World Sport Congress

Amateurs Only

In 1908, soccer became an official event in the Summer Olympic Games, for amateur players only. However, spectators still suspected the event, planned by the Football Association which governed the sport in England, to be more of a show to promote the sport than an actual competition to be taken seriously.

Since the Olympic Games would only admit amateur soccer players, in 1909, Sir Thomas Lipton introduced the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy tournament, which would be held between individual clubs representing each nation rather than national teams. Notable professional clubs from Italy, Germany, and Switzerland participated in the event, which was held in Turin that year; but England’s Football Association declined to send a team, refusing to be associated with the tournament – haughty over being faced with new rules for a sport that they themselves had possessed such a large role in establishing in the first place – so Lipton invited a direct invitation to a West Auckland amateur club from County Durham to represent England instead. The club won that year’s competition, and returned two years later to win again.

In 1914, FIFA accepted responsibility for taking over the management of the Olympics’ soccer event, agreeing to recognize it as the world soccer championship for amateurs. Under FIFA’s management, the 1920 Summer Olympics presented the first ever intercontinental soccer competition, including the first team outside of Europe – Egypt – among the competitors, the rest of whom were thirteen competing teams from Europe. Belgium won the gold medal that year.

The same year, in continued protest against the increasing foreign influence on soccer, which the British still considered to be very much their own sport – as well as due to a reluctance to compete against countries they had only recently fought in World War I, along with a lack of agreement with the organization over just what would constitute professional soccer – British teams withdrew from FIFA. The nation did not accept an invitation from FIFA to compete in a World Cup until 1950, the first World Cup tournament after World War II.

Nevertheless, when Jules Rimet became FIFA’s president in 1921, he believed that the sport of soccer had the power to instill peace across the world and made it among his top priorities in his new position to organize an international soccer competition with no restrictions against players’ status as either amateurs or professionals. In 1924, FIFA officially entered its professional era, and the next Olympic summer game, in 1924, presented the first open world soccer championship. Uruguay won that year, as well as at the next Summer Olympic Games in 1928.

Seeing how successful the soccer tournament events of the Olympics had become, Rimet finally succeeded in convincing the rest of the FIFA organization to revisit the idea of presenting an international soccer tournament and sports award of its own – and in 1928, the FIFA Congress in Amsterdam decided that it was time to host its own world championship.