. The FIFA World Cup tournament is currently the most popular competition out of any sport, with the next competition being held in 2010 in South Africa.

Three Global FIFA Tournaments

The FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup is biggest international competition in football. A total of 208 national football teams from all over the world enter to play in the tournament. Out of those 208, only 31 qualify to play in actual World Cup competition, with the previous tournament's winner making 32 teams total. Brazil has the greatest number of World Cup wins with 5, and Italy is the most recent champion of the competition in Germany in 2006. The winner of the world greatest sporting event is awarded the gold-plated World Cup trophy engraved with each past year's world champion.

FIFA Confederations Cup
The FIFA Confederations Cup is the second most important international football tournament as is often as seen as a warm-up event to the FIFA World Cup. In order to qualify for the tournament, national teams must win their overall confederation competition. The champion of the FIFA World Cup automatically qualifies for this tournament. The most recent champions of the competition were Brazil.

FIFA Club World Cup
The FIFA Club World Cup is a football competition between champion club teams from six continental confederations. The tournament was started in 2000 and teams from Brazil have become most successful. The most recent champions of FIFA Club World Cup are AC Milan as they defeated Boca Juniors by a score of 4-2. The event has been held in Tokyo, Japan for the past 2 years and OleOle has covered the matches live from Japan.

FIFA Management

FIFA is governed by a president and an an Executive Committee. Joseph S. Blatter (Sepp Blatter) is the current FIFA president, and is known for his ego and his brash, outspoken demeanor. He is currently trying to convince UEFA and European football clubs to stop using so many foreign players on their starting squads, but with little avail. EU regulation prohibits the practice of discrimination based on ethnicity or country of origin. Some view his statements and opinions as intruding on the governance of European football, which is the responsibility of the UEFA confederation.

FIFA employs approximately 280 people from more than 30 countries and is composed of a Congress which creates and passes rules, an Executive Committee for management, General Secretariat for administration and finance and special committees to assist the Executive Committee with various projects as needed.