Englishmen and Rimet

Les Bleus: The History of French Football

Course 1 · Chapter 2 · Origins: Englishmen, Amateurs and Jules Rimet

Football did not begin in France. It arrived from Britain in the late 19th century, carried by sailors, students, engineers and clerks, and it took a generation for French players and administrators to take it over. This chapter follows that story from the first British-run clubs to the creation of FIFA in Paris, the first French international in 1904 and the first World Cup in 1930, which grew from the ideas of a Frenchman, Jules Rimet. Names, dates and scores are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

The Game Arrives

The ports and Paris

Football first took hold where Britons lived or traded. Le Havre, a port with a large British community, had one of the earliest clubs, Le Havre Athletic Club, founded in the 1870s and playing both rugby and football (check). In Paris the Standard Athletic Club, run by British residents, played from the early 1890s (check).

The schools and sports clubs

French schools and multi-sport clubs took up the game. The Racing Club de France, founded in 1882 for athletics, added football later (check). Many early French teams were part of clubs that also played rugby, rowed or ran, and the better players often moved between sports.

The first championship

The union of athletic societies, the USFSA, organised a football championship from the 1890s, and the first title in 1894 went to the British-run Standard Athletic Club (check). French clubs took the title over in the following years. The competition was amateur, and was regional before it was national.

The amateur ideal Most early administrators followed the Victorian idea that sport was for gentlemen and was spoiled by payment. The founder of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, was French and a leading voice for that ideal (check). The same attitude, in a country where football was mostly played by the middle classes in the cities, helps to explain why France was slow to allow professionals (Chapter 3). The reality was more complicated: players were often paid in secret, and clubs hired English coaches from early on.

1900 to 1904

Year (check each)Event
1900Football is played at the Paris Olympics as a demonstration or unofficial event, and a British club side, Upton Park, wins (check how it is classed).
1904 (1 May)France plays Belgium in Brussels in the first match recognised by the French federation, and draws 3-3 (check the details of the official recognition).
1904 (21 May)FIFA is founded in Paris by seven national associations, with the Frenchman Robert Guérin as its first president (check the founders).
1908Football is an official Olympic sport in London, and France sends two teams, with heavy defeats (check).
1919The national federation is reorganised as the FFF, and the Coupe de France takes its name (check; the cup began under a different title in 1917).

Notice that FIFA was founded in Paris without the British associations, who joined later, left, and returned (check). The British had a very large head start in the game, and many of them did not think a foreign body was needed.

Jules Rimet

  • The man. Jules Rimet (1873 to 1956) came from a modest family in eastern France, trained as a lawyer, and was an organiser and a believer in sport as a moral force (check). He was a founder of a Paris club, Red Star, in 1897 (check).
  • The federation. He was involved in the French federation after the First World War and was its president for a few years from 1919 (check).
  • FIFA. In 1921 he became president of FIFA, a post he held until 1954, a very long tenure (check). He helped to bring the national associations together after the war and to settle the dispute over professionalism.
  • The idea. He saw a world championship as a way to bring nations together and to create an event that was not tied to the Olympics, where amateurs only could compete. The idea was shared with others, notably his compatriot Henri Delaunay, the federation's secretary (check), so the credit for the World Cup is not his alone.
  • The trophy. The first World Cup trophy was later named after him as the Jules Rimet Trophy (check).

The 1930 World Cup

Point (check each)Detail
HostUruguay, who had won the Olympic title in 1924 and 1928 and were celebrating a hundred years of independence.
Teams13 teams, mostly from the Americas. Only four came from Europe: France, Belgium, Romania and Yugoslavia, because of the long sea journey.
The French partyThe French team sailed to Montevideo with Rimet, who carried the trophy with him. Lucien Laurent scored France's first goal against Mexico, the first goal in World Cup history.
ResultFrance lost to Argentina and Chile and went out in the group stage. Uruguay beat Argentina in the final.

The result was poor, but the tournament itself was a success, and France had gone from a young football nation to one that had helped to create the world competition.

Women and the Early Game

Women played too. A women's team, Fémina Sport, was formed in Paris around 1912 (check), and in the 1920s there were women's matches in France. In 1920 the English women's team Dick, Kerr Ladies, from Preston, toured France and played several matches against French sides, in front of large crowds (check). The English ban on women's football on league grounds in 1921 then cut short a lot of that growth in Britain (check). The women's game in France is taken up again in Chapter 9.

A British comparison The British role was larger than usual in this story. Football arrived with British workers, the first French clubs copied British rules, and British coaches were employed in France for decades (check). The Scottish passing game, where players passed the ball instead of dribbling, was influential on the continent, and Scottish coaches and players worked in many countries (check). The Dick, Kerr Ladies' tour is another link, since Preston's women were among the strongest teams in the world in 1920 and 1921 (check). For an Edinburgh reader, it is worth remembering that Scotland played the first international in 1872, and France's first official match came 32 years later (check).
Check the details Early football history is full of disputed dates. Clubs often claim a founding year earlier than their records show, and there are rival accounts of which match counts as "the first". Dates of foundation, scores and the numbers of teams at the 1930 World Cup should be checked against the federation, FIFA and a reliable history. Some stories about Rimet, such as the story that he carried the trophy himself on the ship, are told in a polished form.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Draw up a timeline from the first British clubs in France to the 1930 World Cup, with at least eight entries, and mark the ones you would want to check.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Test the claim "The English brought football to France and the French simply copied them". What is true in it, what is missing, and what evidence would you use?

→ Solution
Exercise 3

Compare Jules Rimet with a British or Scottish sports administrator of your choice. What did each achieve, and how far did each depend on others?

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • Arrival: British communities, Le Havre, Paris; USFSA championship from the 1890s
  • Dates: 1904 first international and FIFA founded in Paris; 1919 FFF; 1930 first World Cup (all check)
  • People: Jules Rimet (FIFA president 1921 to 1954), Henri Delaunay, Robert Guérin, Lucien Laurent
  • Ideas: the amateur ideal, the World Cup separate from the Olympics