The FIFA World Cup 1930 - 2010

Alan Tomlinson

FIFA: Beginnings, Tensions, Trajectories1

In its modest beginnings, FIFA was founded by seven European footballing nations in 1904, and operated initially from the premises of the French sports federation in Paris. A little more than a century later, the federation could boast 210 national associations as members, and it was housed in stunning spectacularly styled facilities in a beautifully landscaped site on the edge of Zurich, Switzerland. The story of this growth is testimony to FIFA’s remarkable impact on international sport and upon cultural relations around the world. The growth of association football itself (and many other modern sports) was coterminous with the rise of industrial society and nation-states; sport was an ideal vehicle through which internal – often urban, male and working-class – communities could organize their own collective culture2 and demonstrate their prowess and world superiority; Eric Hobsbawm called football “the child of Britain’s global economic presence”.3 The power of football to express national identity in both internal and external forms has propelled the game to the status of the world’s most popular sport. International sport, in its turn, has contributed to the making of societies, through the symbolic expression of the sense of national identity. The nation, imagined as a community, “conceived as deep, horizontal comradeship”,4 has found its fullest expression in two spheres: tragically, in conflict and war; less harmfully, in competition and sport. The early phases in FIFA’s history established a dynamic between the global and the national that has continued to frame relationships between FIFA and its worldwide constituencies; this inbuilt contradiction and recurring tension between national interests and international aspirations has underpinned the story of FIFA’s development, as from its beginnings it offered more and more nations a vehicle for the articulation of national distinctiveness, national belonging and cultural superiority.

From its roots in a Eurocentric initiative, world football has come to represent a global passion, capable of mobilizing national sentiment and pride in unprecedentedly dramatic and, more recently, increasingly sophisticated mediated, and digitalized, forms.5 The balance between national interests and claimed idealist internationalism, though, has continued to be contested in the FIFA story, and is discussed at the end of this chapter within the context of the process of globalization. Prior to that, the growth of the world governing body is traced up to the 1950s and the 1960s, to the point during the presidency of the Englishman Sir Stanley Rous (which was from 1961-1974) that culminated in FIFA’s recognition of five new continental confederations, from UEFA in 1954 to the newest, Oceania, in 1966, by which time FIFA had 126 member associations. The table below shows the incremental growth of FIFA during this period, and the explosion of membership in the post-World War II period and through the 1950s, when newly independent nations in the post-colonial era sought membership of FIFA as a statement of their national autonomy and political and social aspirations.

Year

Number of associations in FIFA

1904

7

1914

24

1923

31

1930

41

1938

51

1950

73

1954

85

1959

95

Tab. 1: Growth of FIFA: member associations 1904-59

Source: Willy Meisl, “The F. I. F. A.” (1960)6

FIFA’s Origins

The founding nations of FIFA were Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. In some cases, these nations were looking for guidance from the longer-established British associations. Robert Guérin, of the French USFSA (Union des Sociétés Françaises des Sports Athlétiques) approached Frederick Wall, the Secretary of the English Football Association (FA).7 The Englishman offered a diplomatic, but uncooperative, response: “The Council of the Football Association cannot see the advantages of such a Federation, but on all such matters upon which joint action was desirable they would be prepared to confer.”8 Wahl relates how Guérin became the first president of FIFA, helped by the phlegmatic and haughty English response, “for lack of interest of the British”.9 Guérin met Wall twice in 1903, and also The Football Association (FA) president Lord Kinnaird on one occasion, but “tiring of the struggle, and recognizing that the Englishmen, true to tradition, wanted to wait and watch, I undertook to unite delegates from various nations myself”. Guérin wrote that dealing with the English/British was like “slicing water with a knife”.10 England had effectively been offered the leading role, but showed a haughty disregard for the initiative. In the founding moments of the world body’s history, the British – the English in particular – displayed an indifference and insularity that was a mystery to its continental suitors. The 1904 initiative proved a false start though. A planned international tournament did not materialize. By 1906, Guérin had stepped down from the leadership. The FA meanwhile had considered it wise to become involved, and a special FA committee invited continental nations to a conference on the eve of the 1905 England-Scotland match in London. Though this was in reality a means of undermining FIFA’s authority, the outcome of the meeting was that the British associations accepted FIFA’s general objectives and expressed willingness to cooperate. An English/British delegation to Berne in the same year responded more and more positively to the international initiative, if still in a tone of patronage and hauteur. D. B. Woolfall reported that:

… it is important to the FA and other European Associations that a properly constituted Federation should be established, and the Football Association should use its influence to regulate football on the continent as a pure sport and give all Continental Associations the full benefit of the many years’ experience of the FA.11

England joined the fledgling organization, then, once the FA felt sufficiently respected. The FA had been approached by Belgium in the late 1890s and by the Netherlands in 1902, both suggesting that the formation of an international association would benefit the European game: England had been seen as an obvious leader of such developments. Thus, even when FIFA was formed without England or the FA, it was clear that its experience would offer benefits: France had played its first international match a mere three weeks before the meeting at which FIFA was formed; and Denmark was not to play an international until 1908, at the Olympics in London, the same year in which Switzerland played its first international match. Three of FIFA’s founding members (Sweden, France and Spain) had not actually formed a Football Association in their own country at the time at which the international body was founded, and Spain was represented by a delegate from a club, FC Madrid. Paradoxically, in these cases, the international initiative was the spur to the founding of national associations. In France’s case this leads to the bizarre entry, in one encyclopaedic source: “Fédération Française de Football … Year of Formation: 1918 … Affiliation to FIFA: 1904”.12

FIFA’s founding fathers were novices, then, and so it was unsurprising that the FA was drawn into the leadership role. In 1905, FIFA considered the FA to have joined the international federation, and the English proceeded to take the presidency at the third FIFA Congress in Berne in 1906, ushering in other British associations to membership; the English stayed until 1920, joined again from 1924-1928 (leaving over disputes concerning payments to amateurs), and then rejoined in 1946. In these early years of English leadership the vexed question of eligibility arose repeatedly. The first article of the FIFA statutes (dated 1st September 1905) stated unambiguously that: “Ces fédérations se reconnaissent réciproquement comme les seules federations régissant le sport du football association dans leurs pays respectifs et comme les seules compétentes pour traiter des relations internationales”.13 (“These federations recognize each other reciprocally as the sole associations/federations regulating the game of association football in their respective countries, and as the only ones competent to negotiate international relations” – author’s translation). Of course much could be disputed at the beginning of the century in relation to...