In this post we will be looking at History of FIFA, what is the purpose of FIFA, how many countries are part of FIFA and How does the World Cup relate to FIFA.
INTRODUCTION.
Regardless of whether you call it football or soccer, it’s a sport with massive global appeal and fan interest. In fact, more than 40% of people 16 or older in major population centers around the world consider themselves interested or very interested in following football, more so than any other sport. As nations compete for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Nielsen Sports research shows the popularity of football is growing in the U.S., India and China. While interest in the sport of football (soccer) is lower in the U.S. than most countries, it stands at 32%, up from 28% from four years prior. Youth participation, an increase in the Hispanic population, the growth of Major League Soccer and the popularity of the FIFA video game have all contributed to the “soccer surge” in recent years in the U.S. Where is the sport most popular? Across countries with football fans, the United Arab Emirates tops the list as 80% of the country’s population are fans, followed by Thailand, Chile and Cristiano Ronaldo’s home country of Portugal. Football has a tremendous following in Europe, with 131 million fans in the big five European markets (Spain, Italy, Germany, U.K. and France.) And more than half (52%) of people in Russia, the 2018 FIFA World Cup host country, are interested in the sport. Around the world, football is a sport that transcends gender. Nielsen Sports DNA global research shows football is the most popular sport among women globally and a recent study shows 70% of women find the men’s FIFA World Cup “very appealing” and 58% of women find the women’s FIFA World Cup “very appealing.”
HISTORY OF FIFA.
FIFA is an international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was founded in 1904 to oversee international competition among the national associations of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland, its membership now comprises 211 national associations; Russia was suspended in 2022. These national associations must each also be members of one of the six regional confederations into which the world is divided: Africa, Asia, Europe, North & Central America and the Caribbean, Oceania and South America. It outlines a number of objectives in the organizational Statutes, including growing association football internationally, providing efforts to ensure it is accessible to everyone, and advocating for integrity and fair play. It is responsible for the organization and promotion of association football’s major international tournaments, notably the World Cup which commenced in 1930 and the Women’s World Cup which commenced in 1991. Although FIFA does not solely set the laws of the game, that being the responsibility of the International Football Association Board of which FIFA is a member, it applies and enforces the rules across all FIFA competitions. All FIFA tournaments generate revenue from sponsorship; in 2018, FIFA had revenues of over US $4.6 billion, ending the 2015–2018 cycle with a net positive of US$1.2 billion, and had cash reserves of over US$2.7 billion. Reports by investigative journalists have linked FIFA leadership with corruption, bribery, and vote-rigging related to the election of FIFA president Sepp Blatter and the organization’s decision to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, respectively. These allegations led to the indictments of nine high-ranking FIFA officials and five corporate executives by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges including racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering. On 27 May 2015, several of these officials were arrested by Swiss authorities, who were launching a simultaneous but separate criminal investigation into how the organization awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Those among these officials who were also indicted in the U.S. are expected to be extradited to face charges there as well. Many officials were suspended by FIFA’s ethics committee including Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini. In early 2017, reports became public about FIFA president Gianni Infantino attempting to prevent the re-elections of both chairmen of the ethics committee, Cornel Borbély and Hans-Joachim Eckert, during the FIFA congress in May 2017. On 9 May 2017, following Infantino’s proposal, FIFA Council decided not to renew the mandates of Borbély and Eckert. Together with the chairmen, 11 of 13 committee members were removed.
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF FIFA.
