ABSTRACT
Football was played in France in the late nineteenth century but it was not until 1904 that the first official international match was played by a French national team (a 3-3 draw in Belgium). The governing body, the amateur, multi-sport USFSA (Union des sociétés françaises de sports athlétiques), favoured athletics and rugby over football and failed to take any initiative in establishing a national team. It was content to send a club side, Le Club français, for instance, to participate in the 1900 Olympic Games and it was primarily thanks to the Belgians that a French national team was finally sent into action to play in what was originally designed as an annual trophy between the neighbouring countries, the Evance Coppée Cup (Cazal et al. 1998: 15). The creation of FIFA later in the same year (inspired by the Frenchman Robert Guérin, a journalist at Le Matin) gave further impetus to the notion of international competition and France was a founder member of the new governing body of world football. The establishment of the French FA (Fédération française de football) in 1919, under the leadership of Jules Rimet, who would go on two years later to preside over FIFA itself, gave further impetus to the development of the sport in France both internationally as well as domestically and France became one of only four European countries to participate in the first ever World Cup finals, held in Uruguay in 1930.
