London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets Ahead.
Story time.
History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers.
And here’s a thought.
Imagine being invited to become a founding member of what would grow into the most powerful sporting organisation on Earth.
And saying no.
Not because you weren’t wanted.
Because you didn’t think you needed it.
Welcome to June 19th.
And one of the great sporting what-ifs.
Or perhaps one of the great sporting ironies.
Because today’s story begins not with a football match.
Not with a trophy.
Not with a goal.
It begins with a shrug.
A very British shrug.
A shrug that said, in effect, “Thanks very much. We’ll manage.”
The year is 1904.
The place is Paris.
A group of European football officials are gathering to create a new organisation.
An international governing body for football.
The Fédération Internationale de Football Association.
FIFA.
The organisation that would eventually run the World Cup.
The organisation that would become one of the most powerful sporting bodies on the planet.
The organisation whose decisions can make governments twitch.
The organisation whose tournaments stop nations in their tracks.
The organisation that today bestrides world football like a colossus.
And England wanted no part of it.
Think about that for a moment.
Football was an English game.
The rules had been codified in England.
The Football Association had been founded in London in 1863.
The FA Cup was already one of the great sporting competitions.
English clubs were thriving.
English football was setting the standard.
From the English point of view, football wasn’t a European game.
Football was their game.
The rest of the world was merely catching up.
So when the invitation came to join this new continental organisation, the response from the Football Association was cool.
Very cool.
Why would the inventors of football need somebody else to organise it?
Why would the teachers join a club for the pupils?
Why would London take instructions from Paris?
It all sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it?
Not hostility.
Not animosity.
Not even arrogance exactly.
Just confidence.
Perhaps overconfidence.
The confidence of a country that had spent centuries sitting slightly apart from the rest of Europe.
The confidence of an island nation.
The confidence of an empire.
The confidence of a people who looked at a new European institution and thought, “Best of luck with that.”
There’s an old headline, perhaps apocryphal but too good not to repeat:
“Fog in Channel. Continent Cut Off.”
Whether it was ever actually printed hardly matters.
It perfectly captures the attitude.
The world seen from the cliffs of Dover.
And in footballing terms, England felt much the same way.
The game had been invented here.
The rules had been written here.
The Football Association lived here.
Why would football’s future be decided anywhere else?
Except history has a habit of laughing at certainty.
While the Football Association stood aloof, FIFA got on with the business of growing.
New members joined.
Competitions developed.
International football expanded.
The little organisation in Paris didn’t stay little for very long.
Indeed, there’s a wonderful twist in the tale.
Only a few years later FIFA was helping organise the football tournament at the 1908 Olympic Games in London.
London!
The city whose football authorities had initially looked at FIFA and declined the invitation.
And there’s another twist.
The second president of FIFA was an Englishman.
Daniel Burley Woolfall.
A man from Blackburn.
So even as England remained hesitant, English influence seeped into the organisation anyway.
Football, after all, remained deeply English in character.
But the centre of gravity was beginning to move.
The game was no longer merely England’s.
It belonged to the world.
The decades rolled by.
The World Cup arrived.
The competition grew.
Television arrived.
Football became a global obsession.
FIFA became a giant.
And gradually the relationship changed.
The organisation England had once regarded as unnecessary became indispensable.
The institution that had begun life as a continental initiative became the governing body of the world’s favourite sport.
The pupil had become the headmaster.
Or perhaps more accurately, the classroom had become a university.
And everybody, including England, now needed a student card.
Which brings us to one of the most delicious ironies in football.
Every England fan knows the song.
“It’s coming home.”
Three words.
Three words that have launched a million conversations.
Three words that have caused jubilation, despair, mockery, celebration and endless debate.
And in one sense they’re absolutely right.
Football is coming home.
Modern football was born here.
Its rules were written here.
Its first governing body was created here.
But FIFA?
FIFA didn’t come from England.
FIFA came from Paris.
The English invented football.
Everybody else invented FIFA.
And there’s the rub.
England gave the world the game.
The world gave the game its global governing body.
It’s one of those wonderfully tangled stories that London specialises in.
A story about confidence.
A story about assumptions.
A story about unintended consequences.
And a story about what happens when something you regard as a sideshow quietly becomes the main event.
The invitation arrived.
The Football Association looked at it.
And said no.
Not because they couldn’t join.
Because they didn’t think they needed to.
History, meanwhile, was already lacing up its boots.
And that’s it for today.
Time-travelled you back 122 years.
To a moment when football’s future stood at a crossroads.
A bit of sporting history you can wow your friends with.
And perhaps leave them wondering how differently things might have turned out if the Football Association had said yes.
The day FIFA came into being.
The day England looked the other way.
And the day history quietly began playing a very long game indeed.
Your daily London fix that turns out, today at least, to be A Tale of Two Cities.
London and Paris.
Which couldn’t be more fitting with the World Cup under way right now.
Because football may have been born in England.
But the organisation that runs the whole show was born in Paris.
England gave the world the game.
Paris gave it the bureaucracy.
Which, come to think of it, is rather French.
See you tomorrow.