FIFA is not a private organization. The people who run it do not own the organization or the sport. They are the custodians of the sport for the many millions who play the game and the billions who love it. “— This is FIFA’s Charter from their website. FIFA was started as a centralized coalition to organize football at an international level. To have a place where international football could reach arbitration for the various squabbles about the laws of the game, the value of tournaments, the organization of a World Cup to determine who is the greatest nation playing football. All of the trappings of how to determine the way the international game is to be played, how the rules will be applied, and by whom, and how it will be organized. Over the years the organization of FIFA has taken on a much bigger role. It has become involved in peace treaties, and foreign aid to struggling countries. Obviously, it has been involved in controversy and graft. Sepp Blatter, the last president of FIFA before Gianni Infantino the current president, was in charge of FIFA from 1998 to 2015. Blatter resigned his post under something of a cloud of mystery involving the granting of the last two World Cups, one in Russia and one in Qatar. Both of these have had accusations of graft laid at Blatter’s feet. The biggest and most complicated duty of FIFA is to organize the Word Cup of Football every four years. These are the most popular sporting events in the world. The final match is seen by something like 1 billion viewers. The entire World Cup in 2014 reached 3.2 billion viewers. Far outstripping anything else on TV by log-rhythmic factors. For comparison the NFL Super Bowl in 2016 reached 167 million people World Wide. In addition to the World Cup, FIFA is responsible for overseeing the various Footballing federations around the world, UEFA in Europe, CONCACAF in the Americas, CAF in Africa and so on. With that comes tournaments like the European Championships that occur on the even years opposite World Cup years, 2016 for example when the World Cup was 2014.In addition to international football, FIFA and UEFA have club tournaments, the UEFA Champions League is a prime example if this. The UEFA Champion league tournament is held every year and features the very best clubs from all over Europe. Each league has a set number of teams eligible for placement onto the tournament, and depending on how the club finishes their season determines their placement into the Champions League the following season., For example, Chelsea FC won the English Premier League in 2016/17 so they went directly into the group stage of the Champions League for the fall of 2017. Some clubs have to go to a playoff to get into the Champion league group stage, Liverpool FC finished 4th in PL last season, so this season they had to win a playoff against Hoffenheim, which they did 6:3 on aggregate, to reach the group stage. FIFA also oversees the referees’ programs and the coaching badges for the various federations around the world. They put together the learning programs, the testing programs, and the retraining programs. All of which is paid for by the member nations and clubs. Part of the price of the tickets we all pay for goes to the custodians of the game.
HOW MANY COUNTRIES ARE PART OF FIFA.
32 countries will participate at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Debutants to qualify were Panama and Iceland. Shocks and surprises included the following teams to miss out: Italy, Netherlands, USA, Algeria, Cameroon, Ireland, Ghana, and Chile. See the full list of qualifiers for 2022. The list includes all countries that have qualified and played in the FIFA World Cup finals.
Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo DR (Zaire), Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Czechia, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, England, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Haiti, Honduras Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, North Korea, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Senegal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sri Lanka, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine, Uruguay, USA, Wales.
Past Countries that have participated at the World Cup.
- Yugoslavia
- Serbia & Montenegro
- Czechoslovakia
- USSR
Countries that have played in the qualifiers, though are yet to play in the World Cup finals.
Afghanistan, Albania, American Samoa, Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chinese Taipei, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Curaçao, Cyprus, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Fiji, Finland, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guam, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Hong Kong, India, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Namibia, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niger, North Macedonia, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Rwanda, Saar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, South Yemen, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Tahiti, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, U.S. Virgin Islands, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
HOW DOES THE WORLD CUP RELATE TO FIFA.
FIFA introduced the World Cup in 1930 and invited every country to participate, but only 13 chose to make the journey to Uruguay. Now featuring 32 teams, the World Cup is known as the world’s largest sporting event, broadcasted in more than 200 countries and viewed by billions of fans across the globe. The event is quadrennial, meaning it occurs every four years, and it involves 32 team’s total. This will be the U.S. men’s national team’s first time competing in the World Cup since 2014. All eyes are on the screen and anticipating this fall faceoff.
THE MOST NOTABLE PRESIDENTS OF FIFA.
French journalist Robert Guerin was the first president of FIFA from 1904 to 1906. The longest running FIFA president was Jules Rimet, who served from 1921 to 1954. The World Cup trophy is actually named after Rimet. The current president is Gianni Infantino, who was elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2019.
CONCLUTION.
FIFA is composed of 211 national associations. This year Russia has been suspended for the 2022 season; therefore 210 national associations will be involved. Thirty-wo of these national associations compete in the final competition – the World Cup. These national associations also have to belong to one of the six regional confederations that divide the world – including Africa, Asia, Europe, North & Central America and the Caribbean, Oceania and South America.