Fifa is close to 120 years only, but the crystallisation of the idea that made the world football governing body the monolith it is today came many years later.
When seven countries gathered in Paris in 1904 to establish a controlling body for international soccer, one of the clauses they wrote into their statues was, “the creation of an international championship to be organised by Fifa”.
The idea belonged to the Frenchman Robert Guerin, a journalist by trade who was a talented writer at the French paper ‘Matin’ and enamoured of football.
Other Frenchman had played a leading role in the creation of international sporting bodies at the turn of the last century – Baron Pierre de Courbetin reviving the Olympic movement and Henri Desange setting up the famous Tour de France cycle race.
Guerin not only saw the need for regular international competition but believed too that it would be a commercial success, able to make money to pay for all of Fifa’s other activities.
His enthusiasm was given impetus by the increasing success of football as a sport at the Olympic Games.
Soccer figured first at the games in Paris in 1900 and was also played in St Louis in 1904. There were eight countries in the field for the 1908 Games in London and by 1920 in Antwerp it was one of the most popular sports at the games, with 14 nations entering. The gold medal match attracted 55 000 spectators as Belgium beat Spain to go to the winner’s rostrum. There was proof that a World Cup would, too, be a major success.
In 1920, Jules Rimet took over from the Englishman Daniel Burley Woolfall as president of Fifa at a time when the debate of the merits of professionalism or amateurism was gaining ground.
Rimet, like Guerin before him, watched in growing conviction as the football tournament at the 1924 Olympics, again organised by Paris, attracted the entry of an incredible 22 countries and was a roaring success. Three countries came from outside Europe and it was the Uruguayans who mesmerized the audiences with their exciting brand of soccer, the lie of which had never been seen before.
If Rimet needed any encouragement it came in the form of another group of French journalists, this time from the newspaper ‘Sporting’, who approached Rimet to revive Guerin’s original idea of a stand alone soccer event, run by Fifa.
FIFA’s executive committee, made up of Messers Bonnet (Switzerland), Meisl (Austria), Ferreti (Italy), Linnemann (Germany), Fisher (Hungary) and Delaunay of France met in Paris in December, 1926 to designate a commission to investigate the setting of a world championship.
The commission was given an urgent mandate and asked to bring back its findings to a meeting two months later in Zurich. Despite the resistance of the German Linnemann, who did not believe there could be both a World Cup and a soccer tournament at the Olympic Games, it was agreed to adopt a text to place before the Fifa Congress in Amsterdam in May, 1928 to set the creation of the a World Cup in motion.
“The principal of the competition is one where the best teams in world football are represented, whether they are amateur or professional,” read the document.
There were opponents to the idea at the Congress because of the fear of professionalism but in the end the resolution was passed by 23 votes to five – and May 26, 1928 went down as the day the World Cup was officially created. The countries against it were all from the Scandinavian bloc – Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
The resolution adopted read: “The congress has decided to organise a competition with teams representing the different affiliated national association”
A year later it was decided to host the tournament in Uruguay and to give it the name ‘Coupe du Monde’, as French was then the official language of Fifa. Today it is known across the globe as the ‘World Cup’ and rivals the Olympics as the biggest sports event known to man.
Since Uruguay 1930, the tournament has been held every fourth year (with exceptions for interruption due to the Second World War) and there are hopes that it will return there in eight years’ time.
Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay have launched a joint bid to host the 2030 World Cup. The four South American nations hope to bring the tournament "home" for the centenary edition, 100 years after the inaugural World Cup was hosted, and won, by Uruguay. Chile (1962) and Argentina (1978) are also former tournament hosts.