FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association)

The Men, the Myths and the Money

Alan Tomlinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781134444458
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Founded in 1904 by representatives of the sporting organisations of six European nations then expanding into the Americas, Asia and Africa FIFA has developed to become one of the most high profile and lucrative businesses in the global consumer and cultural industry. Recent years however have been characterised by a series of crises leaving the organisation open to critique and exposure, and creating a soap operatic narrative of increasing interest to the global media. In this critical new account of one of the world's most important sporting institutions, Professor Alan Tomlinson investigates the history of FIFA and the underlying political dynamics characterising its growth. The book explores the influence of the men who have led FIFA, the emergence of the World Cup as FIFA's exclusive product, FIFA's relationships with other federations and associations, the crises that have shaped its recent history, and the issues and challenges that are likely to shape its future. Particular focus is given to selected moments in the post- Havelange administration and the way in which FIFA, its current president Joseph Blatter and some key close colleagues have responded to and survived successive scandals. The book provides a foundation for understanding the growth and development of what is widely accepted as the world's most popular sport; sheds light on the shifting politics of nationalism in the post-colonial period; and reveals the opportunistic forms of personal aggrandizement shaping an increasingly media-influenced and globalizing world in which international sport was both a harbinger and an early reflection of these trends and forces.

Fascinating and provocative, this is essential reading for anybody with an interest in soccer, sport and society, sports governance, or global organisations.

1 Origins

FIFA was founded by seven European footballing nations in 1904. More than a century later, it boasted a membership of 209 national associations. The story of this growth is testimony to FIFA’s remarkable impact on international sport and on 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 culture,¹ and countries symbolize their prowess and world superiority; Eric Hobsbawm called football “the child of Britain’s global economic presence.”² The power of football to express national identity in both internal and external forms has propelled the game to gaining 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,”³ 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.⁴ 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 in the context of the process of globalization. Prior to that, the growth of the world governing body is traced up to the 1950s and 60s, to the period during the presidency of the Englishman Sir Stanley Rous (from 1961 to 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. Table 1.1⁵ 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

Source: Meisl, 1960

Table 1.1 The growth of FIFA: member associations 1904–1959

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).⁶ 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.”⁷ 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.”⁸ Guérin met Wall twice in 1903, and also the 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.”⁹ 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.¹⁰

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 reference source, “Fédération Française de Football … Year of Formation: 1918 … Affiliation to FIFA: 1904.”¹¹

FIFA’s founding fathers were novices, then, and it is 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 other British associations into membership; the English stayed until 1920, joined again from 1924 to 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 1 September 1905) stated unambiguously that: “Ces fédérations se reconnaissent réciproquement comme les seules fédérations régissant le sport du football association dans leurs pays respectif et comme les seules compétentes pour traiter des relations internationals.”¹² (“These federations recognize each other reciprocally as the sole 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 the status of a “country,” and the FA could hardly claim to speak for a single nation state. Where, then, would the Welsh, Scottish or Irish football associations fit into the emerging world order of football?

At the Vienna Congress in 1908, Scotland and Ireland were rejected as members. Should Scotland and Ireland have been accepted, Austria and Germany had planned to request membership for their confederate states, numbering 26 and 12 respectively. Withdrawing this threat, Austria nevertheless accomplished the expulsion of the Bohemian FA, on the basis of the status of Bohemia as an Austrian territory. In 1909 a breakaway federation, the Union Internationale Amateur de Football Association, was founded, comprising French, English and Bohemian organizations. But the FA’s leadership of FIFA, and increasing domination of the international agenda, was demonstrated at the 1910 Milan Congress in “the admittance, against the statutes, of Scotland, Ireland and Wales.”¹³ South Africa joined in 1909/10, Argentina and Chile in 1912, the USA in 1913. Holland’s C.W. Hirschman, serving FIFA as secretary and honorary treasurer through to 1931, could with increasing credibility claim FIFA as the authentic head of “a universal game,” though the laws of the game were still the prerogative of the four British associations that made up (from 1886) the International Football Association Board (IFAB). In 1911 Germany’s representatives suggested tentatively that FIFA should in time become the regulatory body controlling the laws. The English FIFA president and the FA rejected the idea outright, and also responded negatively to a request that a member of FIFA be invited to sit on the IFAB. But by 1913, at the Copenhagen Congress, it was announced that two FIFA members would be invited onto the IFAB, and the following year it was confirmed that FIFA could nominate these representatives. Here, the foundation was laid for a long-term cooperation between, and alliance of, the FIFA administration and the top administrators of the British associations, despite the in–out dynamics of the UK bodies in terms of formal membership of the international federation.

British intransigence

FIFA administration continued throughout World War I, and membership expanded with the provisional acceptance of Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. The British associations withdrew from FIFA in 1920, on a matter of principle, as the only associations continuing to refuse recognition to football associations authorizing matches against defeated nations. The Football Association of Wales in its Consultative Committee decided that “the Association should agree with the English and Scottish Football Associations in refusing to recognize the Central Powers in football matters.”¹⁴ FIFA was negotiating sensitive territory here, and though Jules Rimet was provisionally named as new president in 1920 and officially approved in the position in 1921 it was not until 1923 that a full Congress was held. The Football Association of Ireland, from the newly independent Irish state, was accepted, prompting a hostile response from the FA; though in 1924 the British were accepted back into FIFA. But this rapprochement was not to last long.

In 1924 Uruguay won the Olympic Games football tournament, and what was in effect the world football championship, in the absence of any coherent initiative from FIFA, became mired in controversy and debate concerning the nature of professional and amateur status in football. British amateur teams had a record of success at the Olympics, taking the title at the three Europe-based Games before World War I. But they did not compete in 1920, in the immediate aftermath of the war, and watched from the sidelines again as an accomplished Uruguayan side took the gold medal in Paris in 1924. But it was clear that the Uruguayan players were not only accomplished, they were also essentially full-time. At the 1925 Congress FIFA took the decision to allow individual associations to rule on the amount of money that could be paid to amateur players for their loss of earnings. This was the context of the British stance t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: FIFA’s Annus Horribilis and its Aftermath
• 1 Origins
• 2 Workings
• 3 Leaders
• 4 The Supreme Leader
• 5 Moneyspinners
• 6 Cash Cow
• 7 Crises
• 8 Futures
• 9 Conclusion
• Afterword: On Myths, the Investigative and the Economic
• Appendix: VISION for the Future Governance of Football
• Index