April 7, 2019, The Federation is born
With the advent of the Fédération Française de Football Association on April 7, 1919, French football was finally placed under the sole authority of a single body.
On the eve of the First World War, the management of French football remained fragmented between several entities and was undermined by chapter quarrels. The beginning of unity was achieved on January 5, 1913 when the Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques (USFSA), which was at the origin of the development of football in France in 1889, joined the Comité Français Interfédéral (CFI), which had represented French football since 1908 at FIFA, created four years earlier at the instigation of the USFSA .
An old division that prevented the development football in France remained to be resolved. Even with this reorganisation, each of the four bodies of the CFI organised its own competitions, cups and challenges. Bringing together the best players in the French national team, which was created in 1904 (photo below), had so far proved almost impossible.
On March 3,1919, meeting at its headquarters at 5, place Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin in Paris under the chairmanship of Jules Rimet, the CFI Council adopted a motion by its vice-president Frantz Reichel and Henri Jevain, member of the bureau, worded as follows: "the Council, composed of delegates representing the four federations affiliated to the French Interfederal Committee and meeting exceptionally on the initiative of the bureau, unanimously decides to transform the CFI into a French Football Association Federation, this transformation being applicable only after adoption of the statutes by a future Council. This motion was voted unanimously".
The official opening on April 7
"The date of April 7, 1919 will become historic in the history of French sport because it will mark the triumph of the sporting idea over the old federative rivalries that have hitherto been so detrimental to the development of sport in France. It is on this date that the representatives of our four major sports groups governing football will achieve the sacred union and unanimously found this unique Federation (...) All the clubs will now be united in an autonomous grouping whose unity of action and propaganda will further confirm and facilitate the undeniable progress we have made in football", Georges Drigny prematurely announced in the sports review of La Vie au Grand Air, on March 15, 1919.
A premature declaration because three weeks later, under the chairmanship of Louis Chailloux (Vice-President of the IFC), in the presence of Jules Rimet and Frantz Reichel (Vice-President), Henri Delaunay (General Secretary), Armand Stanislas Pillaudin (Treasurer), Henri Jevain (member of the Board), and Messrs. Boussard, Chevallier, Domergue, Dupin, Eblé, Folliard, Glarner, Gineste, Magnanou and Dr Mayet (Messrs Namont, Eugène Plagnes, Roux, Armand Thibaudeau, Toulet, Védié and Véry being excused), "the IFC Council transforms the said committee into an FFFA" and adopts its statutes. On April 7, 1919, the FFFA was officially born.
Jules Rimet, first president
The FFFA needed a president. Jules Rimet (photo above), former president of the Red Star and then of the League of Association Football, affiliated on August 27, 1910 to the CFI of which he became president, seemed logical. On April 11, 1919, Chairman Louis Chailloux, declared that he was unanimously elected Chairman, with Reichel and Chailloux as vice-chairmen. Henri Delaunay, who was Secretary General of the IFC, was appointed to the same position on the same day.
The first major decisions taken by the FFFA's leaders were for sport. The Charles-Simon Cup, first organised in 1917, became the French Cup. A French championship was organised: winners of the different regional leagues compete. The FFFA was recognised as being of public body by decree on December 4, 1922.