Facts & History
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About FIFA
FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football, is the governing body that oversees the numerous football confederations, federations, and associations around the world and organize various football competitions, the World Cup being the most important. FIFA is an association established under the Laws of Switzerland. FIFA is made up of a supreme body that is the FIFA Congress is an assembly made up of a representative from each affiliated national federation.
FIFA History
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was founded in Paris on 21 May 1904 after representatives from the football associations of France, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands agreed on pact. Soon after, the first FIFA Statues were created, which included the rules by which the game was played. Intentions of creating a big international football competition started to take shape.
The first FIFA Congress meeting occurred shortly afterwards to discuss the international competition and to help the organization take shape and gain members. Robert Guerin was elected as the fist president of the federation and Victor E Schneider and Carl Anton Wilhelm Hirschman became the Vice- Presidents.
Shortly after the meeting the England became one of the first countries to join the new federation. Afterwards the counties of Germany, Austria, Italy and Hungary joined. The first international competition took place in 1906, with Switzerland being in charge of the semi-finals and finals. It turned out to be a huge failure and led to the replacement of President Guerin with Englishman Daniel Burley Woolfall.
Woolfall’s first priority as the new president was to establish uniform rules to playing the game of football on an international level. The rules went by the English model for football. He also established French as the official language of the federation and published FIFA’s first bulletin. The first members from overseas such as Chile and Argentina joined the federation at this time. Jules Rimet took over for Woolfall’s position in 1921.
The notion of a big successful international football competition was still pending. So in 1928 FIFA modeled its second big football tournament, the World Cup, after the successful 1908 Olympic Games. Uruguay became the first country to host the competition. Teams from Europe were hesitant to participate in the tournament because of the long overseas journey and clubs having to release their best players for two months. The first match of the new tournament was held on 18 July 1930 in Montevideo. Uruguay, the host country became the first champions of the new FIFA World Cup. The tournament turned out to be both a financial success for FIFA and helped make the sport of football even more popular.
Following the success of the first World Cup other countries competed to host the next competitions. Italy became the host of the second World Cup. The host country became champions once again defeating Czechoslovakia in the final. For the first time in history, the final was transmitted over the radio.
Due to the outbreak of World War II, FIFA stopped putting together international competitions despite maintaining its offices in Zurich during the conflict. The FIFA Congress met again on July 1st 1946. Brazil became the first country to host the international competition. Rodolphe Seeldrayers was the new president of the Federation after Jules Rimet retired. The trophy had to the winner of the World Cup was renamed the Jules Rimet Trophy in his honor.
Seeldrayers was able to see the amount of nations that participate in the competition go up to 85 and the federations turn 50 years old before he was replaced by Arthur Drewry. Drewry died shortly after he was appointed president. However, he chaired the Study Committee for the new FIFA Statutes and opened the sixth World Cup in which Brazil won its first championship before his death.
Sir Stanley Rouse, a former referee became the six FIFA President. Under him FIFA continued to expand. A number of newly independent countries joined the federation. The FIFA World Cup also became a globally televised event which helped contribute to the expansion of the federation. As a result, the profit which FIFA makes as a resuly of the World Cup started to go up. Rouse was able to spread out this revenue effectively over a 4 year period. Rouse was eventually named the Honorary President of FIFA and was succeed by Brazilian Joao Havelange in 1974.
Under Havelange, FIFA became a dynamic enterprise brimming with new and modern ideas. He expanded the amount of staff working there by almost 100 employees and created an extra office building for the federation. He also increased the amount of teams playing in the competition from 16 to 24, which gave more room to teams from Africa, Asia and the CONCACAF to participate in the competition.
His leadership also helped in the area of diplomacy as nations that were rivals in the political arena came together peacefully assembled to discuss soccer related issues. For example, representatives from Iraq, Iran, the two Koreas, Japan and Saudi Arabia came face to face in Zurich in July 1993 to discuss the Asian final qualifying round for USA 94. In 1991 North and South Korea were able to come together as one team to compete in the FIFA World Youth Championship.
Joseph S. Blatter (Sepp Blatter) took over the president position on June 1998. Under him FIFA continues evolve the world’s most popular game. It has expanded to include 200 million active players from 208 countries. The World Cup continues to be the biggest football tournament in the world.
FIFA Management
- Joseph Blatter 1998-Present
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